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There is a lot of interesting information. However, is it only me, or the style of writing is chaotic (almost as if every paragraph was shuffled)?
by stared 7y ago
There is a lot of interesting information. However, is it only me, or the style of writing is chaotic (almost as if every paragraph was shuffled)?
- fzeroracer 7y agoYou're not alone. The article tends to leap from one story to another in a way that's not really fully clear or consistent at times.
- rabboRubble 7y agoThough you were exaggerating, but holy cow batman, thought I was reading about an Icelandic fisherman, then a multi-paragraph divert into cold weather effects on the body, to emerge in more multi-paragraphs talking about an off-the-grid Alaska guy whose house burned down. I had forgot that the article wasn't about the Alaska guy by the time the meandering story returned to Iceland~
- use-net 7y agotrue! I skipped 85% of the trash verbiage. You cannot expect anything from "journalists" these days anymore.
- eveningcoffee 7y agoThis is just the style of modern story writing. Words, a lot of words. Just too many of them. I have tried to read such stories and most of the time there are just words and not much substance.
- starpilot 7y agoIt's amazing how we used to read entire stacks of bound leaves of paper. Some contained dozens of events and interwoven narratives. I don't have time for that.
- lobotryas 7y agoThere’s a difference between reading for pleasure and for extracting some information. Some people might read this article for pleasure and that’s fine, but for most they just want the bare facts. An executive summary, if you will, because we have a lot more information vying for our attention than at any previous moment in history.
- eveningcoffee 7y agoI do not disagree with you but most of the time there is just some silly narrative, too many irrelevant details that do not add to the story. This story is actually not bad at all because it is well backed with interesting information.
- OscarCunningham 7y agoThe problem isn't too many events; it's too many words.
- munificent 7y agoThis is the current fad in magazine-style journalism. You essentially take two narratives: * A personal anecdotal account to provide human interest and color. * A relatively dry scientific narrative that explains the larger context. And then you weave the two together. The human interest side keeps readers engaged enough to wade through the otherwise tedious sciency part. The sciency part makes readers feel they are learning something more practical than just one person's story. The jumps between the two narratives can be done well but often it's pretty arbitrary.
- stared 7y agoI have an affinity towards the second one. I cannot bear ones, which start as novels... and you need to go through a few sections to understand what it is about, if it is a true or fake story, etc. In this case, the problem is not with the balance between facts and narration (for my taste, it is fine) but with stories being shattered. I read a paragraph and need to guess if it is a new story, if it relates to the previous one, did it happen before or after, etc. BTW: I did enjoy Memento the movie. But in this one the order was designed carefully.
- klondike_klive 7y agoSometimes adding a Breaking Bad-style flashforward of extreme peril at the beginning to draw you in, followed by the journalistic equivalent of a "two hours earlier" caption.