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To become a better writer, read as much as you can

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Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#251

Post by svara »

YinglingHeavy wrote: post #177
svara wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're reading more words than ever, but instead of coming from books, they're coming from digital media. We're losing that same muscle for long-form reading and deep focus (...) Yes, true, but that's also very much a thing you can do something about by, well: reading books. It's a technique we must preserve for the good of our culture, but, also, in a society full of people who have forgotten how to, an individual…

That offers no solution to the masses, only the individual. The former its a much more difficult and demanding discussion.

I was sure someone was going to say that.

Culture can change surprisingly quickly, but it certainly won't change in ways you like if you're not doing your part.

Already, young people and the ways they use online media are quite different from people my age, and I'm not that old.

I see a lot of young parents reading to their children, making sure they grow up with a love of books, very concerned about their consumption of social media.

Backlash against the shallowness and divisiveness of social media is not niche anymore.

It needs a little more pushing, a little more time, a little more being an example for yourself and others.

What's certainly not going to help is throwing your arms in the air and submitting to the all powerful social media overlords.

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#252

Post by groundzeros2015 »

vintagedave wrote: post #63

> Why be a writer if you don’t love reading? Why devote your intellectual and emotional energy to creating a book, when it’s a form you’re not invested in? Why write, when you aren’t steeped in wonder of storytelling? This is the key point, I think. I've seen the same as the author: people who want to be writers but rarely read books. And I don't get it. I recently finished a novel (now shopping around for agents, wh…

> people who want to be writers but rarely read books. And I don't get it.

Some of the best books are not from writers, but people who have something to say and writing happens to be a medium.

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#253

Post by popalchemist »

andsoitis wrote: post #8
popalchemist wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instant yawn and instant dismissal; I don't want advice from a psychologically stunted man-child.

> Instant yawn and instant dismissal; I don't want advice from a psychologically stunted man-child. So you don’t agree with his one golden rule for becoming a better writer?

Whether his point is valid or not does not change the fact that I do not want to hear from him. A broken clock is right twice a day and a screaming edge lord teenager will occasionally say something insightful, it doesn't mean I should seek either of them out as a source of information when there are better options, even if in those rare moments they are true. The best rubric for advice is take it only from those who have the life you want; this man does not have the life I want for myself, and I can deduce that from his lack of emotional development.

As for the advice. I do think it's perhaps fair to say that reading good material is foundational to being able to think well enough to write good material, however that only takes you so far; to write is the only way to get better at writing. So the advise exists in a tension with that reality; I don't think it's accurate to say that reading is the MOST important, that's like saying that eating is the most important aspect of becoming a chef. Perhaps it is foundational but it will not take you all the way, there is something essential to chefness that lies beyond eating.

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#255

Post by bee_rider »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #103

"I'm one of the few people you'll meet who's written more books than they've read." - The Great Garth Marenghi https://www.garthmarenghi.com/about/ (If you're unfamiliar, it's a comedy bit about a bad writer, somewhat the opposite of a genuine role-model)

The first thing I did in this thread is search Garth. Fun show.

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#256

Post by alexpotato »

klodolph wrote: post #218
alexpotato wrote: post #168

I started a podcast recently and two things are VERY in line with this post: 1. If you listen to tons of podcasts, you slowly internalize what is a good vs bad interview. e.g. you learn to automatically ask leading questions, direct the guest in an arc (if that's what you want to do etc). One of my guests was a professional sports journalist and he mentioned "How did you learn to interview people so well??" 2. I aske…

Speaking of gear, there are also a lot of people who will go out and spend $440 on a SM-7b, and then use it to record somebody (1) not saying interesting (2) who doesn’t have good speaking skills (3) in a room which doesn’t sound good (4) with a preamp that doesn’t have enough clean gain to record a low-output mic like the SM-7b. It’s not like gear isn’t important but the SM-7b has become such an object of hate for m…

100% on the gear.

I started with a couple of $40 Jabra USB headsets + a MacBook. MacOs comes with a built in equalizer that lets you "merge" two inputs into a feed. You can then use Audacity to record one user on the left channel and one on the right.

Again, I didn't know anything about audio processing but with some YouTube videos, Audacity manual + asking an LLM you can really make the audio sound great.

As one extreme, you can literally start a podcast with a phone and whatever audio app is included with the phone.

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#257

Post by KineticLensman »

pessimizer wrote: post #226
KineticLensman wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see his point that it is worth learning to think for yourself, but if you then try to publish your thoughts without understanding what else is out there (e.g. by reading about it), the results could be very embarrassing. This would seem to apply in both philosophy (which I'm assuming Schopenhauer was discussing) and (say) genre fiction. Incidentally, having quickly scanned some of Schopenhauer's actual writing…

> If I'd come across these first I'd be very reluctant, rightly or wrongly, to uncritically accept his views on other subjects. You don't want people to use this sort of criteria to judge arguments. Not just because it's ad hominem, but also for selfish reasons - your opinion that after a "quick scan" one should dismiss Schopenhauer's philosophical thought (his specialty) because he shared a common contemporary opini…

My 'quick scan' involved reading the essay "On thinking for yourself" which was quoted from above. I specifically disagree with his general point here, essentially that you should avoid reading until your own ideas are fully developed. I do not believe this is universally true, especially in the context of this discussion, which is about becoming a better writer.

To get a feel for his other work, I read his essay "On Women", which is derogatory and sexist. Female philosophers such as Mary Wollstonecraft had already responded to similar patriarchal sexism (50 years before in her case) and as a philosopher one might have expected Schopenhauer to be familiar with similar intelligent women, and to have acknowledged their existence. His denigration of the capabilities of half the human race does not give me confidence in his other speculations.

[Edit] I also observe that Tolstoy stated "at present I am convinced that Schopenhauer is the greatest genius among men. ... It is the whole world in an incomparably beautiful and clear reflection" [0]. As someone who has slogged through the 27 chapters of philosophy in War and Peace, which are a case study of how to fail to understand how human society actually works, I am reluctant to uncritically accept claims from famous people that someone else is a genius.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer#Influence_...

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#258

Post by antirez »

codingdave wrote: post #170
antirez wrote: post #140

This is simply not true, even if it is commonly repeated among the folks that usually don't really write. Like how reading every source code that comes handy will not turn yourself into a great programmer, to be a good writer you need to: 1. Read selected books, and re-read good books more often then reading new stuff, to understand why they are good. 2. Read, from time to time, some bad book, and understand why it i…

So you feel that reading being necessary to write well is not true, yet the first 2 points of advice include directions to read, to re-read, to understand what you read, and then to read more. And in your last point, to write while remembering what you read. Are you sure you actually disagree with the article?

Yes. The article says that you need to read a lot to write well. You actually need to write a lot, and to read carefully, high quality, and potentially low quantity too (to use more time to write).

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#259

Post by KolmogorovComp »

Guestmodinfo wrote: post #68
vintagedave wrote: post #63

> Why be a writer if you don’t love reading? Why devote your intellectual and emotional energy to creating a book, when it’s a form you’re not invested in? Why write, when you aren’t steeped in wonder of storytelling? This is the key point, I think. I've seen the same as the author: people who want to be writers but rarely read books. And I don't get it. I recently finished a novel (now shopping around for agents, wh…

Please please suggest me some books where language and style of speaking sentences takes the crown rather than the story being the selling point. I'm tired of hearing about the usual greats and also booker prize ones because they have good characters and good story content or shocking emotionally but are quite bland on the language front because they assume their readers have grade 5 level capacity so the sentences a…

Any book from Jack London. It’s not difficult to find great books.
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