One useful first step in becoming a better writer - in particular if your subject is complex - is to to delete your Twitter account and never look at another Twitter thread. Character limits kill creativity and complexity.
The presentation does leave out one very necessary requirement for becoming a good-to-great writer: you have to do a lot of reading. If you're going to write about a complex scientific or technical subject, you should have some examples in mind of great texts that you've read. What did other writers do that you liked or that stuck with you? Equally true, what are some really bad examples, some things to avoid?
For example, here's what I think is an excellent popular history book, and if I ever wrote something with a historical bent, I'd flip though it first:
"By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia" by Barry Cunliffe
The point about Twitter is really this: you have to develop the skill of composing a paragraph as a coherent entity in order to become a decent writer, and Twitter doesn't allow for paragraphs, just sentences (and short ones at that). Paragraphs should have an internal cohesion to help the reader absorb the concept being presented. Once you have that, you can start chaining paragraphs together, reordering the sequence of paragraphs, with the goal of constructing a path that the reader can follow through the whole essay or chapter. Getting the order right is important for complex topics, as point D might rely on a good understanding of points A and B, and so on. Your goal should be to make the reader feel smart.
Of course that's just advice for non-fiction writing; if you're doing fiction or poetry basically anything goes. The public might like it or hate it, but the literary critics can safely be ignored.
On the contrary, a person skilled at Twitter could have compressed the essence of what you wrote into 280 characters.
I’ve found the best books and essays are similarly compressible, with the rest of the information being about bolstering it as being worthy of the precious few slots in your L1 cache.
The essence, perhaps... with none of the nuance or shading. If one thinks that is unnecessary, dispensable fluff, Twitter is no doubt sufficient for most writing.
And a rhyming dictionary contains all poetry in many fewer pages.
Yep, I do remember the many problems Twitter solved. Without Twitter, we would be centuries away from enlightened world peace and mutual understanding.
I explicitly said that it’s necessary, but generally it’s not for the primary purpose of encoding the core point one is trying to make. Nuance to me is more about convincing the unpersuaded reader the idea has merit and is important or useful. Which is why Twitter allows reasonable idea propagation but does a terrible job of persuading people who disagree.
Given the nature and quality of replies I’ve seen even on HN — where there are no such character limits and the level of education its members have is higher on average — it seems to me that trust has yet to be earned.
I agree: Twitter forces you to be succinct, a useful skill when writing an Executive Summary for a business paper or an Abstract for a paper in a scientific journal.
Limitations and bounds generally allow me to explore a smaller creative space without tangents. I think this is a generally accepted trope in creative domains.
There's also the fact that a swath of the world stopped reading after high school. If accessibility and reach are a goal of a piece of writing, Twitter sort of forces a writer to compress an idea and move on.
Who knows how many people I lost even with just this short comment. I guess it's about end goals.
Twitter is an extreme example, but in general, learning to cut concepts down to the bone and write in short succinct sentences is a super useful skill to make your writing more comprehensible. For example:
Twitter is an extreme example. In general, however, it is important to learn to cut concepts down to the bone. Writing in short succinct sentences is a super useful skill. It improves your writing and makes it more comprehensible.
I disagree: I follow research scientists and software developers in topics of my interest. This way, Twitter feed keeps me up-to-date on useful information in topics I care for and I can exchange news and ideas with those people.
Twitter has a lot in common with writing poetry. I think it can be a good practice, depending on one’s goals. But I agree with your general point about reading a lot. I think it’s important to read a lot of different styles/genres: fiction, academic writing, journalism, old stuff, new stuff, translations, great literature in various languages, ad copy, so on. Most good writing is about conforming/mimicry and being especially considerate of the reader. Exceptional writing is a different thing. A lot of bad writing comes from regular people trying to write exceptionally. It’s hard to learn to write dumber, but thankfully the internet lets us all practice a bunch. Whether we like it or not, most people prefer Stephen king to Henry James or Proust.
Many famous old books (bhagavatgita, etc.) look like a long list of tweets. Each "tweet" is well thought out and has multiple layers of meanings. Such books often have companion books with commentary, where each "tweet" is explained in many paragraphs of text. Those commentaries are written by very knowledgeable and respected people, who are, nevertheless, aren't wise enough (yet) to write those condensed "tweets".
> The presentation does leave out one very necessary requirement for becoming a good-to-great writer: you have to do a lot of reading.
I strongly agree. Based on my experience in my first profession, teaching school children throughout my 20s, I’d say that doing a lot of reading is more important than everything on these slides combined.
> Twitter doesn't allow for paragraphs, just sentences (and short ones at that). Paragraphs should have an internal cohesion to help the reader absorb the concept being presented. Once you have that, you can start chaining paragraphs together, reordering the sequence of paragraphs, with the goal of constructing a path that the reader can follow through the whole essay or chapter. Getting the order right is important for complex topics, as point D might rely on a good understanding of points A and B, and so on. Your goal should be to make the reader feel smart.
You are describing 'tweet threads' (formerly 'tweetstorms'). They are a popular format for long-form writing on Twitter.
The presentation does leave out one very necessary requirement for becoming a good-to-great writer: you have to do a lot of reading. If you're going to write about a complex scientific or technical subject, you should have some examples in mind of great texts that you've read. What did other writers do that you liked or that stuck with you? Equally true, what are some really bad examples, some things to avoid?
For example, here's what I think is an excellent popular history book, and if I ever wrote something with a historical bent, I'd flip though it first: "By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia" by Barry Cunliffe
https://www.amazon.com/Steppe-Desert-Ocean-Birth-Eurasia/dp/...
The point about Twitter is really this: you have to develop the skill of composing a paragraph as a coherent entity in order to become a decent writer, and Twitter doesn't allow for paragraphs, just sentences (and short ones at that). Paragraphs should have an internal cohesion to help the reader absorb the concept being presented. Once you have that, you can start chaining paragraphs together, reordering the sequence of paragraphs, with the goal of constructing a path that the reader can follow through the whole essay or chapter. Getting the order right is important for complex topics, as point D might rely on a good understanding of points A and B, and so on. Your goal should be to make the reader feel smart.
Of course that's just advice for non-fiction writing; if you're doing fiction or poetry basically anything goes. The public might like it or hate it, but the literary critics can safely be ignored.