On Writing Techniques

[Oskar]

I greatly admire the quality and speed at which Chase writes. If I want to match his quality it takes me a lot longer than it seems to take him. A part of this is experience and practice -- getting used to holding yourself to higher and higher standards and writing A LOT every day for years and years... but I still feel like a piece of the puzzle is missing.

What do you guys think: how can one write faster and at a higher quality besides working hard and wanting it? Those are wide-scale while I'm looking for specific techniques you use. One thing I can think of is to front-loading the work; making a plan of action that spares you thinking and editing later on. Another is to write about subjects that you're intimately familiar with. But it's one thing to write an article on seduction, it's quite another to write a book on imaginary experiences and characters (the latter tends to involve significantly more creation during the writing process than the former).

I know there're a lot of writers here, so I'm curious to know what kind of tricks y'all use to write faster and with higher quality.

-Oskar

 

[BarryS1]

I know there're a lot of writers here, so I'm curious to know what kind of tricks y'all use to write faster and with higher quality.

I use a technical writing style meaning no adjectives, adverbs, slang, pronouns, and passive-voice. I desire taking all the "fluff" out of the text and insert only value. In that style, there's a tradeoff between faster and quality. Not really used for making an emotional connection, but getting the point across fast.

Eventually I'll pick up material for writing novels using emotion for captivating the reader. I like reading Chase's articles because he captures emotions w/o longggggg rants.

Technical writing took me 2 yrs before becoming automatic. Otherwise, I would (passive-voice opps!) re-type over and over.

What style are you using?

 

[Oskar]

What style are you using?

Writing style is complicated (understatement)... I see it as the sum of our answers to these three questions:

1. What am I going to write about and what do I want to accomplish by writing about it?
2. Which words will I use?
3. In what order will I put them?

Said another way, the choices we make when we write are about our propositional content, word choice, and syntax. Style to me then is both what we say and how we say it. The only thing I can say about my style in general is what it is not: it is not adverse to long sentences, it is not entirely ignorant of how what I'm writing sounds, it is not based on the assumption that the fundamental unit of a sentence is the word, it is not dead facts on a page waiting to be taken out of a formaldehyde solution and dissected.

We can't do much to improve one another's propositional content here (besides perhaps recommending books with good ideas in them) but we can say some things about the other two. I'll keep my input brief:

When dealing with word choice it's useful for me to look at words as existing on a spectrum of abstraction, a vertical axis intersecting with the syntagmatic (think syntax, i.e. the order of the ideas you're presenting) axis. The spectrum of abstraction is a way of looking at synonyms.

Writing moves in linear space, which is analogous to time. Because of this, when we read, we aren’t getting the whole picture all at once but instead the information is unfolding over time, causing the way that it unfolds to become important –- in some cases even more important than the paraphraseable information our sentence contains.

The third question (dealing with syntax) is the one that learning about can most improve our writing and the one that we can most control, yet it is also the one that is most overlooked in most modern education systems (and almost all the resources online dealing with it are insufferably pedantic too). One essay that I find quite illuminating is Francis Christensen's A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence, which can be found on JSTOR, if you're interested. It's based on the argument that modern educators have misunderstood Strunk & White's popularly quoted prescriptions of "Simple and Direct" and "Omit Needless Words"; that we take them too far, leading to many moderns' writing to be thin... perhaps even threadbare.

Learning about modification strategies (not necessarily memorizing their names, but their functions), in particular the cumulative (which is the focus of Christensen's essay) and periodic syntaxes with a focus on unbound adjectival steps, could be invaluable to people who are interested in learning to write sentences like the following:

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off –- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
--Herman Melville -- Moby Dick

It's certainly not your typical advertising/propaganda or capitalism-bent language, but the ability to write sentences like Melville's can improve your writing across the board (and more quickly and surely than anything else I know) by forcing you to experiment with unfamiliar grammatical constructions and also helping get you thinking about your sentences on a more structural level.

Anyway, I'm still wondering what other techniques people use here to to write quickly and effectively.

-Oskar

 

[Thedoctor]

how can one write faster and at a higher quality besides working hard and wanting it?

Oskar,

How can one do anything without working hard and wanting it? The only shortcut in life is to try to be as efficient a human being as possible.

