Ask HN: How to get better at writing?

I truly struggled with writing for the longest time, but three practices helped tremendously. The practices are 1) writing with a piecemeal approach, 2) accumulating notes as fuel for tomorrow’s writing, and 3) rewriting with keyword outlines.

My most important shift was to start writing nonlinearly. Instead of writing a beginning, middle, and end, I instead gather together all the claims, facts, etc. and develop them individually without concern for the overall logical structure. Eventually, the pieces start fitting together and the linear structure emerges. It is so much easier to start with too much and whittle it down.

Where do these claims, facts, etc. come from? This is what your note taking system should create. As I read a text, I highlight relevant sections and then go back through to paraphrase them. These notes are organized around topics and solve the daunting blank page problem.

How should you paraphrase? Keyword outlining is the practice of picking a handful of _keywords_ from a source text, setting aside the original text, and then paraphrasing using the keyword outline and your recollection of the original text. This is a subtle shift from the typical approach of changing a few words of the source text to paraphrase it. This is also great practice for honing your sentence and paragraph writing skills.

What has really helped me is two things.

1. Condense. Much of good writing is simply signal/noise ratio!

First write a draft that says all you want to say. Then go over it again and again, removing/rephrasing un-needed words and syllables. 20% compression is a decent result.

2. "Rubber ducking". Imagine showing the text to someone likely to read it. I've developed an "inner stranger" I show text or code to. He doesn't have my specialized knowledge, but is reasonably smart.

Implied above is to always write a draft that you edit. Do NOT try to form a perfect text in your mind before writing!

Reading good writing is the first step towards improving your written output. Observe the techniques that resonate with you and incorporate them into your style. It will feel clunky at first, like any new exercise, but over time will become more fluid and seamless. Reading also builds a large vocabulary, which is essential to achieve fluid prose.

Read the best authors for the intended style, be it story-writing, critical analysis or business communication. It all depends on the style of writing you would like to master. It's theor techniques that you want to emulate and make your own.

Write to evoke an emotion. There must be a purpose to your writing. If to inform, guide the reader to an ah-ha moment. Your writing will be memorable if the reader feels something.

Cut fluff. Every word must have a purpose. Less is more.

Good writing is about refining your own voice. Write as you speak, speak as you write, and both will improve.

Ultimately, have fun with it. Experiment with different styles. Writing is an art, it requires creativity. This must be cultivated and grown. In time, over many poorly crafted drafts, a unique voice, all your own, will emerge.

Best of luck!

A professor at Harvards entire course is dedicated to the refinement process. You start with what they call “write your best story”. Every assignment afterward is the removal of something unnecessary from the original story. Each assignment is not adding to, but subtracting. Each word and sentence must matter. Painful but rewarding.

Another important skill is being able to read your own writing as if you are different readers. Think about how much someone knows and how something will sound to someone who doesn’t know as much. What’s their mental picture as they start reading, what is it after they are one paragraph in, etc. Make sure you aren’t making leaps they can’t follow. Try this out while modeling people of various levels of familiarity with the subject so your writing isn’t tedious to someone who already knows a bit. Make sure you aren’t wasting their time. Make sure you’ve defined your terms before using them. Read it over and over trying to get yourself into other people’s shoes every time. Have empathy for every reader you’re writing for.

Gene Wolfe, my favorite writer, said that the advice he gave people was to pick a short story they thought was perfect, and try to rewrite it word for word from memory.

Presumably the idea is that you run into the same challenges the original author did — how to get from one scene to the next, how to direct or misdirect the reader, etc. — and by solving those challenges you understand the mechanics of storytelling at a deeper level. Since you've got the "perfect" version of the story as a key, you aren't just guessing, and there is a right and wrong answer.

He also said that, to his knowledge, nobody had ever taken him up on this advice.

But, Wolfe was a fantastic writer, and an engineer, so I assume his approach would be a practical and useful one for anyone willing to put in the work.

I just spent about 30 minutes trying to find the source of the quote, but failed. /shrug

Stephen Fry has talked about trying to rewrite scenes from The Great Gatsby from memory, and the renewed appreciation he got for Fitzgerald's prose after that attempt.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oSdLfPas8dw around around 10 minutes. Good stuff!

