What to read to become a better writer
economist.com[insert Sean Bean “One does not simply read to become…” meme]
I don’t make a living as a writer but writing has made my living. Here’s my advice to improve as a writer in general, not as a writer of a specific genre or purpose, and not to improve a specific piece of writing.
0. All advice needs salt.
1. Recognize that all writing is personal and all reading is subjective. No one has a perfect lens. Be willing to be wrong. Even if you’re right, guaranteed someone else thinks you’re wrong.
2. Are you writing to be authentic or writing to be popular? Writing to persuade or to inspire? To amuse or confront? All of those may be in conflict at times. Recognize and accept the conflict, then make your choices in peace. See rule #1.
3. Everyone loves simple language.
4. But try not to be bland. This is the value of rhythm, voice, word choice, tropes and schemes, idioms, patterns, and so on.
5. There really is something to copying other people’s writing as a way of finding your own writing voice. So you need to read widely to find people worth copying. In general, avoid the angry advice writers.
6. Practice. Click the Publish button once in a while. You don’t end up pitching for the Yankees by reading about baseball.
7. Writing is pretty fantastic, isn’t it?
8. Language evolves. Just like foxes and toaster ovens. Accept it. Thank people for their critique of your apparent misuse of language and then please continue challenging the rules.
9.
10. Leave something to the imagination. Think of it like an offering to the gods.
11. No one cares about your writing as much as you do. See rule #1.
One does not simply read to become a better writer, but reading a bunch might make writing easier for you (that was my experience). Like was mentioned in the article, writing used to be “tough” for me. I picked up reading as a hobby during the pandemic, and now I’m avid. Now the writing flows out of me. I don’t know if it’s any good, but I don’t dread it anymore.
Damn good writing.
What's rule #9?!? I need to know!
Maybe rule 10 explains rule 9 :)
Thank you!
thanks for sharing, good list
Superb.
From Schopenhauer's essay, "On reading and books":
> No literary quality can be attained by reading writers who possess it: be it, for example, persuasiveness, imagination, the gift of drawing comparisons, boldness or bitterness, brevity or grace, facility of expression or wit, unexpected contrasts, a laconic manner, naïveté, and the like. But if we are already gifted with these qualities—that is to say, if we possess them potentia—we can call them forth and bring them to consciousness; we can discern to what uses they are to be put; we can be strengthened in our inclination, nay, may have courage, to use them; we can judge by examples the effect of their application and so learn the correct use of them; and it is only after we have accomplished all this that we actu possess these qualities. This is the only way in which reading can form writing, since it teaches us the use to which we can put our own natural gifts; and in order to do this it must be taken for granted that these qualities are in us. Without them we learn nothing from reading but cold, dead mannerisms, and we become mere imitators.
Gutenberg link: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11945/11945-h/11945-h.htm#li...
I dislike this view, for learning to write or anything else. It has an implicit assertion that all human quality is innate, and we only ever learn how to recognize and express it. This means that we can never actually learn anything new, we can only learn new ways to pull from our innate quality, and everything else is just imitation.
It implies we are born with some sort of immutable value locked inside of us, which I disagree with.
"We are born with some sort of immutable value locked inside of us"
I think I agree with it. Most people have a natural intelligence or artistic capability or instinctive talent or natural athleticism that cannot be learned and cannot be taught, but that can be acquired by diligent perseverance in practice and effort.
Naturally strong people often do now realize how strong they are compared to the standard. Naturally smart people often mistakenly assume that everyone else is equally as intelligent and that their intelligence is nothing special.
Our brains tend to normalize our everyday experience so that the extraordinary stands out more against the background of life.
Nothing is impossible for anyone, but some things will be easier or harder for you because of how they fit with your natural inclinations, abilities, or skills.
I read it more like the word 'attain' means to internalize those writing abilities are your own; and reading others will not work to achieve developing such an ability. As such, this advice is about the same as most advice I've seen from great writers - read a lot, but write more.
Did Schopenhauer go on to give any reasons to believe that the things he was claiming there are true?
I have found re-reading my own writing helps tremendously.
We often do not appreciate how vague we are and how many biases we embed in our writing until we read them again outside of our current mindset.
This is why portant emails should be composed, and then wait until later before re-reading.
You will often find yourself rewriting entire communications because your original message was unclear/emotional/combative/etc...
> This is why portant emails should be composed, and then wait until later before re-reading.
Not sure if intentional, but if so this was a fantastic way to emphasize your point!
I've been doing an exhaustive review of my diaries from the last 6 odd years. I am amazed by how many sentences start with one idea, lapse in the middle, and conclude almost as if another person had taken over. Evidently, some thought had transpired in that interval, but I failed to transcribe it to the page.
I wish I followed that advice awhile ago.
Same for code.
> portant emails
portant?
The point is that re-reading catches errors, like the spelling of "important".
Two books which I read this year that have helped me become a better writer are,
Charles Bukowski On Writing
Kurt Vonnegut Letters
These books aren’t so much about how to write better but more so a look into the minds of two good authors. Helped me get over some of the hurdles of writing. Probably not very useful if you’re looking to be an improved work document writer but for creative writing they were great.
