7 ms·

Ask HN: How do I teach myself better writing skills?

• AlexBlom 16y ago
  Honestly, blog, blog and blog. After leaving school my writing went to crap. When I started blogging I was shocked at how bad my published materials sounded. Now that I'm blogging 2-3 times per week it has in all honesty refined me a tonne. Practice makes perfect.
  • spooneybarger 16y ago
    And remember, the first revision is never the final version. Refine Refine Refine.
    • markstansbury 16y ago
      Yeah, good point. Only Kerouac wrote in one draft. And he was a liar. Don't be afraid of the 10th revision. Don't get attached to that witty phrase. If it's wrong it's wrong.
      • andrewce 16y ago
        William Faulkner claimed to have written "As I Lay Dying" in one draft over the course of 6 weeks. He was almost certainly lying.
  • chanux 16y ago
    When I came out of school, my English was fairly good for a non native speaker. But then I started blogging and I can't even believe how much it has helped me. With time I blogged less and less. And I realized my English is not improving anymore. So I agree that blogging is really a good way to improve your English.
  • ScottWhigham 16y ago
    I have to say that, while this makes sense on one level ("Practice makes perfect"), on another level it is dangerous. Let's say you have horrible grammar, bad ideas, and poor planning. Is it a good idea to plaster your blog posts on the internet? No. As someone else said, "Read, read, read" is a guaranteed winner. Also reading books on how to become a better writer will help. There's definitely a minimal level of skill needed before you start "Writing, writing, writing".
    • Eliezer 16y ago
      It's not good for the Internet, but it'll be good for the writer. Depends on how selfish you are.
    • xiongchiamiov 16y ago
      > Let's say you have horrible grammar, bad ideas, and poor planning. Is it a good idea to plaster your blog posts on the internet? No. Why not? The internet is full of pedants who will gleefully correct you.
• woid 16y ago
  A general rule: learn anything by doing it while following people who are doing it well.
• mrpsbrk 16y ago
  More than anything, i would say: read. Reading good stuff will subliminally creep into what you write (also known as the secret to originality is bad memory). There is simply no time available to read the books that are so good that you shouldn't consider yourself a complete human being before reading them, which basically means: Do not read anything that is not very good. Like stellar good. Also, sharpen your thoughts: Words can set you free if you know that it is not the words themselves, but how you use them. But, really, blogging helped me a lot too ;-)
• markstansbury 16y ago
  Read. Read. Read. Then read some more. If you want to write for a modern audience then read as many great works of fiction from the last 50 or 100 years as you can. Read the non-fiction too. Read great essays. Read The New Yorker. Then try this... You know how when you go to an art museum you always see art students sitting around sketching some great masterpiece? Do that. When you read a great passage--or hell just open up something by a great author and pick a page--copy it down, word for word, and pay attention while you do it. Now go back through with a different color pen and break it down. How long are the sentences? Does their length vary? How? What letter starts each sentence? Is there alliteration? How is it stressed? And so on. Reading will give you the tools, but like Alex said, you've got to write to get good at writing. Here's what I suggest. Either blog or write a journal every day. Then make it a habit to go back to things you've written (blog or work stuff, whatever) and review it, then revise it. Do that about one or two weeks after you've written it so you have fresh eyes. You'll start to pick up on your common mistakes and learn to correct and avoid them. Above all else, a great writer must develop empathy for the reader. Become sensitive to every miscue or ambiguity in your writing. Empathize with the reader. Learn to express yourself simply and clearly.
  • adaptives 16y ago
    "Become sensitive to every miscue or ambiguity in your writing" I agree with you. This is very important. I have often times written stuff, which when I re-read was full of ambiguities.
    • pbhjpbhj 16y ago
      >I have often times written stuff, which when I re-read was full of ambiguities. I find that I try to remove all ambiguities and be extremely precise. This leads me to sub-sub-clauses and lots of parentheses. Usually I have to accept ambiguity in favour of a clear style. I guess it depends on what one is writing about.
  • chromatic 16y ago
    Do this, and also read what you write aloud. Pay attention to repetition, to unclear thinking, to confused writing, and to anything else which distracts from your point.
• andrewstuart 16y ago
  Read "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White
  • GiraffeNecktie 16y ago
    Ech. If you want to improve your writing, please do NOT read Strunk and White. It might make you feel better that you are following what are supposedly "the rules" but your actual writing will not improve. http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/happy-birthday-strunk-and-white/ http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/happy-birt...
    • markstansbury 16y ago
      Hah. I don't know ... I mean, they Strunk & White don't know what the passive voice is. I wouldn't use them as a grammar guide. But they're both solid writers and their tips are--most of the time--quite wise. Of course, you run the risk of sounding like New Yorker fiction...
