Ask HN: How do you improve your writing? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you improve your writing?

49 pointsnavs58 comments

I've been writing more and more on Substack. I started with simple Haikus and just expanded with longer posts before settling into this mix of poetry, mental health and my software career.

I finally did this by letting go of my perfectionism but I don't want to let go of improvement.

Are you a someone who writes on your own blog? And do you have recommendations on where I can get feedback either by formally submitting posts for review or where I should share to elicit feedback?

My blog: https://theperfectlycromulent.substack.com

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Some quick thoughts while I finish my coffee:

- Decide who your audience is. You can't write for everyone, and picking a specific person (real or imaginary) keeps things directed.

- Decide the goal(s) of your writing. Three big ones: inform, entertain, persuade

- Get to the point (or grab the reader's attention) ASAP. Every additional sentence is a place where someone could stop reading - make them count! Consider the takeaway of someone who only reads your title and subheadings: they should either get the gist of it or be curious enough to read properly. Be ruthless about removing segments that do not pull their weight. (If you're anything like me, this is the opposite of what writing essays in school was like, and it takes a bit of unlearning)

- Take feedback, selectively. If you apply every suggestion you receive (from humans or automated tools) you'll tend towards the median, and that's just not very interesting.

- Narrative. Even if you're writing something purely "informational", everything is more compelling if there's some kind of storyline, however basic. I finished my coffee now btw.

Aha, Chekhov's coffee as well it seems!

After reading that I almost started a blog called: Letters to Dzjengis Khan to convince him that killing everyone might not be the coolest idea to be had. The postings would tell him about the atrocities committed today and the senseless excuses for it drawing parallels with similar historic events.

Hello, I'm a long-time blogger and to be honest, my writing skills have been gradually improving over the years. At first, I started with basic bullet points, keeping things as concise as possible. Then I tried writing longer pieces, but the more I wrote, the weirder they became, to the point where even I didn't want to read them. I thought I had failed and couldn't possibly write a complete article.

Everything changed when I started reading books - one, two, and eventually many more. I learned a lot of engaging storytelling techniques and read a wide range of genres, from novels to scientific books. I extracted what I needed and learned how to present issues in a systematic way, without forgetting to incorporate my own stories.

To this day, I still maintain a daily writing habit. Every now and then, I go back and read my old articles, identify areas for improvement, and work on those weaknesses in my subsequent pieces. But one thing is certain - to write well, you need to read a lot. I'm not sure what you'll read, but at some point, you'll realize your own shortcomings.

It's really striking how similar your description is of your progress as a writer to the progression of LLM quality, particularly in terms of long context windows ("the more I wrote, the weirder they became") and training ("I extracted what I needed").

At least one key difference is your ability to self-evaluate. That reflexive ability to realize your own shortcomings over time is why human intelligence is still more of a flywheel than that of machines...for now!

Oh, you've pointed out something interesting to me. Indeed, I'm honing my writing skills by writing more and reviewing them more often. It's like an endless loop.

Why do people write like this?

This is no way to write.

Every time I read something.

Written like this.

I expect a sales pitch for a course at the end. /rant

Perhaps it's just a personal preference, but I prefer reading fully-formed paragraphs instead of one sentence per line. I really wish people would stop writing their blog like it's a marketing copy for get-rich-quick schemes.

I second comment this after reading some of the blog posts.

Studying philosophy in university and having my essays critiqued was a very valuable experience. In three years my writing got perhaps 10-20% better, in part due to understanding that prose and argumentation is a reflection of the thought behind it.

If you write your blogs like this.

It just…

Looks like you are having snippets of ideas.

It isn’t very profound.

It is actually just an annoying stylistic dead-end.

Also reading, reading, reading things that aren’t technical articles and PowerPoint presentations really helps. To develop good style one has to know good stylists, and what one has taste for imitating.

I could go on. But I’ll try not to.

Except to say, why should anyone bother reading your blog? Why don’t you write a whole book instead? That can be a useful way to “write yourself out” to burn through all your bad and needless ideas while finding your own voice. Also accepting and understanding that minds vastly greater than those found in STEM sometimes choose to apply themselves to crafting fiction and prose.

But ultimately you need to have things you need to say.

> Looks like you are having snippets of ideas.

Been thinking this. I try to complete whatever random thought I have in a day but that doesn't leave me with much time to really ponder or be profound.

Partly because I've found my attention span has really deteriorated over the last few years and I struggle to sit, read and think. I'm gradually spending more time thinking but I could do more.

This reads like an average LinkedIn post

It's become popular because Reddit requires double new lines to create a new paragraph.

Reddit is such a popular website that this habit has proliferated across the textual web.

It has the side effect of making your point take up more screen space vertically.

This can help you maximize the number of upvotes you get on your posts.

The narwhal bacons at midnight.

