7 ms·

“Sometimes I’ll start a sentence, and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way.” — Michael Scott, the first LLM.

vasco 2y ago
Most of my good thinking is done like this. Walking around the house talking out loud to myself about a topic without knowing where it's going. Over the years I've trained myself to try and speak more and more in this mode and I find it has good outcomes. It's not how it works but to myself I call it "putting my brain in analog mode". I also try to write like this for all my first passes. I also found it works for drawing, I will start drawing a random line and see where the hand takes me. I believe there's a term for art done in this way but I can't recall it now. I think Michael Scott was on to something.
- szundi 2y ago
  Stephen King does this with whole trilogies haha
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    This is actually a very practical way of creating stories - set up the stage and see what the characters go about doing. The writer needs to be aware of the larger stage in order to keep the reader interested in understanding what’s actually going on and why.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Lyngbakr 2y ago
      I remember Stephen King writing in his book On Writing that he once deviated from this approach (Maximum Overdrive, perhaps?) and it really didn't go well. At the time, I thought creating characters, a scenario, and setting and then seeing what happened was nuts, but it's essentially how D&D works (albeit in a group setting) and that's always fun.
- asimovfan 2y ago
  Cant do it in German.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
    You are getting -- I think -- reflexively downvoted, but I genuinely think you are onto something. German grammar has strict word order rules as opposed to say Polish, where syntax is much more permissive ( for that one aspect of it ). I wonder to what extent native language changes how brain functions over the course of one's life.
    - eru 2y ago
      Nah, spoken German can handle that just fine. Spoken German has different rules from written German (and, of course, people have quite a bit more tolerance for minor breaks of grammatical rules in ad-hoc spoken language anyway.) To give an example: a bog standard German sentence puts the verb in second place. Everything else is fairly flexible, eg you can either put object or subject first (unlike in written English, where the place of the subject is much more constrained). Now, when you have a subordinate clause, written German puts the finite at the end. Like "Barbara besuchte das Restaurant, weil sie Hunger hatte." In spoken German, you can get away with "Barbara besucht das Restaurant, weil.. sie hatte ja Hunger." Especially if you pause to think at the place marked by the two dots.
      - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
        > In spoken German, you can get away with "Barbara besucht das Restaurant, weil.. sie hatte ja Hunger." Especially if you pause to think at the place marked by the two dots. Native German speaker: When I hear such a wrong placing of the finite verb in a subclause, I immediately think that the respective speaker is either uneducated (when the person is a native speaker) or (if the person is a foreign speaker) had a really bad German teacher who did not correct this mistake. Thus: No, don't do this. Speak the sentence as you would write it.
        deleted 2y ago
- trainyperson 2y ago
  The term (I think) is “automatism”, popularized by Surrealists. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealist_automatism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealist_automatism

vasco 2y ago

Most of my good thinking is done like this. Walking around the house talking out loud to myself about a topic without knowing where it's going. Over the years I've trained myself to try and speak more and more in this mode and I find it has good outcomes. It's not how it works but to myself I call it "putting my brain in analog mode". I also try to write like this for all my first passes. I also found it works for drawing, I will start drawing a random line and see where the hand takes me. I believe there's a term for art done in this way but I can't recall it now. I think Michael Scott was on to something.

szundi 2y ago
Stephen King does this with whole trilogies haha
- rbanffy 2y ago
  This is actually a very practical way of creating stories - set up the stage and see what the characters go about doing. The writer needs to be aware of the larger stage in order to keep the reader interested in understanding what’s actually going on and why.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Lyngbakr 2y ago
    I remember Stephen King writing in his book On Writing that he once deviated from this approach (Maximum Overdrive, perhaps?) and it really didn't go well. At the time, I thought creating characters, a scenario, and setting and then seeing what happened was nuts, but it's essentially how D&D works (albeit in a group setting) and that's always fun.
asimovfan 2y ago
Cant do it in German.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
  You are getting -- I think -- reflexively downvoted, but I genuinely think you are onto something. German grammar has strict word order rules as opposed to say Polish, where syntax is much more permissive ( for that one aspect of it ). I wonder to what extent native language changes how brain functions over the course of one's life.
  - eru 2y ago
    Nah, spoken German can handle that just fine. Spoken German has different rules from written German (and, of course, people have quite a bit more tolerance for minor breaks of grammatical rules in ad-hoc spoken language anyway.) To give an example: a bog standard German sentence puts the verb in second place. Everything else is fairly flexible, eg you can either put object or subject first (unlike in written English, where the place of the subject is much more constrained). Now, when you have a subordinate clause, written German puts the finite at the end. Like "Barbara besuchte das Restaurant, weil sie Hunger hatte." In spoken German, you can get away with "Barbara besucht das Restaurant, weil.. sie hatte ja Hunger." Especially if you pause to think at the place marked by the two dots.
    - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
      > In spoken German, you can get away with "Barbara besucht das Restaurant, weil.. sie hatte ja Hunger." Especially if you pause to think at the place marked by the two dots. Native German speaker: When I hear such a wrong placing of the finite verb in a subclause, I immediately think that the respective speaker is either uneducated (when the person is a native speaker) or (if the person is a foreign speaker) had a really bad German teacher who did not correct this mistake. Thus: No, don't do this. Speak the sentence as you would write it.
      - deleted 2y ago
trainyperson 2y ago
The term (I think) is “automatism”, popularized by Surrealists. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealist_automatism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealist_automatism