• jwr 16y ago
  1. Practice makes perfect. Yes, others are right in telling you to read a lot, but reading alone won't improve your writing much. You have to write and more importantly, edit what you wrote. Write a blog post, wait a day or so, and edit it — make it as short as you possibly can without losing the message. 2. I found the Economist Style Guide (http://www.economist.com/research/styleguide/ http://www.economist.com/research/styleguide/) to be quite helpful. Strunk & White is useful, but not as a set of rules to abide by, but as a set of ideas to consider.
  • markstansbury 16y ago
    I really like your point about making it as short as possible. Short=dense=clear. As an attorney I'm always running up against court-imposed page limits. Nothing clarifies an argument quite like having to cut it in half.
• more_original 16y ago
  Practise! But others have said that already. I'd like to add that George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" makes a few good points that may help improve your writing: http://wikilivres.info/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language http://wikilivres.info/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Languag...
• giu 16y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm an Italian guy living in Switzerland since ever :) ---- Read a lot, but more importantly, write a lot. 90 % of the things I read online or offline are written in the English language. I blog in my free time, and I once was at your position, too, so I decided start to write all the posts in English. It helps. Really. Try to write as much as possible in English. I'm benefiting a lot from both these facts. Read as much as possible in English; get your daily news from the NY Times, read technical blogs written in English, etc. Try to write as much as possible. Keep a diary in English; try to answer questions over at StackOverflow; try to comment on articles posted here on HN. You should also adjust your environment to support you with learning the language. For example, I've installed Lauchy (http://launchy.net http://launchy.net) and I've set up a shortcut to http://dict.cc http://dict.cc; I launch Launchy, type in d myword and get an English translation of myword. I'm pretty productive thanks to this little shortcut, and I'm constantly learning new words.
• dirceut 16y ago
  I've always wanted to get better at writing in english (my first language is portuguese). Unfortunately I'm too perfectionist to post things to my public blog regularly, so a private journal is a good alternative. Try to build a habit, it helps a lot. I write (almost) every day, first thing in the morning, on a full screen terminal window with Emacs. I write whatever I want and then copy it to my Dropbox folder. Before starting my writing habit I was spending a lot of time reading posts like "11 ways to write good headlines", "33 tips to better writing" and "10 ways to foster your creativity". Much more time than writing, actually. FAIL. So, don't look for websites or programs; practice more. Read good books and analyse them.
• filosofo 16y ago
  Read "Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace" by Joseph Williams. It is not one of those books like Strunk and White's that teaches you a set of arbitrary rules. Rather, the author defines a set of general principles. Then he develops and illustrates those principles with good and bad examples. And talks about the exceptions to those principles. Much of what separates really good writing from merely correct writing seems ineffable; it sounds the right note. Williams makes many of those seemingly indescribable qualities identifiable, so you can then recognize them in others' writing and learn to build them into your own.
• RyanMcGreal 16y ago
  Write a lot, as other commenters have recommended; but go beyond that and have skilled writers critique your writing. Good writing is good in large part because it avoids poor techniques. A competent editor can point out the passages in which your own writing goes awry so that you can cut them out or otherwise reform them. It may seem backwards to suggest that good writing amounts mostly to writing with the bad stuff subtracted; but in my experience the inverse idea - that good writing amounts mostly to writing with good stuff added - leads to an overreliance on tricks and contrivances, i.e. preciousness. There's maybe one writer in a thousand with the talent to succeed at preciousness. (Margaret Atwood comes to mind; I tend to read her books with a dictionary close at hand.) For the rest of us, the straightest path to good writing is to stop trying so hard and just aim for good structure, clarity and brevity. That means you need to develop a thick skin, by which I mean a willingness to let go of the stuff that doesn't work. Few contemporary critics would regard Stephen King as a literary giant, but he clearly knows how to get the words onto the paper and into the hands of readers. His most salient writing advice? "Kill your darlings."
  • andrewce 16y ago
    The best editor is one who is insightful, constructive, and absolutely merciless toward your writing. Your responsibility as a writer is to your reader; give them the clearest and most direct path to follow that you can (via the most accessible language you can wrangle) and then populate that path with compelling people, scenes, and ideas. No one (except Faulkner) criticizes Hemingway on the basis of "his sentences are too short".
• d_r 16y ago
  I highly recommend grabbing "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser. Beyond that, write as much as you can, and read your writing immediately or later. Is the point you're making as clear to the reader as it is to you? Are you using extra words that don't add to the content? I find myself even revising my long e-mails, with the final result being more succinct and easier to understand.
• xiongchiamiov 16y ago
  Read. Write.
  • fezzl 16y ago
    Exactly what I was going to say. Read for learning, write for practice. Continual learning and practice = Mastery
• Eliezer 16y ago
  Write write write write write write. You have to write one million words to throw away before you can write anything good. Yes, one million. Start now. I recommend choosing something that lets you publish small bites of work as you finish them, and get them actually read and commented on by someone. Like a blog. Or posting chapters to a fanfiction site. Write write write write write.
  • CyberFonic 16y ago
    AND .... get lots of impartial feedback! Without constructive criticism you won't know what you are doing right and what needs changing.
