
Writing Tips from 6 All-time Great Writers - pramit
http://bighow.com/news/the-art-of-great-writing-60-writing-tips-from-6-alltime-great-writers
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xtho
What is interesting about such lists of N writing tips is the total lack of
theory of fiction or narration. It like explaining people how to write
software by listing formatting rules/code conventions.

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arethuza
Careful, that will start a claim that engineers are better at writing fiction
than anyone else ;-)

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stcredzero
Undoubtedly, there exists some engineer who believes that they are as good or
better writer than anyone.

I was just viewing at Max Raabe's take on "Oops, I did it again" on YouTube
and realized that the song follows to T all of these writer's advice to, "Keep
it short and to the point." In just a few repeated sentences, she manages to
dramatize a relatable scene of romantic misunderstanding, while characterizing
both a femme fatale and earnest friend-turned lover. It's really minimal.
(Richard Thompson's "2000 years of popular music" spiel includes his awesome
cover of the same song.)

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ErrantX
Vonnegut used such delicious metaphors (from the article):

 _Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the
world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia._

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hernan7
For more top-10-list writing advice goodness, see also:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-
wr...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-
fiction-part-one)

And the ur-text of all writing how-to's: Lester Dent's master plot formula for
pulp fiction (Dent was the author of the Doc Savage pulp novels):

[http://thelastreveal.blogspot.com/2010/02/lester-dents-
maste...](http://thelastreveal.blogspot.com/2010/02/lester-dents-master-plot-
formula.html)

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jasonlotito
"Omit <del>Needless</del> Words"

William Zinsser, _On Writing Well_

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jpd
I've never understood that quote as I believe it removes a necessary word.
"Needless" describes the type of word to delete. Without it, isn't William
Zinsser suggesting we should omit random words?

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gloob
Without an explicit predicate, I would guess that the implicit predicate would
default to either "true" or "false" rather than "at random". If it defaulted
to "false", then the imperative conjugation would make no bloody sense at all
(i.e. "eat up" would parse into "don't eat anything"), so I think he's saying
you shouldn't write anything.

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jpd
I disagree, I find "omit all words" to make as little sense as "omit no
words". Personally, I find it more likely to default to "omit some words".
This, of course, does not describe the type of words we should be omitting,
but rather that there exist words that we should omit. Saying "omit needless
words" does describe the type, adding more information which is not there
otherwise, making it a "needed" word.

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zeynel1
"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other
people."

The ability to put writing in one of the standard forms, novel, story, etc,
seems important too.

