outline
Great written thoughts have clear pathways. I block out the prominent points and fill out the details to create more cohesive ideas. I was an art major in college, and my painting classes taught me to block out colors, then fill in the details. The same applies to writing.
~ in essays, explain what you're up to right at the beginning
— Sarah Paine
~ 1 paragraph should represent 1 core idea
— 1981 📖 Style﹕ Lessons in Clarity and Grace
~ bad writing comes from refusing to go from Beginning to Middle to End
If he would inform, he must advance regularly from Things known to things unknown, distinctly without Confusion, and the lower he begins the better. It is a common Fault in Writers, to allow their Readers too much knowledge. They begin with that which should be the Middle, and skipping backwards and forwards, 'tis impossible for any one but he who is perfect in the Subject before, to understand their Work, and such an one has no Occasion to read it
— Ben Franklin, quoted in 📖 Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace
zero draft
Novelist Anne Lamott believes that every good writer writes what she calls shitty first drafts. “The only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts,” Lamott writes in Bird by Bird. Just get it down on paper, she recommends. Write like a child, whatever comes to your mind.
— Little Bets
~ make important actions verbs
— 📖 Style
> What are we to do with what we have written down﹖ Certainly, at first, we will produce mostly garbage.
— Luhmann
~ in essays, focus on the Crunch
- says that before the conclusion, there is paragraph 4, the crunch:
- pull out your best arguments, structure logic and judgement, be a courtroom
~ use emotion
~ results over thought process
most readers aren't interested in how you thought through it, they want to see the
— 1981 📖 Style﹕ Lessons in Clarity and Grace
~ actually jot down characters you intend to use.
— 📖 Style
~ don't write about topic, pose a problem
— 1981 📖 Style﹕ Lessons in Clarity and Grace
~ essay conclusion should add nothing new
~ prefer 'because' over 'and then'
‘You want all your scenes to have a “because” between them, and not an “and then”.’ Brains struggle with ‘and then’.
— 📖 The Science of Storytelling
> Write concisely. Preferably, not at all.
— Sigge Ågren
