15 ms·

To write non-fiction, draw the trunk, then the rest of the tree

114 points by DanielVZ 8d ago

mrosenbjerg 6d ago
it’s dead Jim
TaLiTr 6d ago
> “You should have failed this class. I’m going to make accommodations so that no student can pass next semester the same way you did.” > This is what my Ancient History II professor told me when my group and I got our final group project essay handed out. What a terrible, hack of a teacher. If you've ever said something like that to a student, quit your job. Those people are the reason academia is such a miserable experience for so many.
- DanielVZ 6d ago
  Yep. The main reason I didn't further pursue History academia was that it was too much of a monoculture with a bit of nepotism sparkled all over it. Not to discard everyone there of course; there were some awesome courses and faculty. But there's no way I was going to dedicate my life to such environment with so little in return for it.
- pessimizer 6d ago
  Nah, the teacher was just wrong about the facts. If they had been right about the facts, there's nothing wrong with saying that imo. The reality was that it was the partner who should have gotten that lecture rather than the author. So I'd say that you shouldn't say that if you're relying on your own feelings and impressions to judge facts not in evidence, because your instincts may be wrong. They may even be racist or sexist (i.e. something that the person you're maligning has to deal with constantly), instead of in this case when it was just a weakness for ass-kissers. Too many times somebody else got a good grade from my work. I don't begrudge them the grade because I don't care when other people get nice things for free (I love it when me or my friends get nice things for free), but they certainly had no knowledge in what had been taught in the class they just got a B in. > Those people are the reason academia is such a miserable experience for so many. School isn't a therapy session or entertainment. If it's a miserable experience and you come out smart, it's 1000x better than if its a wonderful experience and you come out dumb.
  - tikhonj 6d ago
    That's a big if. I've learned far more from settings and courses I enjoyed than from ones I hated. I expect the causation flowed in both directions, and there's no way I'm unique in that regard.
  - TaLiTr 6d ago
    > So I'd say that you shouldn't say that if you're relying on your own feelings and impressions to judge facts not in evidence, because your instincts may be wrong. That's exactly my point. That teacher didn't have any facts, they just decided someone was a slacker based on vibes and used that bias to single them out. And presumably would go on to add systems to allow them to persecute others they deem to be slackers. > School isn't a therapy session or entertainment. If it's a miserable experience and you come out smart, it's 1000x better than if its a wonderful experience and you come out dumb. As someone who gets told he's smart somewhat regularly by his peers, and had a school mandated therapist because they thought he was a suicide risk, I believe that's a statement that needs a citation. In any case they're not mutually exclusive, you can have an education system that works without grinding people down into lifelong anxiety disorders.
    - gowld 6d ago
      > And presumably would go on to add systems to allow them to persecute others they deem to be slackers. According to the story (which seemed to lack a "trunk"), the proposed system was individual essays.
      - tolerance 6d ago
        > The structure of this post is a bit of a miss for me. Sorry about that. I wanted to write a short post about writing non-fiction but it turned out to be a bit longer than expected and I need to get to work now. I hope you enjoyed it. It almost reads like the author climbed the tree to shake its branches and content himself with whatever dropped. Which in this case is fine by me.
        6d ago
- bsder 6d ago
  This is why when I taught in college I NEVER gave out group assignments. I'm not trying to test whether the best student knows the material; I'm trying to test whether all the students know the material. As the person who regularly carried such groups when I was in high school and college, I was especially sensitive to this.
thex10 6d ago
This format probably resonates with somebody. But I learned how to write outlines in school and that has worked for me.
firefoxd 6d ago
I like the trunk analogy, the branches can only grow so much before the tip the entire tree over. I usually use the example of a blue sky. Write that the sky is blue. That's it. Simple yet the temptations to paint the sky with clouds, trees, and emotions is hard to resist. Always come back to the writing, and endure that you clearly wrote that the sky is just blue.
horitechsolutio 6d ago