• danilocampos 16y ago
  Good writing – good anything, really – comes with practice. You'll also need inspiration, though, because there are many different flavors of good writing. Find an author whose voice you respect and devour their work. Understand what it is you like about how they communicate, and experiment with it in your own work. Don't crib their style wholesale, obviously, but have a high water mark or two that can inspire you. Grab a WordPress install, get out a post every n days, then see how you feel in a few months. Writing is important most of all for forcing you to understand and defend your ideas. Getting into the habit now is a good idea.
• chanux 16y ago
  Check this too. Found on HN. http://www.theamericanscholar.org/writing-english-as-a-second-language/ http://www.theamericanscholar.org/writing-english-as-a-secon...
• LloydPren 16y ago
  Read good writers in your field of interest. 1) Outline their works to see how they build logical structure/argument -- See how they introduce key points in the structure/argument -- See how they support key assertions with facts or examples -- See how they exploit the "ladder of abstraction." When they make an abstract assertion or point, do they back it up with specific examples or concrete evidence? 2) Identify the "elevator statement;" e.g. major thematic assertion of the work. If you can write it down on the back of a business card, you're on the right track -- Study how they introduce the theme -- Study how the develop it -- Study how consistently the stick with it -- Study how they reach a conclusion that hammers the theme home 3) Study how they construct paragraphs -- See how they transition into a paragraphs -- See how they set up and establish the main point of the paragraph -- See how they stick to that point within the paragraph -- See how they set up for the next paragraph (transitions of thought) 4) Study how they construct sentences -- See how they use concrete vs. abstract nouns -- See how they use active vs. passive verbs -- See how they use (or avoid) adjectives and adverbs -- See how they make every word count -- See how the vary sentence rhythm across simple, compound, and complex structrues. 5) Study how they relate to the reader -- Study the voice (formal vs. intimate, etc.) -- Study the tone (friendly, angry, ironic, etc.) 6) Master spelling, punctuation, and grammar 7) Lean about different conventional "formats" -- e.g. essay, opinion piece, news story, report, thesis, etc. -- How do they differ? -- What are essential elements of each? 8) Write for specific readers -- What does your readers expect? 9) Follow the "yeah, yeah, oh!" pattern. E.g. Introduce a thought (yeah), introduce a logically connected thought (yeah), throw in a surprising image or twist of thought (oh!) 10) Tell the truth, but tell it slant (e.g. avoid cliches and dull, worn-out language; keep it fresh..
• HilbertSpace 16y ago
  My usual advice: Start with three books: (1) The most thorough book on English grammar you can find. (2) A relatively complete dictionary of English. (3) Strunk and White, The Elements of Style. Then (1) Write, about nearly anything for nearly any purpose, and think about what you would like to do better. (2) Read some relatively good writing and see if by example it provides some good answers the questions you had in (1). Then rinse. Repeat. Many times. My evidence is that good progress takes years: When I was a college prof I noticed that the much older evening students were much less good students except for term papers where they were MUCH better. Net, learning to write well takes time. For some good writing, in math read Paul Halmos. In science, read a good freshman physics book. These examples are high among the best ever at communicating rock solid information with some of the greatest clarity yet achieved and are crown jewels of civilizations. For persuasive writing, practice on, say, Reddit or other fora and see what reactions you get. Rinse. Repeat. Many times. For writing for the humanities, mostly just learn about humans. For this purpose, my favorite Humans 101 for Dummies is the now classic E. Fromm, The Art of Loving. Then for Beowulf and Chaucer through Milton, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Dickens, and Henry James to the present and for the rest of this millennium in English literature, and its history, techniques, values, and goals, I would treat it as at best meaningless and otherwise as toxic waste of great danger to humans, this far into the 21st century still stuck before the 18th. Here I am straining as hard as I can to be astoundingly diplomatic and omit remarks about detritus of the ascent of man, effluent, and septic tank of civilization. Actually in England in the 1600s there was a good writer, Newton.
• mattgratt 16y ago
  I'm doing a correspondence course in copywriting called "the Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting." (http://www.awaionline.com/copywriting/ http://www.awaionline.com/copywriting/) While it's simply unrealistic to get paid six figures for copywriting, it's helped make my writing much simpler and much easier to read. Additionally, this sounds like stupid advice, but copy (by hand) writing you like. You'll learn (both consciously and subconsciously) what the writer is doing.
  • maxawaytoolong 16y ago
    this sounds like stupid advice, but copy (by hand) writing you like Somerset Maugham did this, and he was the highest paid author of his time.
    • edge17 16y ago
      I think Ben Franklin did it too. He'd copy one paragraph of a writer whose style he like, and then try to write the following paragraph himself.
• pramit 16y ago
  The Success Manual http://thesuccessmanual.bighow.com http://thesuccessmanual.bighow.com Has summaries from useful writing books, experts and great writers as well.
• SteveMorin 16y ago
  I think the book suggestions are great. But if you read enough about learning theory you need enough feed back. If you have a following ask your reader for feed back regularly to improve your writing.