I don't have a whole lot of formal education in the writing department, but I can generally form a thought and get it to paper in a fairly short amount of time. I'm rather concise in my responses here. This is mainly for 3 reasons:

-Not everyone on here seems to have English as their native tongue, so I don't want to lose anything in translation. Even if a person only speaks English, it doesn't mean their comprehension level is overly high. We come from all walks of life and I never assume that someone even went to school. That's life. It doesn't make a person dumber by any means, but if they cannot understand you how are they supposed to learn?

-I'm not the most gifted writer. I'm working on trying to improve it, but that usually means starting with shorter pieces.

-Last, it saves me time. Thereby making me a more efficient human being

I'm sure if I put enough effort and energy into it I can become a better writer. But, if someone does have a secret formula, I'd love to hear it

-John

 

[Ross]

Chase has been writing 3000+ word articles multiple times a week for three years. He's spent so much time on it, I'm willing to bet he would completely master it out of time spent working on writing.

Even then, you really don't know how long it takes for articles to form. Ideas come and go, and oftentimes you can start writing about something and halfway through decide to scrap it because it's so far removed from your idea. I can only speak for myself; writing isn't a fast task, especially when you attempt to commercialize while getting a point across.

All you can do is practice writing and review it every now and then. I got my practice primarily through having conversations through text on a frequent basis when I was a teenager. I'd play computer games where the primary mode of conversation was a text format, and you learn what tends to get your point across and what doesn't get your point across. One key concept is to have an idea for what you are writing take form before deciding to write about it. Plan out the form of the article, make sure that the form is congruent and flows well, and then get to working on writing.

 

[Oskar]

I'm sure if I put enough effort and energy into it I can become a better writer. But, if someone does have a secret formula, I'd love to hear it

-John

Yeah, most of it is about putting in the work and pushing against your edge.

Secret writing formula, hmmm... best thing I can think of is to read books, and to read at least one book with the goal of truly understanding it.

I got my practice primarily through having conversations through text on a frequent basis when I was a teenager. I'd play computer games where the primary mode of conversation was a text format, and you learn what tends to get your point across and what doesn't get your point across. One key concept is to have an idea for what you are writing take form before deciding to write about it. Plan out the form of the article, make sure that the form is congruent and flows well, and then get to working on writing.

Some great points, thanks Ross! I'd have to agree, the more clearly you've planned out how it will work the more smoothly things tend to go. Though, you certainly can over-plan too!

Learning seduction seems to be a fertile scenario to find out what works and what doesn't work in communication, and that's actually why I'm asking people here, because I'd bet the people here know how to calibrate to their audiences better than most, which is hugely important in writing.


Some more techniques for maximizing efficiency in the field of writing:

1) Do it first thing in the morning. Jump out of bed, sit down at your typewriter/computer, and clatter off. This is a good way to get past activation energy and other mental defenses while you're building up the habit.

2) Practice memorization (passive technique).This can come in handy as you can maintain your flow without having to look stuff up. This is related to understanding your topic. A friend of mine had to memorize Bible verses every week growing up and now his mind is sharper than a blade of Ramston steel.

3) Set aside a specific place and time so you can offload your conscious thinking and conserve your willpower.

4) Find a few useful syntactical constructions that you find effective and integrate them into your arsenal. Two that I like to use are "...not only X, but also Y." or beginning sentence with "Having <past tense verb>...." This can be useful for generating new ideas and pushing onward if you get stuck.

As Ross aptly said:

All you can do is practice writing and review it every now and then.

Techniques are great, but they're only useful if you're putting in the work already -- we all seem to agree there. What techniques are all about is, relating it back to seduction, getting past the last 5%; pushing through when your instincts/willpower aren't enough. In other words, techniques are for "closers"

-Oskar

 

[metomeya]

Here are two great posts when it comes to writing.

I would say find your own voice FIRST. Then start applying these techniques.

http://boostblogtraffic.com/better-writer/

http://boostblogtraffic.com/editing-tips/

Enjoy!

 

[Eternity]

I'm working on incorporating both technical and creative writing into my short stories that i write. They will be about one specific character who has hard earned insight about seduction; the light and the dark side of it. I finished the introduction and a poem about him and will work on more later on.

To achieve this, i will write a rough draft of my experiences and add some from other people i have met. Then i will add in between the nuts and bolts of what i learned of seduction -technically speaking. Lastly i will blend both with vivid imagery and strong, emotional words to create a key moment or paragraph to further my short story into whatever course i see fit. That's how i usually blend both the technical and creative into a story.