You can only ever be as good as that which you read. Read only blog post and you will sound like a blogger. Read only classics and you will sound like a scholar. If you read enough you will become your own best critic. Stop trying to write better and spend that time reading the best material you can find.

The same is true for all aspects of language. If you want to speak better, don't watch TV news or LA sitcoms. Watch classic British comedy (Blackadder) or BBC science docs (Brian Cox) that will expand your practical vocabulary and sense of proper diction.

This is such a good point. After 3 years of writing and reading (mostly) math proofs, I wrote everything in proof-like fashion.

"You can only ever be as good as that which you read." I disagree. If your statement was true, progress would never occur. Obviously writers can learn by reading the writing of other good writers, but the are not bound by what they have read. The ability to exceed is always present.

1. Read the Elements of Style by E.B. White. It describes how to write in active voice for positive effect.

2. Practice converting your thoughts to the written word so that they're clearly understood by anyone. That is the exercise at hand and it takes practice.

3. Once you've mastered clearly communicating your ideas, add some cleverness to your writing. Use double-entendre and practice economy of words. Leave something for the reader to guess, allowing one's imagination to fill the gaps with what you didn't say.

4. Finally, practice the art of showing versus telling, i.e., the art of story-telling versus an analytical accounting of facts.

My personal experience has led me to believe that there’s truly no substitute for reading a lot and writing a lot. But the funny thing is that you may not realize how true that is until you’ve gotten sick and tired of trying to find shortcuts and hacks. You can get burnt out on reading and watching material about how to write well but it can be helpful in moderation. The best resource I’ve found is the Belief Agency YouTube channel. They have a lot of great interviews/shows about how command of the concept of storytelling can improve your communication, written or otherwise. Brian McDonald’s books are great too—-especially Invisible Ink. One more thing I’ve found helpful is to take up a practice that has nothing to do with writing—-gardening in my case—-and see if you can learn some things that shape the way you think about the writing process. All of these things should lead you back to a regular practice of reading and writing though. It’s like an archaeological dig. Most of the time you’re just throwing dirt over your shoulder but once in a while you find treasure.

This technique helped me become a better writer.

Get a cheep spiral notebook and a nice pen.

Then collect some example writings that represent the best writing style you aspire to. I prefer short stories and essays, but for larger examples (novels) you can focus on single chapters.

Every day spend about 1/2 hour copying the example writing by hand into the spiral notebook. When you are done copying about two pages into your spiral notebook review the pages and identify different writing techniques. I used this technique to learn copywriting so I identified different persuasion techniques including what’s the catch addresses or Promise.

However, you could also use this same technique to become a better novelist. So maybe you identify alliteration, irony, foreshadowing, etc.

Why does this work? This have been studies on the powerful learning effect of writing notes by hand. The technique I described follows the same principals. By copying great writing by hand you are engaging multiple senses at one time. You are feeding your conscious and subconscious mind rich example writing that will help you improve your own writing.

Anyway, this worked for me. Good luck.

I am happy you found success copying others’ writing but highly doubt that rote copying is what made the difference. It’s more likely that you learned through analysis.

Learning works through synthesis of material, which is the main takeaway from the writing studies you mentioned, however when copying writing no synthesis occurs. Also these studies were recently duplicated and results did not match the original conclusion.

I've read drafts from people who truly write well and have come to the conclusion that the biggest thing they're doing that I'm not is revising. I write straight through and maybe do a single pass after to punch things up and get rid of passive voice, and so everything I write reads like an HN comment (which, don't get me wrong, is a useful local optimum for me). The good writing I've watched happen was revised a lot. Besides not having the talent, I lack the patience, which is liberating.

Also: this book is great: https://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-Chicago-Writing-Publish...

The other thing the very good writers I know do that I don’t is practice. That is they will write explicitly for no audience but in a form they’d want to present to a hypothetical audience for a hypothetical reason.

This allows them all the benefits of practice in other endeavors. They can experiment, get faster, build “muscle memory” etc.

I don’t know why I keep being surprised that the answer to being good at things is working at it.