I don’t think this makes sense as the reason. Surely the problem is the stylistic decision to have many one-sentence paragraphs rather than the mechanism of separating paragraphs?

My theory is people watch more video than they read prose. Then they end up "thinking in video", even as they write for readers.

So we get little textual storyboards for unproduced video content. Easy for them to write, annoying for most to read, but "good enough".

gen z kids type like this aha

Thanks for the feedback. I don't know why I settled on that. It could be because of LinkedIn and in general, what I read online: other substacks, medium posts etc.

During my Masters, one of my professors had us take turns reading everything we wrote aloud to a classmate. It sounds like a lot, but it was effective. Reading what you write aloud to another person makes you notice all kinds of things about your tone, repetition, etc that you would otherwise miss.

I also let my computer read it aloud.

You can catch things you don't notice when reading it yourself. I think it's because our brains "fill in the blanks". Listening to the computer is a free and easy way to make a first pass.

On MacOS you can turn on Speak Selection, a setting that lets you press Option-Esc to hear the highlighted text.

You'll find it under Settings, Accessibility, Spoken Content in MacOS Sequoia. Then turn on Speak Selection. Once it's on, highlight some text and press Option+Esc.

Fascinating idea. Have you tried open-mic storytelling?

The Moth[1] have storytelling events in various locations and I recently signed up to do just that. I've also tried to add a voice over for some of my more poetic posts and I already feel re-writing after that alone.

[1] https://themoth.org

I've stopped writing for a general audience and forced myself to just write to clarify my general thoughts about things and I feel like it's helped immensely.

Of course you're writing with the goal of making a blog and I can keep all my slop to myself. But I find it helpful to have the attitude of "I'll keep writing and rewriting the same thoughts over and over and over again", because chances are the good ideas are the ones you feel like you have an intuitive grasp on but need to work out the kinks to.

Obviously my communication needs refinement and work. But I've noticed just getting to that core problem solving aspect of your thoughts is more important than your prose.

---

At least for me, I'm so used to writing 1-shot responses, such as this very comment right now, and then refining it iteratively, and sure, if I improved my writing skills technically, I could write a more refined comment. But that doesn't change the fact that I didn't think *that* hard about my comment critically, I just wrote whatever feeling I came up with right now. And that's fine - tradeoffs in life, etc.

But if you have a truly interesting idea, even if it's just to you - which chances are you DO, you're just not looking at a fine enough granularity - work at it, refine it, idk.

(for me, it was finally accepting that hey, when I think something might be wrong about the world, perhaps I should try to explain that and put it out there into thought, instead of just repressing it and saying "it's probably just me being dumb")

---

After a re-read through of stuff I'm often still very unsatisfied and feel like I want to delete the comment; often in the past I would have several iterations of a comment and just delete it over and over again.

I dunno, I think just having all versions is valuable, ideas are still going to always be infinitely more dimensional than text could ever be (not to mention the layer of perception that goes with it). Now I'll save all of those snippets somewhere.

Probably 99% of those little snippets won't ever get read again, but the act of preserving these little random notes and essays somewhere, at least for me, I feel like jogs my memory again when I need to sit down and read something and get re-contextualized.

I once hired a writing coach for a bit and it improved my writing immensely. There’s no better way to get real, unadulterated feedback on your writing.

Interesting. Where does one find a writing coach?

I found one online, but it wasn’t in English.

I’m a blogger, and I get compliments here and there about my writing, so here are my 2c.

The best way to improve writing, is to write more. I know it sounds cliche, but writing should be 70-80% of your time spent on improving writing.

The other 20-30% should be a mix of reading what other people write. Find good blogs, read good articles. Avoid reading the news (they rarely provide concise and good writing). Also avoid social media. LinkedIn is clickbait, and short form content platforms like twitter are focused more on getting your idea in as few words as possible, which often leads to poorly formed ideas and in general bad writing style.

Use a spell and style checker, I use ltex for neovim, which afaik uses LanguageTools. It not only corrects grammar mistakes, but also point you to common issues like starting consecutive sentences with the same words, etc. I do suggest you avoid AI tools. You can use it for brainstorming, but don’t use to write/rewrite for you.

Learn grammar, proper punctuations, etc. And dont write on mobile (like I’m doing now), because you will usually get annoyed and would want to get over with it as quick as possible which often leads to poorly formed writing.

“Practice practice practice”, sure but it helps to know what it is you’re practicing.

Writing is a craft. The craft can be learned. There are some good resources out there.

The one I recommend is https://www.udemy.com/course/writing-with-flair-how-to-becom...

(wait for it to go on sale, usually next week)

I use HN comments as my blog. My only advice would be to write naturally without any self-consciousness, forcing yourself into some style etc. Only think about the content you want to convey and let the "how" flow naturally. I read a lot (varied subjects) and through that process have somehow internalized some aspects from various styles which when expressed in writing becomes "my own style".