[dead]
navane 6d ago
The assignment was a shared essay? Written together? And then the prof was, oh no a free loader?
tolerance 6d ago
This is good blogging right here and sound advice for all writers on the web to follow. But I'm a little disappointed that one of those ink blot looking circles (preferably the big one on the left) did not lead back to the home page.
- DanielVZ 6d ago
  OHHH THAT'S SUCH A GOOD IDEA. I'm going to add some interactivity to the circles
  - jhartikainen 5d ago
    Yes please add an obvious method to go back to your homepage - I also attempted to click the circles to do that because there was no link or anything :) I was interested in checking out more of your writing and I had to change the URL to do that. Your site isn't the only with this "feature" that I've seen lately, not sure what's up with this pattern.
    - DanielVZ 5d ago
      I changed the '..' at the top with a '<-' to make it more noticeable. I also gave the dots some functionality :) thanks for the suggestion
_superposition_ 6d ago
This is great advice. I suck at writing, usually getting started is the hardest part. Appreciate the blazed trail.
HPsquared 6d ago
I start with section headers, then subheadings, then fill in the details.
maxiepoo 6d ago
Am I missing something or did the anecdote at the beginning have nothing to do with the rest?
- FLeXMurphy 6d ago
  No you are not missing anything. This is a more recent bait-and-switch method of writing articles. I'm not sure where it comes from but if I had to be extra pessimist, I'd say it is a trope among failed writers. Sometimes they use narrative devices that work best in novels, but they end up being applied to normal every-day articles and the result is something that seems out of place. Arguably if HN is to use LLMs to curate and administer submissions and comments (which it has been doing already), one would hope they can short-circuit this for all of us and scan the article/blog post, providing a summary directly underneath the submission/comment reply box. Reason being is, a lot of the time many paragraphs are spent belaboring one or two points that would best work in a tl;dr way and jump over these narrative passages, framings and backstories that serve very little to the points themselves.
  - Hbruz0 6d ago
    Well, isn't it related to writing ?
  - kevin_thibedeau 6d ago
    This is New Yorker style. Paint an elaborate scene and get to the point later on.
    - analog31 6d ago
      No. The New Yorker never gets to the point. — Long time subscriber.
  - delis-thumbs-7e 5d ago
    How should have the author written the article then for it to work better?
- hermanradtke 6d ago
tuberreact 6d ago
> "Knowledge has to be packed and unpacked. And in order to do that we increase and decrease the complexity in semantic waves. One key tool for packing is Nominalization, that helps the reader pack the knowledge they’ve received into a concept to be stored in memory. But if you only speak in tightly packed abstract concepts students get lost. And thus you drop down in abstraction and teach through examples, stories, images, that help students digest the contents." this is top tier writing. thanks for sharing
- arrowleaf 6d ago
  Really? While reading I couldn't help but think about how I wish this article on writing well were... written well. That block quote loses me in the first sentence, I had to re-read it a few times. "Good teaching requires alternating between two views, going up and down levels of detail. Sometimes you zoom out and give students one word for a big idea, calling a whole chain of events a "collapse." This 'Nomiinalization' lets them hold the idea in mind instead of the whole story. But summary words alone can lose students, the abstract loses meaning as details are forgotten. So you zoom back in with examples, stories, pictures, concrete cases. Those reinforce the idea of the summary word."
delis-thumbs-7e 5d ago
Problem with giving advice on writing is that quite often you end up going against your own advice in the very text you give that advice. But the main point stnds, you should indeed know what you want to say. Tell the audience what you are going to say, then say it, and tell them you said it. Few observations: 1) it says for noj-fiction, but I think the trunk analogy is even more prescient in fiction. The Invisible Ink by Brian McDonald basically just hammers on this over and over again: know what you want to say and say it. 2) the author does not say it directly, but it is obvious that he learned to write the right way: by reading. You must read to be able to write. Just going througha few writing manuals won’t do, you must go the woods to find trees kemosabe. Fell in love with an author. Read all types of texts. Good writing is good writing.
meisterfeister 4d ago
Pyramid principle