What I did: (1) start a blog, (2) force yourself to write at a specific frequency at all costs, like once a month, (3) plan and schedule future writing topics and times, (4) be very intentional with each sentence and paragraph, and (5) start with an outline for each post and iterate on it before filling in with details.

#5 feels like a superpower to me. It has made writing so much easier. It forces me to really understand (and to realize what I don’t understand) about the topic.

Write -> give other people for proofreading -> rewrite -> publish -> gather feedback.

There is no other way than practice. Feedback speeds up this learning process a lot and improves the result significantly.

Everything else varies from person to person. Some write daily; some don't for months - then dive into their writing modes. Some start with an outline, and some - pour a stream of thoughts into the computer.

Nevertheless - what is your goal, and what blocks you in the process?

I'd probably substitute editing for proofreading (which for me implies copyediting). Particularly starting out you may be looking for more structural feedback than a copyeditor will often provide.

But other than that I agree. There are probably a few books worth reading but it's more about writing and getting good feedback. Past a certain point, you can probably dispense with some of that feedback depending on the nature of what you're writing. But it's essential to get started.

> I’ve been writing for a while but I feel like I’ve stagnated for a while.

You could rewrite this to say "I have been writing for a while, but feel like I have stagnated for some time now."

Be a ruthless editor of your own writing, to begin with. Read actual printed words that have been through rigorous editing. Examples include print magazines and newspapers.

Read Strunk and White's Elements of Style and try to put it into practice in your writing. Read a variety of works, both fiction and nonfiction. Read classic writers such as Melville, Trollope, or Hemingway and pay attention to the plot devices and writing style (you will have to re-read individual pieces in isolation, again and again).

Take every opportunity to write, including in this forum or other places where you can write and have an actual conversation with like-minded, intelligent people. I'm sure there are internet forums and subreddits for aspiring writers where you will find opportunities aplenty to write, critique and hone your craft.

1. Write a lot

I think much of the other advice on this page is very valid (and I'll repeat some below), but what I often find missing from advice like this is simply do the thing a lot with some sort of feedback/iteration loop. While this is true for most professions, it is specially true for writing: write a lot.

Other useful things to help: 2. Define the purpose of your writing 3. Define who your target audience is (is this a novel, article writing, marketing, etc) 4. Define who you are as the author (are you a subject matter expert, the narrator of a story, a friend)

Learn some of the basics: - Elements of Style is a good place to start - Use Grammarly - Read, a lot

Reading makes you a better writer.

Writing makes you a better thinker.

Better thinking leads to better everything.

David Mamet's writings on writing are the best.

Hey, which Mamet’s books on writing would you recommend? Thanks

Having people read your writing who can give constructive criticism can be a huge help.

It can be people you know, but there are also online writing communities that will give candid feedback in a safe environment. Usually the catch is you’ll have to return the favor for someone else in the community, but that’s not a bad thing.

- Write more. Meaning output not length.

- Rewrite more. Same as above.

- Seek feedback from qualified sources.

There really isn’t that much more. If you want to write more yet you fail to write more, then maybe you should schedule periods of time for just writing. I do it and can’t recommend it enough. 15 minutes a day of pure writing time is better than an hour every other day.

Read books by Gary Provost on writing. Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark. Draft number 4 by McPhee. They contain a variety of ideas. Writing Tools is great if you want to identify and drill techniques. Provost's books cover everything and are written well.

Set aside what you wrote for about two weeks and read it. Reading aloud what you wrote, too. Emphasis on smaller sentences-less than 10 words on average. Never more than 20 words.

Do the Technical Writing One course [1] and consider Google developer technical documentation style guide highlights [2]. Both those links are about technical writing which is primarily about clarity. Since I started focusing on clarity when writing, I find any writing fun and engaging.

-[1] https://developers.google.com/tech-writing/one

-[2] https://developers.google.com/style/highlights

Write often, about anything.

Perhaps try nicheless.blog, I write there regularly. Given a 300 word limit, I can write one or two thoughts. The word limit necessitates merciless editing, if i care to have a coherent message to say to the reader.

I write about, literally, anything, at first. Writing is a muscle rarely used by anyone. It is a superpower that could be mastered, or at least harnessed, by everyone.