Reading is a prerequisite for Writing, and so browse/skim/read/study a lot. Then trust your inner self/intuition to do its thing by freely expressing itself in Writing.

To get some background on this sort of mindset, you might find the book The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman by Takuan Soho and translated by William Scott Wilson helpful (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unfettered_Mind). The book is written w.r.t. Martial Arts but the principles/mindset enunciated therein are applicable to any endeavour.

I think the best way is to just write a ton and get that writing in front of people. Find your voice with practice and get feedback as you build your audience.

I'm not sure there's any other way to improve. Improve how? At what cost? Is someone else's idea of improvement going to strip your personality?

Also read a lot and take note of writers who have to style that resonates with you. Some of my favorite writers don't even bother to be easily understood. They just write in their own style. Some love it, others complain.

As a last step, editing is probably important. You write with your head full of ideas to create the first runs. Then edit with a different head. That way you aren't slowing yourself down trying to get things perfect while writing, and not trying as much to be creative while fixing up the mess. Even here, you're not shooting for perfection. Just arrange the mess so that it's coherent. Sometimes my first runs are so bad I can't even remember what I was writing about.

NOTE: I'm not a writer. ;)

In my limited experience on this rock, the best writers are phenomenal readers, and the best speakers are very attentive listeners.

I improved the most when I would copy a particular author's style. I had a phase where I wrote like Hemingway, a phase where I wrote like Tao Lin, a phase where I wrote like the monks translating the King James Bible. If it seems derivative that's because it is, and readers will notice, but when you learn to turn it back off those authors you had a passion for will still have a mark on your style.

Tao Lin for example said he thought he was done with "Taipei", but then he read a Gore Vidal novel, and felt that the style was so superior to the one he was using that he felt forced to go back and rewrite the entire book in order to incorporate it.

My three concerns are: organizational clarity, vocabulary, and brevity. I hate seeing scatter brained output that feels all over the place. Vocabulary is important to prevent things from feeling repetitive.

You may have heard words matter. That is largely superficial. Phrases and context matter much more but your audience must be capable of consuming it.

Read the following books:

- On Writing Well by William Zissner

- Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg

- The Elements of Style, 4th Edition by Strunk & White

- Good Prose by Kidder & Todd

- Wordcraft by Jack Hart

- Storycraft by Jack Hart

- The Art and Craft of Feature Writing by William Blundell

- The Art and Craft of Storytelling by Nancy Lamb

If I may hijack your reply for a recommendation thread, I'd recommend "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker, too. It's worth it just for the section on metaconcepts. I loved how much simpler my writing became when I removed them.

Also, read anything by Robert Graves. He did write a style guide called "The Reader Over Your Shoulder", but that's optional; I learned far more about good writing from "I, Claudius" and "Good-Bye to All That".

You can improve your writing by respecting your readers time. Wasting your readers time by showing them a picture of a cat isn't respecting their time.

Be concise, be upfront about what you want to say, don't make your readers work hard to understand what you're trying to say.

Your readers will also tell you about your content's quality and relevance through their visits. Check your site visits, understand if they're one time visitors or returning and figure out why that's happening.

You might also want to get a domain for your blog, it projects more of a commitment than a subdomain.

> I finally did this by letting go of my perfectionism but I don't want to let go of improvement.

I tend to have similar issues, where trying to perfect things lead to a complete arrest of progress. The advice I want to give myself is to always try to improve, to but improve on what I wrote 4 months ago, not 4 minutes ago. If I focus on analyzing and improving stuff that I'm not actively writing today, hopefully that allows what I write today to not become an obstacle to writing more today.

Practice. If you don't have enough ideas for the blog, participate in long form discussions on forums.

Look up a chatgpt prompt for nitpicking or write your own.

For centuries writing was a lonely task. Take a moment to see if publishing right away is helping or hurting your mindset and the work. Sometimes prompt feedback is great, other times not so much.

A great way to improve your writing is to write. Then let it sit for a while and re-read it. If you don't see anything to change it's either done or you've stopped improving.

Read more books written by the best and good authors besides writing.

If the author conveys the message, analyze the words/tones/patterns/paragraph structure.

Just like you have a voice for the words that come out of your mouth, and you change/improve it according to the situation. Similarly, your writing also has a voice.

Yes, I have a blog at - https://rxjourney.com.ng

To improve your writing, read more books/articles, or watch movies or listen to podcasts and pay attention to how intelligent people express themselves with words. It bleeds into your writing, slowly.

> pay attention to how intelligent people express themselves with words.

Do you consciously do this? I listen to podcasts in a very passive way.

No, I don't. But you still notice how they express themselves or describe certain events.