Add Orwell’s essay on the English language. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
Another one is Stephen King's On Writing.
You can get rid of Economist's paywall by disabling JS.
Or in Firefox with the bypass paywalls extension.
The books that (I think) made the biggest impact on my writing are Zinsser's On Writing Well, everything Hemingway (e.g. The Sun Also Rises, A Moveable Feast), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Wind, Sand and Stars, and Beryl Markham's West with the Night.
The common theme being simplicity and informal, but correct, speech.
The article recommends having a good dictionary at hand, and that is absolutely correct advice. What I'd like to suggest is that, aside from writing that absolutely must use terms from the last 100 years, use the Webster 1913[1] as your dictionary of choice. It's become a fetish, of sorts, among writers like Cory Doctorow [2] and others who approvingly link to James Somers' May 18, 2014 post, "http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary"[3].
Try it. Read its
[1] https://www.websters1913.com/
[2] https://boingboing.net/2014/05/29/you-should-try-the-1913-we...
Walter Mosley made an interesting observation about the writing process. When he rereads his first draft of a novel, he notes the places where the words go awry: where something is amiss; where a character seems shallow, poorly developed. (I'm just recalling this from memory.) Mosely simply notes those spots in the novel. And keeps reading. Right to the end. He says he finds that when he fixes those sections, that's when the writing starts to sparkle.
The book I read was Mosley, "This is the Year You Write Your Novel".
I guess his message is to not be aggrieved when one’s writing seems like sh*t. That observation might be the start of a good piece of writing.
Alternatively there's the quip of Oscar Wilde: “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”
I found recording a read aloud of what I write helps me condense writing flow.
Even better is to listen to how your words flow using a Text-to-Speech (TTS) tool. I got this tip on HN.
I use it a lot for long articles that I've already spent far too much time editing to help me catch sentences that could be broken up for clarity.
+1 about this. It has been very helpful for my work.
Here are instructions for how to set this up for macOS users: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem...
This is an amazing tip! I use TTS quite a lot for checking certain accessibility issues, never once thought to use it for my own writing.
100%. After I'm done with my last draft I always read the whole thing loudly, and end up changing at least a word or two in every paragraph. Usually it's the small stuff - eg. using "he instead went" instead of "instead he went" because my brain expects a sentence a certain way that "flows" well and I've written something else.
I’ve developed that further to getting Siri to read it out to me.
Stephen King, On Writing. No matter what your writing style is or what your subject matter is, be it fiction or not, this book will turn any writer into a better writer.
Note that I didn't say it'll turn any writer into a good writer. It'll turn them into a better one. A good writer could become great and a terrible writer can become slightly less terrible. It's all subjective.
One thing I've learned is that some people have a way with words and some just don't. And there's nothing wrong with that. But all of us need to write at some point and that book will definitely help because it helps the person focus on what's most important to the story rather than what's the most important to the writer.
That's not how that works. Writing is about practice, repetition and feedback. Improvement is gradual and lifelong to say that only certain kinds of people get better is a pretty bad take. Anyone can become competent at writing. It's just many do not have the prerequisite requirements to begin improving on certain parts and never learn of their deficencies or how to fix them.
Orwell's Politics and the English Language is a masterful essay. Forget that he gets his own rules wrong when setting them (twice) - but it rarely fails. It also happens to be the basis for the Economist's style guide...
An essay on writing by Raymond Carver [1] (as well as pretty much anything by Raymond Carver and authors he mentions in the essay :)). It's about good fiction writing, but, I think, good to keep in mind for writing in general.
[1] https://bryanafern.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/on-writing-ra...
No discussion of Carver is complete without mentioning his relationship with editor Gordon Lish.
>Carver had been up all night reviewing Lish’s severe editorial cuts––two stories had been slashed by nearly seventy per cent, many by almost half; many descriptions and digressions were gone; endings had been truncated or rewritten––and he was unnerved to the point of desperation.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220617140639/http://www.newyor...
That is a pretty low effort list.
I have read dozens and dozens of books on writing, and for non-fiction nothing beats Writing with Style by Trimble.
There is one such book on how to write, absolutely the best in every way and recommended by the most eminent writers in the world. You can get it from any stationery store, and it only contains blank pages.
How to Write, Speak and Think More Effectively by Rudolph Flesch is still a great book and good bang for your buck. I got mine on bookfinder.com
Huh, spam bots are getting better every day. That's a good book suggestion.
i'm not a spam bot. that's just how good I am at making recommendations.
My recommendation is First You Write a Sentence. by Joe Moran. It feels like a recent classic and I re-read chapters all the time.
Check out this old but gold Reader's Digest: How to Write and Speak Better[1].
[1]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2180265.Reader_s_Digest
If you are pitching a far off idea it is good that when you read aloud the text you consider it from the perspective of the right measure of skepticism so that you can address the plain issues quickly and maybe contrast the alternatives that failed for similar reasons.
