5 tips on writing from Ernest Hemingway | Holy Kaw!
By Daniel Miessler on March 24th, 2011: Tagged as Writing
CopyBlogger put together a list of five tips gleaned from Hemingway’s classic terse style that offer a handy lesson in effective writing.
- Stick to short sentences.
- Use short opening paragraphs.
- Use vigorous English.
- Stick to the more positive-sounding word
- Four rules isn’t enough
I need to aggregate all these together some day. I have a ton of them in various posts.
How to Write Without Writing | Coding Horror
By Daniel Miessler on February 5th, 2011: Tagged as Philosophy | Writing
Over the last 6 years, I’ve come to believe deeply in the idea that that becoming a great programmer has very little to do with programming. Yes, it takes a modicum of technical skill and dogged persistence, absolutely. But even more than that, it takes serious communication skills:
The difference between a tolerable programmer and a great programmer is not how many programming languages they know, and it’s not whether they prefer Python or Java. It’s whether they can communicate their ideas. By persuading other people, they get leverage. By writing clear comments and technical specs, they let other programmers understand their code, which means other programmers can use and work with their code instead of rewriting it. Absent this, their code is worthless.
Conceptualization + Articulation. These are the key to effectiveness in everything.
cooperati: Keltonin @ Annathalia’s Keep
By Daniel Miessler on February 5th, 2011: Tagged as Writing
The door caved in with a cloud of dust, and Keltonin rolled as splinters and rusted nails rained down on him. A dozen young female creatures, initiates of the unholy arts, surrounded him in the chamber, circling around their blue flames candlestands, baring their odd fish teeth, gaping at the adventurer with vicious, glazed over eyes that sparked an odd purple reflection from within. The prince noticed high above him the red vined, and blue petalled flowers pulsing in a silver glow to each surge of the monstrous women, who in turns took a step, flexed their taloned fingertips and retreated with a hiss.Keltonin’s blade Eiglif, blessed and cursed by the arts of his mother’s homeland, came loose in the scabbard and stuck to it’s master’s palm, and through this touch the warrior felt the hunger for death and justice. The sweat on his skin, all across his skin and under his plate armor and chainmail, was like the air under a thundering sky, and his foes understood the storm he brought with him.
His eyes narrowed, his toes dug in, his breath quickened, his muscles paced to outrun and eat his way to the heart of a stag, and he grinned.
This was going to be a slaughter the likes any butcher would applause, with an skill and frolic any minstrel’s wife could laugh and dance to. If Keltonin was going to live, or die, he was going to enjoy this next battle with a vim and vigor he shall never forget.
Some writing from my friend Tim. I’ve been encouraging him to get all his stories online for years, and I’m committed to prodding him until this takes place.
It’s sad to me, in the age of self-publishing on the Internet, to have writing live only in the mind of the writer. Put it to paper. Share it. The world will be better for it. ::
Think You Know ‘How To Write A Sentence’? | NPR
By Daniel Miessler on February 1st, 2011: Tagged as Writing
Fish is something of a sentence connoisseur, and he says writing a fine sentence is a delicate process — but it’s a process that can be learned. He laments that many educators approach teaching the craft the wrong way — by relying on rules rather than examples.
Analyzing great sentences “will tell you more about … what you can possibly hope to imitate than a set of sterile rules that seem often impossibly abstract,” Fish tells NPR’s Neal Conan.
A good sentence may be easy to pick out, but learning to understand what makes it great, says Fish, will help a student become a stronger writer and a “better reader of sentences.”
Read Hitchens. It’ll school you.
Basic Grammatical Errors to Avoid in Business Writing
By Daniel Miessler on January 31st, 2011: Tagged as Writing
Committing grammatical errors in business writing is like having body odor during a business meeting. Some may be able to look past it–or even fail to notice–but others might end the relationship immediately because of assumptions they’ll make about everything else about you.
You never know which it’s going to be, so it’s best to shower.
My new grammar project.
