Ask HN: How to get better at writing?
I’ve been writing for a while but I feel like I’ve stagnated for a while. What have other people done?
Read the best authors for the intended style, be it story-writing, critical analysis or business communication. It all depends on the style of writing you would like to master. It's theor techniques that you want to emulate and make your own.
Write to evoke an emotion. There must be a purpose to your writing. If to inform, guide the reader to an ah-ha moment. Your writing will be memorable if the reader feels something.
Cut fluff. Every word must have a purpose. Less is more.
Good writing is about refining your own voice. Write as you speak, speak as you write, and both will improve.
Ultimately, have fun with it. Experiment with different styles. Writing is an art, it requires creativity. This must be cultivated and grown. In time, over many poorly crafted drafts, a unique voice, all your own, will emerge.
Best of luck!
Do you have specific authors whose writing really resonated with you? How have they changed your writing?
1. Condense. Much of good writing is simply signal/noise ratio!
First write a draft that says all you want to say. Then go over it again and again, removing/rephrasing un-needed words and syllables. 20% compression is a decent result.
2. "Rubber ducking". Imagine showing the text to someone likely to read it. I've developed an "inner stranger" I show text or code to. He doesn't have my specialized knowledge, but is reasonably smart.
Implied above is to always write a draft that you edit. Do NOT try to form a perfect text in your mind before writing!
2. Practice converting your thoughts to the written word so that they're clearly understood by anyone. That is the exercise at hand and it takes practice.
3. Once you've mastered clearly communicating your ideas, add some cleverness to your writing. Use double-entendre and practice economy of words. Leave something for the reader to guess, allowing one's imagination to fill the gaps with what you didn't say.
4. Finally, practice the art of showing versus telling, i.e., the art of story-telling versus an analytical accounting of facts.
My most important shift was to start writing nonlinearly. Instead of writing a beginning, middle, and end, I instead gather together all the claims, facts, etc. and develop them individually without concern for the overall logical structure. Eventually, the pieces start fitting together and the linear structure emerges. It is so much easier to start with too much and whittle it down.
Where do these claims, facts, etc. come from? This is what your note taking system should create. As I read a text, I highlight relevant sections and then go back through to paraphrase them. These notes are organized around topics and solve the daunting blank page problem.
How should you paraphrase? Keyword outlining is the practice of picking a handful of _keywords_ from a source text, setting aside the original text, and then paraphrasing using the keyword outline and your recollection of the original text. This is a subtle shift from the typical approach of changing a few words of the source text to paraphrase it. This is also great practice for honing your sentence and paragraph writing skills.
Presumably the idea is that you run into the same challenges the original author did — how to get from one scene to the next, how to direct or misdirect the reader, etc. — and by solving those challenges you understand the mechanics of storytelling at a deeper level. Since you've got the "perfect" version of the story as a key, you aren't just guessing, and there is a right and wrong answer.
He also said that, to his knowledge, nobody had ever taken him up on this advice.
But, Wolfe was a fantastic writer, and an engineer, so I assume his approach would be a practical and useful one for anyone willing to put in the work.
I just spent about 30 minutes trying to find the source of the quote, but failed. /shrug
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oSdLfPas8dw around around 10 minutes. Good stuff!
PS: I'm more of a fan of Zelazny, but I enjoyed quite a lot The Book of the New Sun
Zelazny was my first love. :)
The same is true for all aspects of language. If you want to speak better, don't watch TV news or LA sitcoms. Watch classic British comedy (Blackadder) or BBC science docs (Brian Cox) that will expand your practical vocabulary and sense of proper diction.
Get a cheep spiral notebook and a nice pen.
Then collect some example writings that represent the best writing style you aspire to. I prefer short stories and essays, but for larger examples (novels) you can focus on single chapters.
Every day spend about 1/2 hour copying the example writing by hand into the spiral notebook. When you are done copying about two pages into your spiral notebook review the pages and identify different writing techniques. I used this technique to learn copywriting so I identified different persuasion techniques including what’s the catch addresses or Promise.
However, you could also use this same technique to become a better novelist. So maybe you identify alliteration, irony, foreshadowing, etc.
Why does this work? This have been studies on the powerful learning effect of writing notes by hand. The technique I described follows the same principals. By copying great writing by hand you are engaging multiple senses at one time. You are feeding your conscious and subconscious mind rich example writing that will help you improve your own writing.
