Editing, Cutting, Winning

Re-writing to get from good to great

This week I’m going to write a few posts about writing. Writing is awesome. I’ve been editing my writing and other people’s writing almost every day for a year. 

Here’s what I look for when I edit:

1. Passive voice 

2. Run on sentences 

3. Telling people what to do

4. Unnatural phrasing 

5. Me getting bored

6. “You” frame 

7. Changing between “I” and “you” frames 

8. Changing verb tenses

9. Opportunities to go deeper

10. Things that are actually interesting 

11. Things that make me laugh or smile. (Comedy gets at truth)

12. Extraneous words

13. Unnecessary repetition

14. Nonflow. Flow is fundamental.

15. Words people don’t know

16. Extraneous sentences. Either the sentence is a banger, or it tees up a banger or both

Questions I ask:

• Is this sentence/paragraph useful or entertaining?

• Does it ring true?

• Do people know what these words mean?

• Do I want to keep reading? If I stop reading or skip ahead then that section should be reworked or cut. 

Nobody taught me this. I’m sensitive to words. I tune into my body. When I read something shitty, it hurts. A shit sentence is like poop on Mona Lisa’s face. It hurts my spine.

Writing Principles

Elon Musk once said something like, if you’re not adding stuff back, you didn’t remove enough. He was talking about manufacturing, but it also applies to making great writing. 

Paul Millerd wrote How I Write. I love that he highlights the key differentiator between good writing and writing that sells: re-writing. Paul’s book sold 45k copies in two years.

Most of my book writing was re-writing things I had written before but far, far better than the original. This Quora post from Venkatesh Rao nails it in terms of the value of rewriting:

The HUGE difference between everyday writing that everybody does and serious writing is the proportion that is re-writing. I’d estimate that for non-writers, rewriting accounts for maybe 10-20% of their writing. For serious writers, it accounts for anywhere between 50-90% depending on how critical the particular piece is.

The more I re-write, the more I cut. And the more I cut, the better it gets.

I wrote a stream-of-consciousness AGI apocalypse story in my iPhone notes. Then I re-wrote it in Google Docs. Months later, I re-wrote it again. I recruited internet people to give feedback. I paid a pro editor to help. The final doc has hundreds of comments from six people.

This story got me my first paid subscriber. To take your writing seriously, focus on re-writing. 

Scribe Media put out a comprehensive piece on how to write a book that sells. Here are my favorite three points:

1. Make it short.

This is the most important principle. If you get this one right, the rest (usually) take care of themselves.

Keep your writing short on all levels. Short chapters (usually no more than 4k words). Short paragraphs (2-3 sentences). Short sentences (5-20 words). Even shorter words (less than 12 characters).

Brevity forces economy and effectiveness. When you put a space constraint on your writing, it compels you to focus on the essential and cut the rest.

One key point: make it as short as possible without leaving anything out. Short does not mean missing essential content.

2. Make it simple.

Simple is very similar to short, but not the same thing. You can write something that’s short but complex. That doesn’t work well.

Simple words and sentences force you to write in plain English. Even difficult and complex ideas can be broken down into small words and short sentences. As Richard Feynman said, if you cannot explain your idea simply, it probably means you don’t fully understand it (which is bad, if you’re writing a book).

3. Make it direct.

Most non-fiction writing is indirect in some way—passive voice, jargon, multiple clauses, heavy use of adjectives and adverbs.

Don’t do these things. If you’re doing them, stop.

I agree. Short sentences. Short paragraphs. This is how we talk. Paul Graham, one of my favorite essayists, says “Write Like You Talk.” Fortunately for me, I talk in my head all day long. Short sentences hit. Varying sentence length makes writing musical. 

Paul Millerd writes,

I love the people that read my stuff. I’m writing for them. It’s enough.

People don’t realize that if you are writing for a mass audience you are also hanging out with a mass audience.

That doesn’t sound fun.

I write for the hyper-curious weirdos.

Those are the people I like hanging out with.

The sentences and paragraphs cannot be any shorter. I love it.

I’m reminded of the quote, “If I had more time, I would’ve written less.”

Taste

I don’t know how to cultivate taste. I don’t know how an uncool person becomes cool. I’ve always been cool. Confidence, I suppose. I don’t know how I’m funny. I don’t know how I can tell stories that people listen to. I watched my father do both.

I’m a tough crowd. I try to make myself laugh. It’s not easy. If I laugh, then chances are others will too. Especially if they have the same context as me. The first time that I ever did standup comedy in public, I got on stage and made a few people laugh. It’s hard to overstate how difficult that is. My thought machine never stops. And I have high fucking standards. 

If you’re like me then it’s important to live a healthy lifestyle that limits chemical, memetic, and emotional toxicity, because if the thought machine goes off the rails, it gets messy real quick. The intellect is a sword. When it turns on itself, it is brutal. 

That’s it - I’ve written enough.

Also from Scribe: How to fix passive voice.

Thanks for reading

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