Learning Without a Purpose: Building a Book
By Daniel Miessler on December 29th, 2010: Tagged as Writing
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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about goals. We all know that spending hours a day reading reddit or whatever is a waste. But what about other types of reading? What about newspapers and books and such? Why are they any better?
It seems to me that all input is a waste unless it is put to use as a means of generating quality output.
So, with that in RAM I’m thinking it’s time to start building a book. A book of the key things I’ve learned in the last 30 years. It’ll be like this site, only more concise, better edited, and backed more by data.
The goal right now is not to set a timeline for publishing or anything of that nature, but rather to build an outline. Pick chapters. Decide who the target audience is. Pick a title. Etc.
The purpose is to give everything I’ve been doing…a purpose.
This has always been the goal, really, but I think it’s time that the first step of starting to organize all this information is upon me.
I encourage any input. ::
MFA vs. NYC: America now has two distinct literary cultures. Which one will last? | Slate Magazine
By Daniel Miessler on December 29th, 2010: Tagged as Writing
There were 79 degree-granting programs in creative writing in 1975; today, there are 854! This explosion has created a huge source of financial support for working writers, not just in the form of lecture fees, adjunctships, and temporary appointments—though these abound—but honest-to-goodness jobs: decently paid, relatively secure compared to other industries, and often even tenured. It would be fascinating to know the numbers—what percentage of the total income of American fiction writers comes from the university, and what percentage from publishing contracts—but it’s safe to say that the university now rivals, if it hasn’t surpassed, New York as the economic center of the literary fiction world.
How to Improve Your Writing
By Daniel Miessler on December 7th, 2010: Tagged as Writing
- Write often – you won’t get better at writing without spending a lot of time writing
- Review your own writing – You’ll get better quicker if you deliberately look to improve
- Read often – exposing yourself to great writing will provide
Do this for a few years and you will be, at the very least, a good writer. This will benefit not only your businesses, but all areas of your life.
Great advice for all of us.
Stephen Fry Lashes Out at Language Pedants
By Daniel Miessler on October 27th, 2010: Tagged as Language | Writing
I very much disagree with this video, and I think Stephen would too if he thought more about it. The fundamental problem with the argument is that once you say it’s ok not to follow the rules for small details, the slope drops off right into ignoring them altogether.
Honestly, this line is completely untenable. He’s simply overacting to a particular brand of negative person and in the process he makes an absurd argument.
[ EDITED: Added more content below from my response to comments. ]
Yes, I really liked the video as well. And I do strongly agree with the idea put forth, i.e. that meaning matters more than delivery.
My objection is a practical, real-world one. In short, I think that you’d be troubled to find a situation where someone who “should” know how to write well (using the rules) would be given a free pass by you, me, or Stephen Fry if he were to give the answer “you knew what I meant, and the content was good.”
That’s asinine, and unacceptable.
You wouldn’t accept it, and neither would Stephen Fry. And I don’t think you should, either. People who don’t put forth effort to make it easier for others to consume their communication are selfish and rude–and that takes away from the quality of their work.
I reject the notion that the ideal state is to ignore presentation. I reject it outright. I agree that if someone is pretty much spot on, and obviously knows their stuff and has great content–but makes a mistake or two of the subtle variety–then people who outright attack their mistakes are hollow, vapid assholes. No doubt.
But don’t take that to the extreme (a favorite liberal activity) by insisting that it’s ok to ignore the rules if your content is strong. That’s simply absurd.
If you don’t believe me, try going reading some content that fits that description and see how long you can tolerate it. It’s not the mistakes that will get you, it’s the fact that they don’t care about the mistakes. And that’s the problem.
The accuracy matters, too–as static on the line precludes pure transmission of ideas–but that’s ancillary compared to simply “putting forth the effort to make it easy for your consumer”. It’s the disregard for the reader that makes this behavior unacceptable, combined with the fact that once you relax the rule in principle there is no clear line regarding how far you can take it.
Do yu seee wut I meen? Wuts rong with thiss?
