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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   2517 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 8, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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How do you become a better writer ?

I think and speak in a casual rambly manner. It is good for story telling in person. I'm animated and do quite a lot of voice modulation, so long sentences don't feel as bad. It's allowed me be quick on my feet and can give an impromptu speech with zero notice.

But, in professional settings, it feels cumbersome. I hate reading my own writing back to myself and my elevator pitches feel lacking. The sharp edge of a well-made point gets lost in the layers of qualification and verbose filler.

I want to get better at being concise and pointed. Any suggestions for where I can start ?

I find my writing much more clear and concise when I make a detailed outline first. It helps to get the thoughts out of your head and onto paper where you can begin to fit them together in a more coherent way. I tend to find myself writing in rambling ways when I’m tap dancing around either something I’m not sure about, or that I don’t quite understand. If you ramble in an outline or in scribbles on a piece of paper, you’ll tend to find those things quickly and you can research them more or think more deeply about the point you’re trying to make.

I find Jordan Peterson’s guide (https://www.mr-sustainability.com/internal-stories/2021/jordan-b-peterson-essay-writing-guide) rather useful for nonfiction, and if you want to do fiction, get a good beat sheet ( I use Harmon’s 8 step story circle) and use character sheets from RPGs or the like.

To cut it very short, everyone’s unedited prose is rambling. If you want to be better at writing, you need to learn to plan before you write and edit afterwards. Pantsing in either fiction or nonfiction doesn’t really work unless you’re writing a zero draft you intend to basically cannibalize for good ideas to put into your real writing. Or at least that’s how it ends up for me. I’m sure there are a few natural writers who can actually pants a coherent piece on their first try. It’s rare, and so unless you’re already pretty good at writing in your chosen genre, it’s better to learn to structure your writing first.

Write a million words.

William Zinnser's On Writing Well is by far the best book on concise writing. You end up learning to edit as you write.

Write more, edit yourself more, and find someone who is a strong writer to help you edit your writing. Be merciless and aggressive with the editing. "Kill your babies." Also, read the works of people who are strong writers in the style you want to achieve and emulate them.

Read On Writing. The second half of the book is a nuts and bolts description of how to write better (mostly fiction, but broadly applicable). The first half is mostly biographical but still fascinating.

Classics like The Elements of Style are also useful; perhaps more so if you're trying to trim the fat from your prose. There was a similar book that got me through grad school, but I'm blanking on the name at the moment. This genre mostly taught a style that was dry and concise, optimized for conveying information with the least amount of text possible.

Write and share it with people whose opinions you trust for feedback.

  1. Read well-written books and articles. What you read is just as important as what you write.
  2. Learn grammar. Understand sentence structure and using the correct words.
  3. Learn punctuation. Your writing will improve when you understand, for example, when to use a comma versus a semicolon.

Writing more helps. I really like CGP Grey's half-marks for habit forming. Basically, you make a calendar that has a empty circle for each day and each activity you want to improve on. For each activity you write down the criteria for full effort (fully colored circle), and for partial effort (semi-colored circle). But the cutoff for partial effort is not 50% of full, it's more like 10%. So, for working out you might put: "do a full upper or lower body workout" for full effort and "do one set of bodyweight squats or push-ups to failure or spend five minutes stretching" for partial effort.

Do the same with writing. Have "write a page of text" for full effort and "write a single sentence or edit two" for partial effort. Then print the calendar out and start coloring in the circles. You look at your streak of circles every day and it's really easy to start writing or working out because if you're not feeling it today you can just do a little bit and stop while awarding yourself partial credit.

My advice would probably differ from most of the others here. I believe that your unique “voice” needs to find its own “truth” for you to be seen (or see yourself) as “a better writer”.

For some people this will be more direct and concise. For others this will be more “verbose” and “rambly” to use your words. There is nothing intrinsically wrong about long sentences. Charles Dickens often wrote long sentences. David Foster Wallace was seen by some as the greatest novelist of his generation and some of his sentences were pages long. The key thing that set both of them apart was they wrote what was absolutely true for them. Ernest Hemingway (who typically wrote in short, direct, pared back style) had some famous advice for writers: “Make every sentence the truth.”

