Some Writing Advice: Don’t Take Others’ Advice
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Re: Some Writing Advice: Don’t Take Others’ Advice
#2I’d add to this that most “How to write” or “style guide” books aren’t useful. They can help you to turn really bad prose into serviceable prose, but they can’t make you a good writer. For that you need to spend thousands of hours reading the work of expert writers.
If you read a style guide like Strunk and White, you’ll come across a lot of nonsense. A particular bugbear of mine is the prohibition against passives, which is utter rubbish[0]. Don’t waste your time hunting down passives and split infinitives under the illusion that it will make your writing better. It won’t.
Re: Some Writing Advice: Don’t Take Others’ Advice
#3I’d add to this that most “How to write” or “style guide” books aren’t useful. They can help you to turn really bad prose into serviceable prose, but they can’t make you a good writer. For that you need to spend thousands of hours reading the work of expert writers. If you read a style guide like Strunk and White, you’ll come across a lot of nonsense. A particular bugbear of mine is the prohibition against passives,…
I think the US government’s “plain language” site has examples showing that changing passive to active can definitely improve texts, like here: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/empl...
Re: Some Writing Advice: Don’t Take Others’ Advice
#4I’d add to this that most “How to write” or “style guide” books aren’t useful. They can help you to turn really bad prose into serviceable prose, but they can’t make you a good writer. For that you need to spend thousands of hours reading the work of expert writers. If you read a style guide like Strunk and White, you’ll come across a lot of nonsense. A particular bugbear of mine is the prohibition against passives,…
I think the US government’s “plain language” site has examples showing that changing passive to active can definitely improve texts, like here: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/empl...
Passives are an information structuring tool that writers use to control how information is presented in a sentence. They can be used well or they can be poorly.
For example, on the page you linked to the first line of the body text reads:
> This example was created for training and is not official agency text.
The first clause of that sentence is in the passive voice — “was created” — and is a good example of how passives should be used. Nothing is gained by replacing it with:
> We created this example for training and it is not official agency text.
Re: Some Writing Advice: Don’t Take Others’ Advice
#5I think the only advice you need is:
- if you are creating figures: research and be empathic to the real reasons why people act like they do. Observe life
- be aware of the functions certain words, phrases, sentences or sections fulfill in the system of your text
- become a good reader: if you’re sensitive to language, this can be your failsafe, it will protect you from writing things you didn’t intend
- Just write and don’t be afraid to throw things out.
- don’t overly rely on dramatic systems, because you will end up telling low impact predictable stories like everybody else
Re: Some Writing Advice: Don’t Take Others’ Advice
#6But there is a reason people seek advice: writing is hard.
I've always wanted to write, and I sought the help of some pretty good writers. They gave me great advice. But no amount of advice can be applied to a blank page.
So I wrote, pretty badly at first, you can see it on my blog.
Writing is hard. Imagine, you have an idea in your head, and you like it. You grab a keyboard and write it down, somehow you write something else, not the idea in your head. You have to force your brain to say what it means to say.
There is no problem with reading other's advice, as long as you have some writing to apply it to. However, in my case I benefit more from reading what those people write, rather then read their advice.
Re: Some Writing Advice: Don’t Take Others’ Advice
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the US government’s “plain language” site has examples showing that changing passive to active can definitely improve texts, like here: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/empl...
Passives are an information structuring tool that writers use to control how information is presented in a sentence. They can be used well or they can be poorly. For example, on the page you linked to the first line of the body text reads: > This example was created for training and is not official agency text. The first clause of that sentence is in the passive voice — “was created” — and is a good example of how pa…
Sure, I agree that prohibiting passive voice entirely is a bad idea. No rule can ever substitute judgment and experience.
I’d formulate the passive thing as “watch out for the passive voice and try if an active reformulation sounds better.”
Re: Some Writing Advice: Don’t Take Others’ Advice
#8I think the only advice you need is: - if you are creating figures: research and be empathic to the real reasons why people act like they do. Observe life - be aware of the functions certain words, phrases, sentences or sections fulfill in the system of your text - become a good reader: if you’re sensitive to language, this can be your failsafe, it will protect you from writing things you didn’t intend - Just write a…
And practice editing, especially deleting.
Re: Some Writing Advice: Don’t Take Others’ Advice
#9I’d add to this that most “How to write” or “style guide” books aren’t useful. They can help you to turn really bad prose into serviceable prose, but they can’t make you a good writer. For that you need to spend thousands of hours reading the work of expert writers. If you read a style guide like Strunk and White, you’ll come across a lot of nonsense. A particular bugbear of mine is the prohibition against passives,…
I think the US government’s “plain language” site has examples showing that changing passive to active can definitely improve texts, like here: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/empl...
There are cases where eliminating passive voice can improve things. In a lot of the example cases I've seen in such guides, however, the examples are somewhat straw-man sentences that don't have so much to do with passive vs active.
I also agree with the grand-parent that as writing advice for literature it's bad advice. I'd also like to state that passives are a tool, and like any tool they can be and are misused.
I've read sentences in active voice that were clearly contortions around such advice and would have been much better as passive voice. They were usually, but by no means always, of the form without the by-clause.
Also, in English, a lot of people have got the idea into their heads that this applies to the imperfect tense, often from the likes of grammar checkers that warn about eliminating passives and don't seem to understand imperfect past.
Consider: "He was punched" vs "{subject} punched him" The two have quite different meanings, but a lot of grammar checkers warn about passive voice here.
But even if we take the past continuous passive, "He was being punched" has a subtly different meaning to "{} was punching him." As an author of literature, who was doing the punching might be stylistically omitted.
A good editor arguably should pick these contortions up, drastically improving writing; just as a good editor should pick up misused passive voice where active voice would be better. Sadly, editing time given to literature these days even by the better publishers is fairly cursory compared to some of the efforts of the past. The rise of easy-access self-publishing may have had an impact here, but the bar had already been significantly lowered by the pathological profit-obsession of big publishers.
Re: Some Writing Advice: Don’t Take Others’ Advice
#10The best advice I ever heard: Every text you read is both an advice how to write and an advice how not to.