[HN Gopher] Writing Is Magic
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Writing Is Magic
Author : AliCollins
Score : 89 points
Date : 2022-12-08 09:44 UTC (13 hours ago)
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| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| I'm always conflicted about long-form writing. Particularly when
| dealing with senior management and executives, the "wall of text"
| is a great way to ensure no one actually reads what you have to
| say (edit: unless, like the OP, you work at Amazon where Bezos
| established the notion of the 6-pager).
|
| In those circumstances I tend to opt for inverted pyramid
| writing, in the hopes that the skimmers will get the gist and
| folks who really care for the details will get what they need.
|
| But it's a tough balance, which is why it's critical to a) know
| your audience and b) have a clear understanding of what you're
| expecting when you're communicating. Are you sharing information?
| Communicating a decision? Seeking feedback or approval? All of
| those may require flexing into a different style to be most
| effective, particularly when taking audience into account.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| What I would often do was write a result or impact sentence or
| two, a summary of no more than three bullet points, and a
| summary of how or where to follow up. Someone who is in 8 hours
| of meetings a day and receives 200+ emails a day isn't going to
| read anything longer.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I studied journalism in college, and wrote a great deal in the
| (now archaic, maybe?) style of the inverted pyramid, and
| learned about writing a great lead.
|
| An interesting thing I read about writing recently is the
| enormous difference between writing as if you are speaking to
| yourself, as juveniles typically do in school when they are
| asked to write a 300-word essay, and writing with an audience
| and goal in mind, which is everything in business writing.
|
| You last paragraph succinctly states the technique.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| I find that the process of writing text is similar to writing
| code.
|
| You can't just keep piling lines upon lines, at some point you
| have to stop, re-read everything you've wrote, refactor it,
| make it simpler, more concise, remove the outdated text/code,
| etc. etc.
|
| Documentation should always have one global "root" document,
| which contains links to everything else, and the documentation
| graph should be regularly reviewed and pruned.
| runevault wrote:
| An option if you don't wanna write the main document as a
| pyramid is to write a brief version as an email/DM/What have
| you but include a link saying for anyone who wants the in depth
| version it is available for you to read. That way you can
| structure the document in the way people who expressly want it
| will find it useful (which might still be pyramid but you
| aren't constrained to it) while giving the original person what
| they might need in the shorter form.
| AliCollins wrote:
| This is where a short abstract or executive summary upfront
| can make all the difference. If the main points are
| summarized, they will (hopefully) be read; the rest of the
| document, no matter the format, can then be read for context
| or with references from summary.
| kashyapc wrote:
| Yes, that "wall of text" is a _real_ problem, especially by
| those who don 't realize that "everyone is in a hurry" almost
| all the time. I solve it by first adding a top-level "executive
| summary" with all the critical information, followed by a
| "Details" section with nicely formatted lists with _fully-
| dressed_ sentences.
|
| And definitely check out the book _" Style: Towards Clarity and
| Grace"_ by Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb (there are
| several editions of this; but any earlier edition would do; I
| have the 10th edition). I wrote a bit more about it here[1] in
| the past.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24272968
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Addressing a counterargument in your writing is also extremely
| useful, and often the hallmark of very convincing writing. You
| don't need to address every counterargument, but addressing the
| strongest counterargument to whatever you are proposing or
| saying is a very powerful rhetorical move that communicates
| "mastery" of the subject matter, as well as introduces a dash
| of humility and shelters the writing from the accusation of
| pure opinion.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| I agree a wall of text will often not be read. But I think
| often the problem is with the author for having written it in
| the first place, rather than the reader for not being bothered.
| It's like that famous Pascal quote, "if I had more time, this
| letter would be shorter".
|
| One part of that is about redundancy and verbosity: with some
| effort it's usually possible to say the same thing with a lot
| less text.
|
| The other part, as you say, is about knowing your audience: an
| executive didn't read your massive email because they genuinely
| don't need to. If you can pick out the few bits of information
| that they actually need to know then that's better for
| everyone.
| jerf wrote:
| At this point, I explicitly call my "second draft" a "word
| removal pass". That's most of what happens. If I were ever to
| write fiction, I'd also write myself a text editor customized
| to some of my own bad habits, like, it would syntax-highlight
| all adverbs. I use them a lot in first draft writing but most
| of them should be removed.
|
| As a sibling to your comment says, I have often unashamedly
| included an "executive summary". They seem to appreciate it.
| I also rather frequently pull them off the email chain when
| I'm diving into technical details, unless they explicitly ask
| to stay up-to-date on the entire chain. Then, if I want to
| re-update them, I'll add them back in, so they get the whole
| chain in one shot if they really want to dig and I'm not
| "hiding" anything, but they still get their summary.
|
| Upshot, don't be scared to put "executive summaries" in. It's
| not sarcasm and it's not a joke.
| devd00d wrote:
| Hey! South Africa made it to hacker news! Nice!
| pkoird wrote:
| I feel that the author adequately explained why writing is
| _important_ but never quite justified why it is _magical_. I was
| hoping to read more about how writing is essentially a hypnosis
| spell where you use runes to make the readers hallucinate (which
| is what fiction & fantasy essentially do).
| Biologist123 wrote:
| If you have a moment to elaborate please do!
| pkoird wrote:
| So people (unless they have aphantasia) immerse themselves in
| whatever they are reading and conjure up imaginations of the
| world that the fictional novel is portraying, right? If you
| think about it, what people read is essentially symbols of
| certain optical structure and you could argue that runes (in
| the traditional sense) are not much different as well! So
| yeah, writing can comfortably be thought of just runes that
| makes people hallucinate.
| Biologist123 wrote:
| It's certainly an enchanting explanation. Of course some
| act on those hallucinations as if they were spellbound -
| and the Capitol riots had a definite feel of tweet-induced
| chaos. Interesting idea.
| phonescreen_man wrote:
| That's why they call it spelling
| fancybouncy wrote:
| took me a while to understand, then it clicked and I was left
| writ(h)ing...
| oofnik wrote:
| This is good advice for clarifying your own thoughts, but your
| ability to communicate effectively through writing is very
| dependent on whether or not your team is composed of readers.
|
| I personally enjoy writing design documents and feel that they
| help me organize and systematize my thinking in a way that few
| other tools can. My coworkers don't share this view, however, so
| I usually end up writing for an audience of one.
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