3 ms·

> read good writing That's sort of a Catch-22 right there. Can you tell if "your favorite SF novel" represents good writing without having a grasp on what cons

by V-2 9y ago

> read good writing That's sort of a Catch-22 right there. Can you tell if "your favorite SF novel" represents good writing without having a grasp on what constitutes good writing to begin with? Is writing like cooking (where you don't really need to cook well yourself to be able to tell)?

robotresearcher 9y ago
There are plenty of writers who almost everyone agrees are great. For simultaneous clarity and beauty of prose, I like Graham Greene.
ambivalents 9y ago
By virtue of it being your favorite, I would think it's doing something right. But glibness aside, you could think about as you read: Is it fully engaging you? Is it communicating a complex idea in a simple and/or novel way? Is it making you feel something? Does it make you want to do something? These are all good markers, because writing is really just about communicating ideas well. And if you don't trust your own judgment, you could look up some of the time-tested classics. Some of my favorites: The Great Gatsby, To Kill A Mockingbird, 1984 (fiction); Warren Buffett/Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters (business/sales writing).
- V-2 9y ago
  > By virtue of it being your favorite, I would think it's doing something right That something doesn't have to be the quality of writing as such - eg. I can enjoy a somewhat sloppily written book if the idea behind the plot is captivating and compelling
jerf 9y ago
"Can you tell if "your favorite SF novel" represents good writing without having a grasp on what constitutes good writing to begin with?" I think for the purposes at hand, you don't need any expertise in writing to tell whether you want to write short emails with some stuff lifted from a given author. The larger structural aspects of writing a good novel are overlooked by a lot of people, and a lot of people will declare someone a "good author" when every character in their stories are an author stand-in, things appear and disappear for no reason, there is no symbolic or mythic resonance in the story, and every other major structural error that can be made, simply because they like the sentence-by-sentence style of the author or the author has snappy wordplay that they like. That taste is more rare, but also only slightly relevant to the question of whether you can write a 500-word email to the executive team about how important it is to not cut your project.

by V-2 9y ago

robotresearcher 9y ago

There are plenty of writers who almost everyone agrees are great. For simultaneous clarity and beauty of prose, I like Graham Greene.

ambivalents 9y ago

By virtue of it being your favorite, I would think it's doing something right. But glibness aside, you could think about as you read: Is it fully engaging you? Is it communicating a complex idea in a simple and/or novel way? Is it making you feel something? Does it make you want to do something? These are all good markers, because writing is really just about communicating ideas well. And if you don't trust your own judgment, you could look up some of the time-tested classics. Some of my favorites: The Great Gatsby, To Kill A Mockingbird, 1984 (fiction); Warren Buffett/Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters (business/sales writing).

V-2 9y ago
> By virtue of it being your favorite, I would think it's doing something right That something doesn't have to be the quality of writing as such - eg. I can enjoy a somewhat sloppily written book if the idea behind the plot is captivating and compelling

jerf 9y ago

"Can you tell if "your favorite SF novel" represents good writing without having a grasp on what constitutes good writing to begin with?" I think for the purposes at hand, you don't need any expertise in writing to tell whether you want to write short emails with some stuff lifted from a given author. The larger structural aspects of writing a good novel are overlooked by a lot of people, and a lot of people will declare someone a "good author" when every character in their stories are an author stand-in, things appear and disappear for no reason, there is no symbolic or mythic resonance in the story, and every other major structural error that can be made, simply because they like the sentence-by-sentence style of the author or the author has snappy wordplay that they like. That taste is more rare, but also only slightly relevant to the question of whether you can write a 500-word email to the executive team about how important it is to not cut your project.