Currently I write about boring ole everyday subjects. Putting in the work. However, I am getting ready to try flash fiction, then perhaps a short story.

Good luck.

Yes, what was that Steven King advice; "...two shitty pages in a day"

Rewriting (by hand) the works of authors you admire is a great way to boost your writing skills.

It'll give you an intuition and "taste" for the texture of writing; why you find it so compelling, even if you don't consciously know the rules they're applying.

Highly recommend.

Lots of good advice here, but one thing I haven't seen mentioned is this:

https://hemingwayapp.com/

It can be fun to paste in some writing and see where you agree and disagree with it.

If you want to get better at writing, be deliberate: practice with the goal of learning and becoming better. (1) read good works and study their authors' choices and techniques, (2) write often to strengthen your writing muscles and develop your style, (3) practice rewriting and editing (your writing and others), and (4) get feedback on your writing.

Books on writing can help, but there is no subsitute for doing the work. Being deliberate about learning from the work, however, will speed your improvement.

With regular work, you'll be noticably better after a month or two, especially if you're getting feedback. After a year, you'll be a different person. Your writing will be faster, easier, and better.

But don't stop then. You're just getting started :-)

Read more in order to identify the types of writing you admire, enjoy and perhaps wish to emulate on some level. I like William Zinsser's books, On Writing Well is the "flagship" I guess.

If you're writing in public, like a blog, try giving yourself a deadline and permission for the post not to be perfect.

Zinsser's On Writing Well was my game changer, can't recommend highly enough. And it's a fun read too.

The main takeaway is to simplify text as much as possible. That doesn't mean dumbing it down, and it doesn't mean abandoning creativity. It's just the opposite: Once you get rid of all the excess junk, the reader will hear your genuine voice.

Get people to critique your writing. Ultimately, writing is communication and recipients can give you a lot of actionable feedback. Without such a feedback loop it will be very hard to become meaningfully better at writing. Often the feedback will be relevant to a particular piece, though sometimes to writing in general.

You can also find someone else who wants to become a better writer and offer advice to each other. Reading another person’s writing while thinking about how it might be improved, and discussing your suggestions with the author, might benefit you as much as the advice you receive about your own writing.

Two things:

1. Read about writing. The very tactical stuff like "On Writing Well" and "Writing Tools" and "The Craft of Scientific Writing"

2. Imitate writers you like. Try reading someone else's work, then reproducing it in their style.

Read a ton. Write constantly. Write for the trash can. Writer's block is caused by the pressure of obligation. Write like you're speaking plainly to a friend. If you can remove words without losing meaning, do it.

Read some fiction you might not normally read, sometimes you'll find phrases or sentences so interesting in the way they're constructed it's a learning experience. One example for me was reading Charles Dickens. Reading some of his stuff as a child in school was an inferior experience to reading it as an adult.

Write a lot, and repeatedly re-read what you wrote (when it's done in its entirety). You'll naturally correct yourself or tune it.

Writing is really mostly editing and polishing.

Try to read something out loud and you'll immediately hear if it works in terms of punctuation.

Don't try to be smart and writerly. Find your natural voice. The point is to communicate something, not impressing with your skills.

Listen to the music of your prose. Don't repeat the same length of sentences over and over again.

Writing is both an art and a craft but like every skill it improves with deliberate practice. It means having an idea of what good writing is - so most likely taking a course or being trained - actually writing a lot and having someone skilled criticise and correct.

I'd say that if you want to write well, read good writers.

There's different styles of writing, for different purposes. Entertainment, intellectual debate, instruction etc. You didn't say what you wanted to write about.

What's a good writer? Well, someone who writes well, to your taste, and in your domain. Or if you want to write commercially, someone who is commercially successful; whether or not they write well, I suppose.

For many purposes, a knowledge of logic and rhetoric is probably going to help.

It's hard to say - you haven't given much away.

Writing a lot is important, but being able to get feedback on your writing can prevent you from developing bad habits you may not be aware of.

When I was in college for English, getting regular feedback from professors and the writing center helped me learn things I wouldn't have figured out on my own.