> Do you consciously do this? I listen to podcasts in a very passive way.

This caught my eye. What does it mean to listen 'passively'? Meaning it's just 'on' in the background? I.e., you're not paying attention to the content? If so then it would seem you're not interested in hearing what the speakers have to say, which then begs the question of why 'listen' to podcasts in the first place?

same reason i watch steven seagal movies.

> Intelligent people

This point is worth elaborating.

Select on more than "intelligence". Plenty of intelligent people write complete rot.

Trust your feelings [0] and feed your hunger for satisfaction from reading. "AI" slop, formulaic performance language like overly academic, too-perfectly structured, or corporate tripe, likewise bleeds into and corrupts your soul. Good writing makes effortless reading and the words pull you along with delight, If not, stop.

[0] we actually read many lines ahead of where our eyes scan, so long before the words are internally "verbalised" you'll get a feeling about it. Pay attention to that.

If by "writing" you mean penmanship: Just write more.

If by "writing" you mean text of any kind: The most important rule is that "Less is More". Use the fewest simplest words you possibly can. Longer text using complicated words isn't a sign of superior vocabulary.

Mark Twain: "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."

It was Blaise Pascal, not Twain.

Goes to show I'd have been better leaving that out!

Close. Pascal said “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” Twain said the other (longer) quote.

Not sure if this is an option where you are, but I became a "stringer" for my local newspaper for a while. Writing tightly, under deadline, with an editor reviewing my work helped improve my clarity quite a bit.

Practice makes perfect. While you're practicing though, consume content on improving the skill. Don't let that take the place of practice though. Write a lot. If you're not good yet, write more. Keep writing until you are.

Fascinating: none of these comments answers the question at the end. Instead, they suggest ways the poster might improve.

To answer the question: you would get some of the best feedback by paying a talented, professional editor.

Write, a lot, often.

Read, and try to do it questioning why a particular style works on you.

Use people, or ChatGPT, or something similar to get feedback, but be critical of it: you want to keep your own style.

What do you want to get out of it?

I believe the ancient ritual is to stare at a blank page until the spirit arrives to write it all down.

well, by writing, I would say. For example, try writing short stories (anyone can write haiku). Also, writing technical documentation is a good discipline, though many people don't like doing it.

I guess the first question is “what do you really mean by improve your writing?”

You might mean “make it easier to read” or you might mean “make it better for capturing and recording my ideas for future reference” but I suspect given you’ve linked to a blog you probably mean “build an audience”.

Which then leads into “why do you want to build an audience” and “what ideas do you have that are worth sharing” and “why would people even care?”

There is a lot of bad writing out there. Generic “thought leadership” nonsense that says little but takes a lot of time and space to say it. Think the awful recipe preamble that food influencers churn out, but for “business writing”.

The best writing has something interesting to say, but doesn’t need to be original, and has its own very clear tone of voice.

The thing that will have the most impact on improving the way you write is to know who your audience is, and why they read your content, or why you hope they will read your content. If you’re writing without an audience or objective in mind then your writing will have less direction and will fundamentally be written for an audience of one: you.

Over time your audience should be able to recognise your content by its style, structure and tone of voice.

So you need to decide how you want to communicate (vocabulary, structure, length) and how you want people to read. The best writing is writing that people will enjoy reading whatever the subject; as an author that works for you because it means that the ideas you are communicating reach more people and might provoke more interesting responses.

A big part of this is writing and workshopping and editing and rewriting.

The power of prosody - the rhythm and intonation of writing - is often underlooked by inexperienced writers and it why talented writers often get very upset when their writing is badly edited.

The British food critic Giles Coren is notorious for this, once laying into subeditors, saying “I have never ended on an unstressed syllable”.

Coming up with “set pieces” can be a good way to develop style, tone and personality in your writing. For example, if your write the same thing every few weeks - such and such company has released its quarterly earnings - you may find that the “templated” nature of what you are working with means that you are able to write better within those constraints, allowing (or forcing!) you to develop a unique style and tone.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/jul/25/pressandpublis...

Mostly I write HN comments. In part because HN comments are a place to get feedback on my writing craft. Mostly because I frequently feel compelled to write.

Anyway maybe you will find this perspective helpful: https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM?si=PI-_9M8ZxmBrJW2K

Good luck.

> https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM?si=PI-_9M8ZxmBrJW2K

Larry McEnerney's (U of Chicago) "LEADERSHIP LAB: The Craft of Writing Effectively"

write a lot, read even more (books!), read critically what you wrote

Bill Stott, "Write to the Point - and feel better about your writing"

Do you keep a personal pen and ink journal? If you only write formal articles for a public audience, it's like being a football team that only plays on Sundays with no practice otherwise.

Ink is essential because it slows you down and forces you to commit to whatever nonsense you've scrawled out.

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