[HN Gopher] Handbook for Writers (2015)
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Handbook for Writers (2015)
Author : bhy
Score : 104 points
Date : 2022-09-12 12:19 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (saylordotorg.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (saylordotorg.github.io)
| isaacfrond wrote:
| For eReaders, here is the book as an integral pdf
|
| https://2012books.lardbucket.org/pdfs/writers-handbook.pdf
| jmt_ wrote:
| What's meant by "integral" in this context?
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| > _integral: 2. Possessing everything essential; entire._
|
| one PDF with everything in it as opposed to, say, one file
| (or webpage) per chapter
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Handbook for _non-fiction_ writers. :)
|
| If you're writing a novel, a lot of this doesn't directly apply.
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| Really, a lot of bad fiction writing could be fixed if writers
| were more aware of fundamentals like these. Of course there is
| art that goes into writing a novel, but there's a lot of craft,
| too. "Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively"
| is a saying I had always attributed to jazz musicians, but the
| interweb seems to think it was the Dalai Lama who said it.
| Either way, it applies to almost every field I can think of.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I happen to agree. For example, the sections on grammar are
| directly applicable.
|
| However, if you're going to write fiction, you'll need to
| unlearn a good half of it because you learned tools and
| techniques designed for a different medium.
|
| It's like skis vs snowshoes. Sure, there's common stuff to
| them (like dressing in layers) but snowshoes don't slide very
| well. :)
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| I think there's are a lot more crossover than that. The
| thing that needs to be almost universally unlearnt when
| switching mediums is academic writing. Writing fiction and
| non-fiction for a general audience, most of the same rules
| apply.
|
| Of course it all depends on what you call good writing. For
| me the best writing to come out of the 20th century were
| journalists like Hemingway (and about 1% of his
| imitators/peers) who applied the rules of journalism to
| fiction and the "new journalists" who applied the
| techniques of novel writing to journalism (and then in
| Wolfe's case went back the other way).
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I'm specially referring genre fiction, which isn't quite
| up to the academic standards of Hemingway. :)
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| Dunno what genre fiction is really, but a quick search
| tells me it's popular or bestsellers? Which is kind of
| funny because that's what Hemmingway would have been back
| in the day - really to me the opposite of academic style.
| Short sentences, no fancy words, no extraneous waffle
| just to show you how clever he is. It's kind of ironic
| that he's seen as this inaccessible literary giant when
| pretty much the hallmark of his style is its
| accessibility.
| solidist wrote:
| Can someone provide the important cliff notes?
| fifticon wrote:
| It's the opposite, it's all those little details and an
| overview of what goes into writing a proper book (and other
| things). It is a collection of all that which you may not know
| when first starting out. It is not everything, but it is a good
| starting point
| dljsjr wrote:
| Clicking on "Licensing Information" and drilling down a few more
| links gets to the meat of what this is[1] (TL;DR: It's an archive
| of a Creative Commons licensed edition of an undergrad college
| text book. For those wondering who the target audience is:
| undergrads):
|
| > What is this?
|
| > First off, this is not the website for the original publisher.
| Instead, this is the archive of a small project by aschmitz to
| archive Creative Commons-licensed copies of all the books which
| were available online from a specific publisher at the end of
| 2012. (That publisher has asked to remain unnamed here. For more
| information, see the attribution page.)
|
| > That publisher is a textbook publisher, focusing on (mostly
| entry-level) college textbooks. From their beginning until the
| end of 2012, they licensed all of their books under a Creative
| Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license, allowing anyone who so desired to
| copy them, give them away, or modify them, as long as they
| acknowledged the authors, released the copies under the same
| license, and didn't do so for commercial gain. This was an
| unusual model, but they hoped it would work. (They sold access to
| additional study materials, as well as copies of books that would
| fit well on e-readers.)
|
| > In late 2012, they decided that the process of giving away
| access to their textbooks online wasn't working, and decided to
| switch to a different model, requiring students to pay for access
| to the books starting in 2013. (At least initially, these fees
| ware rather cheap compared to normal textbook prices, but still
| not free.)
|
| > Because the books were still available under a Creative Commons
| license at the end of 2012, I downloaded them to have copies
| known to be available under a Creative Commons license. I then
| repackaged them so that they are available outside of the
| publisher's website, and can be used by anyone under the terms of
| their Creative Commons license.
|
| [1]: https://2012books.lardbucket.org
| shantnutiwari wrote:
| Not sure which "writer" this is targeted at? Looks like those
| doing academic research?
| asicsp wrote:
| There are chapters later on that focus on specific areas like:
| Academic/Public/Personal/Web/etc.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| This is an extremely useful compendium for those who-like me-do
| not consider themselves to be good with words.
|
| It has many excellent writing tips, examples of bad grammar
| usage, comparisons between poor and good usage including styles,
| lists of misspelled words, differences between UK and US spelling
| and much, much more.
|
| What makes it particularly useful as a reference is that it's
| organized in such a way that one can quickly look up a subject or
| topic whilst writing. The well organized and optimally detailed
| table of contents makes this possible. Just click on the relevant
| entry and one is linked to a well written section on said topic
| that can be read in isolation or as part of the complete work.
|
| Highly recommended.
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(page generated 2022-09-12 23:01 UTC)