That prompts a different question: “How do you know what’s true?”

My belief is that this is a matter of feel and intuition. Your mind might not always tell you what’s true. But your body will. Something somewhere in your body, some wave of small emotion, some inkling that might even express itself in the formation of a tear or two behind your eyes, will communicate itself when you find words that express a truth.

Also, this is not a 0 or 1. There are a million decimal points on the journey from falsehood to truth in your writing. The staircase stretches far far into the hazy distance and you can never see the top, you can just keep climbing.

Also, good luck.

How do you become a better writer ?

Humourously I often ask myself the same question for precisely the opposite reason. I am concise to the point of cutting vital details, I find it extremely challenging to write at length. I'm two sentences deep into a comment and already getting writer's block. It's awful.

I’m also like that and I shudder when I read about how long essays seem to be required from American college students. My masters thesis had barely more text than some of those essays (and Google Scholar lists a bunch of citations for the thesis, so at least some people found it good).

Kill commas and and's.

Seriously. Comma splicing caveats is common. Interspacing additional phrases is natural. Doing so is often unnecessary compared to just shortening one sentence to make two or using a single adjective. Don't ask how to be concise and punchy. Being concise is the punch. Adding 'and punchy' was what made it less so.

Obviously you don't need to always write like that, and commas can help merge things together, but it's a crutch habit that leads to weaker writing.

To answer your question- the way to becoming a better writer is by writing. You can start by trying to rewrite your post with as few 'and' and commas as possible.

(No, seriously. Try it and reply with your rework.)

To answer your question-

Kill the dash, too.

The em dash is probably one of the most misunderstood punctuation marks. It works well when a comma is too weak but a colon or set of parentheses is too strong. It puts a nice pause in the text — and it is underused in professional writing.

The em dash is like a delicate but dangerous tool: reckless use can lead to injury. They're great for inserting non-related information in the middle of a sentence -- I do this a lot -- but as a way to pause text? No way. A period is sufficient in most cases. Single em dashes create unnecessary whiplash in a sentence.

Non-glowing brain: " - "
Dimly-glowing brain: " -- "
Moderately-glowing brain: " – "
Brightly-glowing brain: "--"
Galaxy brain: "—"

Or at least don't use a hyphen.

How do improve at writing ?

I ramble. My sentences are long. My claims are laid with qualifications. In person I modulate. So sentences don't feel long. Works for impromptu speeches, but is cumbersome in writing.

I've come to hate my writing. My elevator pitches lack punch. The sharp edge of a well-made point gets lost in verbose filler.

I want to improve at conciseness. Where I can start ?

Thanks. I tried.

It's a little jerky, but is much improved.

but is much improved

No it isn't. This is much worse than what you had in your OP; the "improved" version is horribly stilted and unnatural. What you had in the OP was already fine and it wasn't in particular need of any further corrections.

"Be concise" is one of the most actively harmful "principles" of "good writing" in common circulation, almost on par with the utterly nonsensical "show don't tell" (a word is worth a thousand pictures - there are many "tellings" that are more profound than any "showing" ever could be). Concision is principally valued by those individuals who have neither the constitution to digest substantial amounts of authentically individuated writing, nor the ability to produce it. In some cases, a norm of terseness may function as a defense mechanism. When we tell the empty-headed dullard that he should "be more concise", what we are really telling him is that he should simply not write as much, so that we can spare ourselves the exposure to his writing. But this does not thereby transform the bad writer into a good writer - it merely makes him less of a nuisance. A minute quantity of poison is still poison in its intrinsic constitution, even if it has been reduced to a level where it is no longer dangerous.

Burn all the style guides; they're no good. Read your own writing in good faith, and honestly evaluate the degree to which it is in conformity with the law of your own taste. If you have good taste, it'll lead you right. If you have bad taste, then everything is hopeless from the start, so it doesn't really matter what you do.

Seconded, the original was fine.

This is a start- now look to where some of these are overlapping points that could be consolidated, but without relying on commas. The point of this exercise is not to have the shortest sentence possible for final presentation, but to break what you're trying to say into its constituent parts.

For example

I ramble. My sentences are long.

Can combine without a comma or 'and' by

My sentences are too long because I ramble.

