[HN Gopher] Explaining explaining: a quick guide on explanatory ...
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Explaining explaining: a quick guide on explanatory writing
Author : lucasfcosta
Score : 138 points
Date : 2021-10-08 08:58 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lucasfcosta.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lucasfcosta.com)
| andreyk wrote:
| TLDR :
|
| * Use a structure of "what I'll explain, explanation, what I
| explained" (aka intro, body, conclusion)
|
| * use concrete examples instead of starting off abstract
|
| * write well
|
| Pretty underwhelming list tbh. There are many more small tips I'd
| personally include. But, what this does have is still agreeable.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Like many blog posts, it's a "good start" rather than a full
| exposition.
| foxthatruns wrote:
| This is pretty much the same philosophy behind writing effective
| peer-reviewed research publications in the scientific community.
| Not novel, but an excellent short and sweet post to put beginners
| in the right mindset.
| williamkuszmaul wrote:
| I like this post. I think it has an important overarching lesson,
| which is that when you're explaining something that's
| complicated, it's critical that the structure of the exposition
| itself is straightforward, that way there's only one complicated
| thing in the room.
|
| One concrete takeaway for me is: I often lead with the history of
| a problem in order to give it some gravitas, but maybe I'll try
| the advice of swapping the order up, and starting with the
| concrete thing of what it is we're going to accomplish.
| historynops wrote:
| 100% the right takeaway. Even if it's just a couple of
| sentences of encapsulating "what I'm going to talk about", that
| should always come before starting into a long backstory.
|
| I read a lot of blogs that make that mistake of starting off a
| post by droning on for paragraphs about the background,
| history, or context they want to set for the blog -- but I need
| to know why I'm here in the first place. The title got my
| attention, but it still doesn't totally tell me what I'll get
| out of this.
|
| A 'history of a problem' section also has to try and be concise
| and use really engaging language (it's hard) otherwise those
| background intros can feel like a chore to read and people will
| leave.
| historynops wrote:
| The advice is obvious to people who do a lot of blogging, but
| there's always someone learning who needs a resource like this to
| help them build their foundation.
| teddyh wrote:
| Explaining things is not that hard, and if you're bad at it, you
| can get better with practice and by learning a few tricks. But
| explaining is _mostly useless_ in the real world. What will get
| you ahead is, instead, the ability to be _convincing_. That is,
| to pry people loose from their existing beliefs, and nudge them
| to adopt beliefs of your choosing. This, perhaps surprisingly,
| does _not_ involve explaining your beliefs and hoping other
| people see the error of their ways. People don't work like that.
|
| Also, the three-step structure he advocates is a bad idea, as
| described here (IIRC):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM
| lootsauce wrote:
| Thanks for sharing the link, best thing I have seen on
| effective writing, ever.
| vicda wrote:
| Your claim that explaining is mostly useless is a bafflingly
| terrible take. The video you linked is a well known video of
| someone explaining how to write well.
| teddyh wrote:
| The video also starts with, and continues throughout with,
| _convincing_ people why their current writing style is bad,
| and why a new style is better.
| bloak wrote:
| I for one am not going to watch a video on effective writing!
| historynops wrote:
| > What will get you ahead is, instead, the ability to be
| convincing. That is, to pry people loose from their existing
| beliefs, and nudge them to adopt beliefs of your choosing.
| This, perhaps surprisingly, does not involve explaining your
| beliefs and hoping other people see the error of their ways.
| People don't work like that.
|
| Can you give an example of writing that does this? Is it more
| about making declarations (with sources I hope) to nudge the
| reader to your beliefs? I'm not sure how you convince
| intelligent people without some explanations.
| mathnmusic wrote:
| I find that unconvincing. Great explanations are usually also
| great at convincing me.
| teddyh wrote:
| You probably did not have any significant preexisting
| opinions about those subjects, then. When people already have
| an opinion about something, a mere _explanation_ of a
| contrarian viewpoint will mostly accomplish nothing.
|
| Of course, you might be the great exception, a perfectly
| reasoning actor, which we hear so much about in thought
| experiments.
| vaylian wrote:
| I think some people (like you) have opens minds, because they
| have realized that there is no point in insisting on wrong
| things, especially when those wrong things lead us to make
| wrong decisions.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Consider that not all communication is about "getting ahead".
|
| Also no, explaining things well is very difficult. Otherwise
| there wouldn't be so much bad explanatory writing out there. If
| you think it's easy, then you are either naturally skilled at
| it, or you are actually bad at it and don't realize.
| bubblethink wrote:
| >Consider that not all communication is about "getting
| ahead".
|
| But you don't need to follow any advice if you do not seek to
| get ahead (i.e., better) in some sense. So, that doesn't make
| sense as a counterargument. OP's point is that you can become
| better at explaining, but that on its own does not add value.
| This is quite evident in scientific writing. Plenty of well-
| written papers are rejected if they do not provide sufficient
| value.
| siddboots wrote:
| You're implying that the only possible goal is to "get
| ahead", which is not true. There are clearly other goals
| one can have in writing and in life.
| axus wrote:
| https://blog.codinghorror.com/but-you-did-not-persuade-me/
| nerdponx wrote:
| One important thing missing is that "explaining things" requires
| empathizing with your audience, and providing context that will
| be meaningful to that audience.
