Category: writing
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Login Is Not a Verb
We do not signup, login or checkout when we buy products online. We do not startup, shutdown or backup our computers. The reason: these words, primarily used in computing contexts, are not verbs. These are just some of the “bad bad verbs” featured on a site dedicated to “informing people about words that are not verbs, even though…
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Avoid Boring Writing: Tips (to Avoid) from Scientific Articles
Most scientific papers consist of “predictable, stilted structure and language”, leading to consistently boring journal articles. Kaj Sand-Jensen, writing in the ecology journal Oikos, decided to investigate this problem and concluded his research by providing a set of recommendations for how to write consistently boring scientific articles (pdf): Avoid focus Avoid originality and personality Write…
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Psychic Numbing and Communicating on Risk and Tragedies
I’ve been preoccupied lately with the developing aftermath of the Tōhoku earthquake. Unlike other disasters on a similar or greater scale, I’m finding it easier to grasp the real human cost of the disaster in Japan as my brother lives in Kanagawa Prefecture and therefore there are less levels of abstraction between me and those directly…
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How We Read
What we know about how we learn to read and how our ability to read developed is fascinating, and in a review of a book that looks at exactly this — Stanislas Dehaene’s Reading in the Brain — Jonah Lehrer offers us a wonderful teaser on exactly that: the hows of reading, from a neuroscience perspective. The introduction:…
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The Basic Plots of All Stories
That there are a finite number of basic plots from which all other stories are formed is accepted as fact by many literary theorists: Georges Polti, for instance, believes that there are thirty-six dramatic situations, while Ronald Tobias believes there to be only twenty. The Internet Public Library has compiled together the most commonly accepted lists…
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
The First Law of Fanfiction states that every change which strengthens the protagonists requires a corresponding worsening of their challenges. […] stories are about conflict; a hero too strong for their conflict is no longer in tense, heart-pounding difficulty. […] The Rationalist Fanfiction Principle states that rationality is not magic; being rational does not require magical potential or royal bloodlines…
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Become Comfortable with Incompleteness: Writing Tips from Rands
“Don’t write a book” is the first piece of advice Michael Lopp offers us in a post chronicling his writing process. Lopp–an engineering manager at Apple, author of Being Geek and Managing Humans, and more commonly known as Rands–details his tools and methods for writing a book and, as always, his advice is applicable to…
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Six Principles of ‘Sticky’ Ideas
In an excerpt from Made to Stick, brothers Dan and Chip Heath provide an outline of the six principles of creating ‘sticky’ ideas: Simplicity: “We must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. […] Proverbs are the ideal. We must create ideas that are both simple and profound. The Golden Rule is the ultimate…
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Ira Glass on Being Wrong and Manufacturing Inspiration
Discussing how many great stories “hinge on people being wrong”, Kathryn Schulz interviews This American Life host Ira Glass on the benefits of being wrong. I feel like being wrong is really important to doing decent work. To do any kind of creative work well, you have to run at stuff knowing that it’s usually…