While the later half of this-

In person I modulate. So sentences don't feel long.

-isn't actually a sentence, and breaking it apart isn't required to avoid the 'and' or ,.

In person I modulate my voice so sentences don't feel long.

Meanwhile, these-

I've come to hate my writing. My elevator pitches lack punch. The sharp edge of a well-made point gets lost in verbose filler.

I want to improve at conciseness. Where I can start ?

These are better. They could be improved- a general point of good communication is to avoid vague figures of speech ('lack punch') because they don't mean a specific connotation and they often don't translate- but these are all distinct thoughts that can be distinct sentence.

Consider use of linking words beyond 'and,' which may be a different word or just using a necessary word in a different form.

For consideration-

I've come to hate my writing.

Do you hate you writing, or do you hate something about your writing? If the later, this could be

I've come to hate my writing's [characteristic you hate]

My elevator pitches lack punch.

Punch is a figure of speech which may be appropriate, but also doesn't imply a specific issue. Maybe this is a case where a different word would help, whether the effect your pitches lack, or the effect.

My elevator pitches take too long.

My elevator pitches aren't persuasive.

I am not satisfied with my elevator pitches.

Finally, these?

I want to improve at conciseness. Where I can start ?

These aren't just better- these are good. Distinct thoughts, no fluff words, no unnecessary clauses.

Back to the recommendation for you-

Do this exercise again. Iterate on what you just did and produce a third version. Put the first and third version side by side. A powerpoint works well here since you can put the posts in two different text blocks.

Then print it out and take it to a mentor you trust and ask for help finding a writing coach. Or even ask a boss. Believe it or not, bosses often love to receive better-written reports, and will happily help someone who wants to make their lives easier.

If your job has some form of structured 'train yourself' time, make this a project for a period (a month, a quarter), and use either company resources or online resources. Depending on how your job does its evaluation system, you could even build this sort of thing into your personal training / assessment plan as an annual objective. 'In 2025, I will spend at least one training session a month working on my writing skills' is both a target and a quantifiable performance objective.

Finally, just some rules to think on.

Crutch vs Utility Words

'And' and commas are often crutches to insert more clauses that wouldn't be needed if you chose better words the first time. That does not mean they should never be used. A good rule of thumb is 'it is okay to make the sentence a little longer if it makes the paragraph shorter.'

[Demonstration: This allows the commas to be used for lists. This allows for the 'ands' to be used for sentences that would otherwise begin the same way. This allows for commas and ands to be used for lists and sentences that would otherwise begin the same way. ]

Alternate Linking Words

One way to minimize the unnecessary 'ands' to improve the use of other linking words. 'Because', 'although,' 'or,' and similar words can be used to mitigate needs for 'and' or even commas. They should only be used once per sentence to limit clause growth.

[Demonstration: You may want to use a comma or 'and' because you don't realize an 'or' creates a two-element list that doesn't need either although they aren't necessary for a three-part sentence either.

Clause Order

Rather than starting a first sentence, and then using a comma to create a second sentence that itself needs a transition, you may be able to make a better flowing sentence that doesn't need the comma if you just reorder the clauses. By reordering the clauses you can improve sentence flow from the start in ways that doesn't need a comma in the first place.

[Demonstration: See above]

Remember the Rule of Three

As in humor, so in writing, keep a three-part structure whenever possible. Focus on three key themes a writing, limit to three clauses a sentence, make lists of three as able. This isn't always possible, but when you can, this helps prioritize your efforts, limit scope creep, and keep a steady cadence.

[Demonstration: Note how the last sentence was three sections, with the third section itself being a list of three.] (Note- there is a term in management sometimes called the span of control, which refers to how many people someone can effectively directly supervise. This number is... three to five.

Recognize When It's a Rule (And Not a Choice) There are cases where a comma or and is appropriate and even necessary: when you are making a list, and every part needs to be separated by a comma, and the last element needs an 'and' to indicate that it's the end of the list. However, there's no requirement for an 'and' within those list elements. An 'and' can sometimes be replaced by a comma to create another list element and sometimes the and can replace a comma, but question if you need both.

Hope some of these help.

These are golden. I'll try internalizing them in my future writing.

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