|
| For example, think this is kind of missing the point:
|
| > Simply tell people you're going to teach them how to wash their
| clothes.
|
| That recommendation will be valid for _some_ audiences _some_ of
| the time.
|
| Some people _want_ to read about the history of fabric softeners.
| Some people won 't understand why washing clothes is important
| and need to have the "why" before their ape brains can focus on
| the "how". Some people are just there because they have to be
| there and are going to be hard to reach, and you might have to
| get creative in order to make the material seem relevant to them.
| Explaining things is not a one-size-fits-all process.
|
| People seem to need some kind of personal connection to the
| content, and some motivation to care about it, before they can
| understand it. That's the point of getting readers "hooked", as
| the author says. But the mechanisms for "hooking" will
| necessarily vary depending on who the reader is.
|
| People also need to make relatively _small_ logical connections.
| The process of learning and understanding is generally
| incremental. Once in a while, when learning something, the
| learner has a flash of great understanding, but those moments are
| rare relative to learning one small fact at a time. And usually
| those great moments of understanding only happen when the learner
| first accumulates many many small bits of understanding first.
|
| A learner who is personally connected to the material they are
| learning will have an easier time transitioning into learning it,
| because the subject is smaller smaller leap away from what they
| already know/understand.
|
| Therefore the author I think has the right idea and clearly has a
| reliable formula, but they don't understand why their own formula
| works!
|
| The author has found that telling stories is a great way to get
| people interested in the material. That's not because stories are
| a magic explanation bullet. It's because, for the audience that
| they generally write for, stories are a great way to provide
| context and a basis of intuition for the material. Having context
| and the basis of intuition brings the audiences closer to
| understanding the material, which eases the transition into the
| more technical or complicated parts of the explanation.
|
| So yes, most people respond well to stories. But figuring out
| what story to tell it can be challenging.
|
| To explain something truly well, you need to know the motivations
| and and pre-existing knowledge of your audience. You need to
| bring your material to where the audience is at, or at least make
| a connection from your material to there.
|
| I think there are a lot of other small aspects here as well,
| having to do with the way individual small pieces of information
| or structured, how to build ideas, when to challenge the learner
| and when to assist them, etc. but I've already written way too
| much in this post.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| This.
|
| If you can't get into the heads of those you are communicating
| with, you will mostly fail in your writing objectives. And this
| isn't simply what they are thinking now; it's meta-thinking and
| meta-meta-thinking as well as the environment (with resources
| available, rules and limitations, etc.) in which they
| information will be used.
| rendall wrote:
| I really wish people would stop recommending _Elements of Style_
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| What do you not like about this book? Would you have better
| recommendations?
| truly wrote:
| I believe that the most important thing is to put yourself in the
| shoes of your audience.
|
| There is, unfortunately, no single best explanation for all
| audiences.
|
| It all depends on the expertise, experience, level of
| English/other language of the audience.
|
| For example, when teaching programming to students who have a
| solid background in math, it is quite easy to teach functions and
| recursion in an abstract manner. Students familiar with the
| Cartesian plane will find it nice to get started programming by
| doing graphics programming.
| pesfandiar wrote:
| Great post. It has anything from low-level mechanical to high-
| level styling tips. There's another major factor that sometimes
| separates good and bad explanatory writing for me, and that's
| overcoming author's own "curse of knowledge"[1]. If author is
| fully aware of what's likely unknown to the reader and controls
| the flow of information explaining the unknowns one at a time,
| the article becomes a lot more digestible.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge
| token6053 wrote:
| While I do believe that explanatory writing has its place in the
| world, I think it's too easy for people to make the mental jump
| that the better they are at explaining something, the more it
| will resonate with the audience they're speaking to.
|
| At the end of the day, humans are emotional beings first and
| thinking beings second. Explanatory writing speaks to the latter.
| Meanwhile stories connect with our basest programming, thanks to
| the ability to evoke emotion (when written well, of course).
|
| If writing to persuade: yes, the writing needs to be clear and
| succinctly relay information. But most importantly, it needs to
| speak to our deepest emotions and desires. When an audience is
| made to _feel_ differently, they think differently too.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Pretty good exposition of the classic essay / sandwich style.
| I've learned that there probably isn't any new advice to help
| people write, but the opportunity is in teaching them how to
| edit. Nobody writes well, only more or less based on the quality
| of their thinking. The difference is in how well we edit.
| ctrlp wrote:
| The divisions between expository, persuasive, argumentative, etc,
| essay styles tend to blend together when done well.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| True but so many can't do any of these!
|
| I'm OK with that up to a point because those who can have
| advantages over those who can't. I'm an engineer who writes
| well (mother was a PhD in English - could not escape it).
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Not bad, but it's fairly standard advice. Basically, anyone that
| has written a scientific paper or pitch proposal has done this
| kind of thing.
|
| I like to inject humor and write in the vernacular[0]. Doesn't
| always win me friends, but folks seem to like it, for the most
| part.
|
| I'm not big on "hard and fast rules." I find things like passive
| voice can actually be the best thing, in places.
|
| [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/
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