Anyway, this worked for me. Good luck.
Learning works through synthesis of material, which is the main takeaway from the writing studies you mentioned, however when copying writing no synthesis occurs. Also these studies were recently duplicated and results did not match the original conclusion.
Also: this book is great: https://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-Chicago-Writing-Publish...
This allows them all the benefits of practice in other endeavors. They can experiment, get faster, build “muscle memory” etc.
I don’t know why I keep being surprised that the answer to being good at things is working at it.
#5 feels like a superpower to me. It has made writing so much easier. It forces me to really understand (and to realize what I don’t understand) about the topic.
There is no other way than practice. Feedback speeds up this learning process a lot and improves the result significantly.
Everything else varies from person to person. Some write daily; some don't for months - then dive into their writing modes. Some start with an outline, and some - pour a stream of thoughts into the computer.
Nevertheless - what is your goal, and what blocks you in the process?
But other than that I agree. There are probably a few books worth reading but it's more about writing and getting good feedback. Past a certain point, you can probably dispense with some of that feedback depending on the nature of what you're writing. But it's essential to get started.
I think much of the other advice on this page is very valid (and I'll repeat some below), but what I often find missing from advice like this is simply do the thing a lot with some sort of feedback/iteration loop. While this is true for most professions, it is specially true for writing: write a lot.
Other useful things to help: 2. Define the purpose of your writing 3. Define who your target audience is (is this a novel, article writing, marketing, etc) 4. Define who you are as the author (are you a subject matter expert, the narrator of a story, a friend)
Learn some of the basics: - Elements of Style is a good place to start - Use Grammarly - Read, a lot
It can be people you know, but there are also online writing communities that will give candid feedback in a safe environment. Usually the catch is you’ll have to return the favor for someone else in the community, but that’s not a bad thing.
1. Read about writing. The very tactical stuff like "On Writing Well" and "Writing Tools" and "The Craft of Scientific Writing"
2. Imitate writers you like. Try reading someone else's work, then reproducing it in their style.
Writing makes you a better thinker.
Better thinking leads to better everything.
David Mamet's writings on writing are the best.
You could rewrite this to say "I have been writing for a while, but feel like I have stagnated for some time now."
Be a ruthless editor of your own writing, to begin with. Read actual printed words that have been through rigorous editing. Examples include print magazines and newspapers.
Read Strunk and White's Elements of Style and try to put it into practice in your writing. Read a variety of works, both fiction and nonfiction. Read classic writers such as Melville, Trollope, or Hemingway and pay attention to the plot devices and writing style (you will have to re-read individual pieces in isolation, again and again).
Take every opportunity to write, including in this forum or other places where you can write and have an actual conversation with like-minded, intelligent people. I'm sure there are internet forums and subreddits for aspiring writers where you will find opportunities aplenty to write, critique and hone your craft.
If you're writing in public, like a blog, try giving yourself a deadline and permission for the post not to be perfect.
The main takeaway is to simplify text as much as possible. That doesn't mean dumbing it down, and it doesn't mean abandoning creativity. It's just the opposite: Once you get rid of all the excess junk, the reader will hear your genuine voice.
https://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%...
Perhaps try nicheless.blog, I write there regularly. Given a 300 word limit, I can write one or two thoughts. The word limit necessitates merciless editing, if i care to have a coherent message to say to the reader.
I write about, literally, anything, at first. Writing is a muscle rarely used by anyone. It is a superpower that could be mastered, or at least harnessed, by everyone.
Currently I write about boring ole everyday subjects. Putting in the work. However, I am getting ready to try flash fiction, then perhaps a short story.
Good luck.
- take the structure of great sentences that already exists and using it as the bones for a new sentence. - Use Asana as a dumping ground for ideas, great writing; in no particular order. - Work on compression: create the most potent form of an idea in the fewest words possible.
Example of creating useful templates from other good writing: "A key point in the first chapter of Atomic Habits is, ‘You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems’.
That’s actually a play off of a quote from the Greek philosopher Archilochus—‘We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.’ I just took the rough structure of what he said, and played around with plugging words into it to see how I could make it fit with what I was trying to write. "
- Utilize some of the ideas from whatever you're reading. "When I read, I put brackets around the sections I like, and mark them with an asterisk. - Later, transcribe all those sections and put them into your notes
The article is a fantastic read, you will get some instant "Do This Now" advice which will make you a more effective writer.
https://every.to/superorganizers/how-james-clear-is-writing-...