But of course, context matters: that was great for improving my general writing skills and my academic writing, but if you're doing creative writing, technical writing, etc., ideally you want feedback from people that are experts in the kind you're interested in.

Read a lot and write a lot but also edit your own work a lot, putting intervals between editing passes. There is no shortcut. A million words and you’ll be publishable. Three or for million and you might start to approach good. A third party editor might help but could also hurt and isn’t worth it unless the project requires it. Beyond what grammarly can do, labelled data is going to be in short supply— it’s mostly an unsupervised problem. Your most important editor will be you.

Keeping a daily diary by hand is a good first step. When you’re reading, look for sentences whose construction surprises you or is otherwise novel. If you can, try to pay attention to how the parts of speech are being used to form the sentence’s structure. Rereading the diary once a month and making line edits will put into mind your own bad habits. In time, an intuitive set of reasoning about how to marry the idea to the structure of the sentence will develop. Continuing to express, articulate, and expand on that reasoning will make the act of writing more enjoyable and the writing itself better.

Sentences should have a quality that makes them individually memorable.

There's a video where Alan Moore recommends reading terrible books. Knowing what frustrates me in years of poorly presented university textbooks helps me in a way.

A buddhist monk recommends reading D-tier detective books to drill patience and contemplation for others.

Quite the exercise it is.

Check out The Fieldstone Method by G. M. Weinberg.

I also made a web app to help develop my writing habit and improve fluency: https://enso.sonnet.io

I’ve enjoyed it so far and have been writing consistently for almost 3 years so far (ca 800 words per day).

Find people to read and critique your work. The time I spent in 'reading group' in grad school helped me curb some bad writing habits and develop other good ones. My mom used to participate in 'writers groups', in-person and online to get feedback on her poetry and prose.

I blogged every day for a while. That helped but it was grueling. With everything, practice makes perfect.

Working with an editor is huge. I worked with several editors and reviewers both when submitting to other blogs and when writing my books. I learned a lot.

There are great writer assistance tools such as Write Good, etc. They helped with avoiding weasel phrasing, etc.

By reading and writing

Read "bad quality" works too. And know that you're going to write a lot of "bad quality" works too, before people to start to get what you're trying to say.

Steven Pinker, “The Sense of Style”, is a book about the science of how to write well. YouTube talk here: https://youtu.be/3ZKTmsgqi0U

I am not an expert on this matter, but what works for me is to practice and write for a specific use case. In addition, reading helps.

Some things that have helped me:

- grammarly (mostly excellent, I ignore some suggestions)

- reading books more with stylistic elements that push the boundaries of what you're used to. I write technical blogs, but I've found some inspiration reading very different writing. Some examples are Thomas Pynchon, James Joyce, Greg Egan

- setting up constraints. Can you explain this in less sentences without making a long run-on sentence? How concise can you make this whole post? On the flipside, can you avoid all the most common adjectives when describing something? If you take a tokenized word count on your work, what words do you rely on? Can you delete them?

What kind of writing do you enjoy most? What kind of writing are you trying to improve?

The Mountain Man's Field Guide to Grammar: A Fearless Adventure in Grammar, Style, and Usage

https://a.co/d/40wyBTq

write more, read good writing. emulate good writing. read books on writing? Stephen King's "on writing" is recommended all the time

To add to all of this, reading books in the same genre that you want to write in (whether fiction or nonfiction) helps a lot.

For the longest time with my fiction I was just focusing on writing writing writing and reading about writing. I'd always loved to read, but surprisingly never really read that much in my target genre. When I started, it's like another gate of improvement was opened up: analyzing the beats and conflict points of successful books in my genre immediately helped me see what I was lacking in mine. And being exposed to the wording preferences and writing styles of other authors gave me so many "Aha!" moments when it comes to formulating enticing prose.

I'm still not a good fiction writer by any stretch of the imagination, but the improvement has been steady when coupling reading in my genre with more writing.

"Have something to say". Everything else is secondary.

Creative writing? Or improving the quality of your personal / professional comms?

many have already advised to read a lot, write a lot. allow me to add a 2022 piece of advice: ask ChatGPT to review what you write. or rewrite in the style you are trying to achieve.

let us know how it goes :)