I've read the Pinker book. There were some useful takeaways. However, in general I found it long winded which is ironic as most writing tips include a recommendation of brevity.
Read it if you feel you must, but lower your expectations.
Writing advice is overrated. it's hard to know what readers will like. a lot of randomness involved. also, you need to build rapport or trust with the audience or reader, which is hard.
Without the paywall: https://archive.ph/20220925200441/https://www.economist.com/...
Vernacular Eloquence by Peter Elbow is my go-to.
Just read that after seeing your suggestion. It's good! Skipped a lot of the argumentation—the proof is in the pudding, after all—and appreciated the concrete advice about "resources of speech" and intonational units.
This isn’t very interesting, these are all well known books you can find listed elsewhere. I was hoping for something original.
At the end of the article, they link to their online writing course that costs £1,475 so this is more of an ad than an attempt at originality.
https://education.economist.com/courses/professionalcommunic...
What's the point of linking to an article behind a paywall that all of us probably can't read?
I clicked with interest.
Ugly cookie popup was the first thing I read.
Then some big ads at the top and sides begged for my attention.
Next was the paywall box selling me some complicated subscription deal.
Dreaming of a world wide web that cherishes writing.
Without the paywall: https://archive.ph/20220925200441/https://www.economist.com/...
what to write to become a better writer
There's no such thing as better writer. You either have passion and then use inspiration to fuel that passion or you don't. Not everyone is privileged to have higher-education or have the ability to learn the entire Oxford dictionary.
I've worked with editors at Fast Company, Entrepreneur, TheNextWeb and others, and I have not _ever_ tried to read a book to make myself a better writer. What does that even mean?
And on numerous occasions I have gotten away with submitting first drafts that get published "as is" without anyone telling me otherwise. Am I some omnipotent writer, or were the editors incompetent? I doubt it.
I think what a lot of people also don't understand about writing is that some of the best work out there (articles, books, etc.), for the person who put it out - it can be compared to having participated in a triathlon because it has THAT immense of an effect on your mental state of being.
Want to be a better writer? Find out what your passion is and write about that. No book and no order of semicolons is going to make you "better" unless what you write about is what lights the fire underneath your feet.
> There's no such thing as better writer
If someone hones their craft such that they become more effective at articulating their thoughts, at making their argument more persuasive, at moving their audience, at reaching more people, wouldn’t we say that they’ve become a better writer than they used to be?
I'd call those people marketers.
Say there are two people with same understanding of a nuanced argument. One fails to articulate that argument in a written form such that the reader is able to understand it. The other is successful in doing that. I'll say the second person is a better writer. No marketing involved.
> Want to be a better writer? Find out what your passion is and write about that. No book and no order of semicolons is going to make you "better" unless what you write about is what lights the fire underneath your feet.
That's fine if your goal is to become a Writer. However if writing is just the means to the end of communicating an idea or persuading an audience, then it may not be possible to align your passion. That doesn't make improving your technique any less important or achievable though.
Yes, and that what's I'm arguing. There should be a distinction whenever a title such as "read this to become better" is presented, especially for writing.
There's no consideration for the absolute basic level of entry to writing, and it imposes on the person an unrealistic perspective which may lead that person on a meaningless journey on "becoming" something that they are inherently not able to become.
Hence me mentioning higher education. I'm well aware of people who are absolute artists with words, but that same story can be said/explained in practical ways.
Perhaps I should have made that clearer.
It seems like you're using a different definition of "better" than the article author or most of the people responding to your comment. You seem to treat things as a binary – as though the headline is only justified if it can take a non-writer and turn them into a writer. And in that light, your criticism makes sense: reading an article isn't going to do the job without passion and a certain latent capability.
But I'd suggest that others mean "better" in the relative sense of "greater than" or "more" and mean it to refer to skill or dexterity of a sort. If someone has a certain degree of skill or dexterity – the degree that makes them a member of the article's target audience – then, the author is claiming, they can increase their skill by engaging with the recommended material. And I'm curious whether you disagree with that position.
If you agree with it, this might just be a case where people are talking past each other based on different definitions, despite agreeing about the substance of the article.
> Not everyone is privileged to have higher-education or have the ability to learn the entire Oxford dictionary.
That you bring up education and vocabulary suggests that you do think there's such a thing as better writers. One obvious example: compare a given three-year-old to you. You are almost certainly a better writer. Compare you at three years old to today. Same story.
Sure, you may be right that passion is required. But why dismiss skill?
Exactly, I am talking about skill and the use of words as a means to add flare to a story, but it does not make you better. Just because you can translate a black and white story (which conveys the message/lesson) using all the colors of a rainbow does not make you better.
Do you mean "flair"?
You're right that people can disagree about what to value, but I'd think that given a set of values, maximizing them is better than not. If you're a writer who does care about using all the colors of a rainbow, doesn't learning how to use indigo and orange make you better than when you only knew black, white, red, and green?
Thank you. I'm not a writer, but there's an undeniable urge to communicate when I feel excited about something, especially when I have synthesized new knowledge. I suspect this urge is universal.
That being said, achieving clarity often requires tremendous effort.