Write a lot, and repeatedly re-read what you wrote (when it's done in its entirety). You'll naturally correct yourself or tune it.
Quite the exercise it is.
If you want to improve as much as possible, you also need to study. This means reading good works on writing, getting in situations where you get advice and critiques, and analyzing writing (which is more than just reading).
I wound up in a job where I reviewed and edited other people's writing regularly and this was also immensely helpful. It made me really get analytical about what worked or didn't, and shone a light on some things that could be better in my own work - both from reading writing that was good and helping correct and provide feedback on writing that was bad.
OTOH I really like the Pinker "A Sense of Style", "Dreyer's English", "On Writing Well", "Steering the Craft", and "The Making of a Story". (There are lots of others I like too, but these are top of mind.)
Books on writing can help, but there is no subsitute for doing the work. Being deliberate about learning from the work, however, will speed your improvement.
With regular work, you'll be noticably better after a month or two, especially if you're getting feedback. After a year, you'll be a different person. Your writing will be faster, easier, and better.
But don't stop then. You're just getting started :-)
Sentences should have a quality that makes them individually memorable.
- grammarly (mostly excellent, I ignore some suggestions)
- reading books more with stylistic elements that push the boundaries of what you're used to. I write technical blogs, but I've found some inspiration reading very different writing. Some examples are Thomas Pynchon, James Joyce, Greg Egan
- setting up constraints. Can you explain this in less sentences without making a long run-on sentence? How concise can you make this whole post? On the flipside, can you avoid all the most common adjectives when describing something? If you take a tokenized word count on your work, what words do you rely on? Can you delete them?
When I was in college for English, getting regular feedback from professors and the writing center helped me learn things I wouldn't have figured out on my own.
But of course, context matters: that was great for improving my general writing skills and my academic writing, but if you're doing creative writing, technical writing, etc., ideally you want feedback from people that are experts in the kind you're interested in.
There's different styles of writing, for different purposes. Entertainment, intellectual debate, instruction etc. You didn't say what you wanted to write about.
What's a good writer? Well, someone who writes well, to your taste, and in your domain. Or if you want to write commercially, someone who is commercially successful; whether or not they write well, I suppose.
For many purposes, a knowledge of logic and rhetoric is probably going to help.
It's hard to say - you haven't given much away.
I'm making a game/text editor I'm hoping to help people write more prolifically / creatively. There's a free demo on steam. If anyone gives it a try please let me know what you think.
Working with an editor is huge. I worked with several editors and reviewers both when submitting to other blogs and when writing my books. I learned a lot.
There are great writer assistance tools such as Write Good, etc. They helped with avoiding weasel phrasing, etc.
Try to read something out loud and you'll immediately hear if it works in terms of punctuation.
Don't try to be smart and writerly. Find your natural voice. The point is to communicate something, not impressing with your skills.
Listen to the music of your prose. Don't repeat the same length of sentences over and over again.
- Rewrite more. Same as above.
- Seek feedback from qualified sources.
There really isn’t that much more. If you want to write more yet you fail to write more, then maybe you should schedule periods of time for just writing. I do it and can’t recommend it enough. 15 minutes a day of pure writing time is better than an hour every other day.
I also made a web app to help develop my writing habit and improve fluency: https://enso.sonnet.io
I’ve enjoyed it so far and have been writing consistently for almost 3 years so far (ca 800 words per day).
It'll give you an intuition and "taste" for the texture of writing; why you find it so compelling, even if you don't consciously know the rules they're applying.
Highly recommend.
It can be fun to paste in some writing and see where you agree and disagree with it.
Read "bad quality" works too. And know that you're going to write a lot of "bad quality" works too, before people to start to get what you're trying to say.
For the longest time with my fiction I was just focusing on writing writing writing and reading about writing. I'd always loved to read, but surprisingly never really read that much in my target genre. When I started, it's like another gate of improvement was opened up: analyzing the beats and conflict points of successful books in my genre immediately helped me see what I was lacking in mine. And being exposed to the wording preferences and writing styles of other authors gave me so many "Aha!" moments when it comes to formulating enticing prose.
I'm still not a good fiction writer by any stretch of the imagination, but the improvement has been steady when coupling reading in my genre with more writing.
let us know how it goes :)