114 points by DanielVZ 8d ago

it’s dead Jim

> “You should have failed this class. I’m going to make accommodations so that no student can pass next semester the same way you did.” > This is what my Ancient History II professor told me when my group and I got our final group project essay handed out. What a terrible, hack of a teacher. If you've ever said something like that to a student, quit your job. Those people are the reason academia is such a miserable experience for so many.

DanielVZ 6d ago
Yep. The main reason I didn't further pursue History academia was that it was too much of a monoculture with a bit of nepotism sparkled all over it. Not to discard everyone there of course; there were some awesome courses and faculty. But there's no way I was going to dedicate my life to such environment with so little in return for it.
pessimizer 6d ago
Nah, the teacher was just wrong about the facts. If they had been right about the facts, there's nothing wrong with saying that imo. The reality was that it was the partner who should have gotten that lecture rather than the author. So I'd say that you shouldn't say that if you're relying on your own feelings and impressions to judge facts not in evidence, because your instincts may be wrong. They may even be racist or sexist (i.e. something that the person you're maligning has to deal with constantly), instead of in this case when it was just a weakness for ass-kissers. Too many times somebody else got a good grade from my work. I don't begrudge them the grade because I don't care when other people get nice things for free (I love it when me or my friends get nice things for free), but they certainly had no knowledge in what had been taught in the class they just got a B in. > Those people are the reason academia is such a miserable experience for so many. School isn't a therapy session or entertainment. If it's a miserable experience and you come out smart, it's 1000x better than if its a wonderful experience and you come out dumb.
- tikhonj 6d ago
  That's a big if. I've learned far more from settings and courses I enjoyed than from ones I hated. I expect the causation flowed in both directions, and there's no way I'm unique in that regard.
- TaLiTr 6d ago
  > So I'd say that you shouldn't say that if you're relying on your own feelings and impressions to judge facts not in evidence, because your instincts may be wrong. That's exactly my point. That teacher didn't have any facts, they just decided someone was a slacker based on vibes and used that bias to single them out. And presumably would go on to add systems to allow them to persecute others they deem to be slackers. > School isn't a therapy session or entertainment. If it's a miserable experience and you come out smart, it's 1000x better than if its a wonderful experience and you come out dumb. As someone who gets told he's smart somewhat regularly by his peers, and had a school mandated therapist because they thought he was a suicide risk, I believe that's a statement that needs a citation. In any case they're not mutually exclusive, you can have an education system that works without grinding people down into lifelong anxiety disorders.
  - gowld 6d ago
    > And presumably would go on to add systems to allow them to persecute others they deem to be slackers. According to the story (which seemed to lack a "trunk"), the proposed system was individual essays.
    - tolerance 6d ago
      > The structure of this post is a bit of a miss for me. Sorry about that. I wanted to write a short post about writing non-fiction but it turned out to be a bit longer than expected and I need to get to work now. I hope you enjoyed it. It almost reads like the author climbed the tree to shake its branches and content himself with whatever dropped. Which in this case is fine by me.
      - 6d ago
bsder 6d ago
This is why when I taught in college I NEVER gave out group assignments. I'm not trying to test whether the best student knows the material; I'm trying to test whether all the students know the material. As the person who regularly carried such groups when I was in high school and college, I was especially sensitive to this.

thex10 6d ago

This format probably resonates with somebody. But I learned how to write outlines in school and that has worked for me.

firefoxd 6d ago

I like the trunk analogy, the branches can only grow so much before the tip the entire tree over. I usually use the example of a blue sky. Write that the sky is blue. That's it. Simple yet the temptations to paint the sky with clouds, trees, and emotions is hard to resist. Always come back to the writing, and endure that you clearly wrote that the sky is just blue.

horitechsolutio 6d ago

[dead]

navane 6d ago

The assignment was a shared essay? Written together? And then the prof was, oh no a free loader?

tolerance 6d ago

This is good blogging right here and sound advice for all writers on the web to follow. But I'm a little disappointed that one of those ink blot looking circles (preferably the big one on the left) did not lead back to the home page.

DanielVZ 6d ago
OHHH THAT'S SUCH A GOOD IDEA. I'm going to add some interactivity to the circles
- jhartikainen 5d ago
  Yes please add an obvious method to go back to your homepage - I also attempted to click the circles to do that because there was no link or anything :) I was interested in checking out more of your writing and I had to change the URL to do that. Your site isn't the only with this "feature" that I've seen lately, not sure what's up with this pattern.
  - DanielVZ 5d ago
    I changed the '..' at the top with a '<-' to make it more noticeable. I also gave the dots some functionality :) thanks for the suggestion

_superposition_ 6d ago

This is great advice. I suck at writing, usually getting started is the hardest part. Appreciate the blazed trail.

HPsquared 6d ago

I start with section headers, then subheadings, then fill in the details.

maxiepoo 6d ago

Am I missing something or did the anecdote at the beginning have nothing to do with the rest?

FLeXMurphy 6d ago
No you are not missing anything. This is a more recent bait-and-switch method of writing articles. I'm not sure where it comes from but if I had to be extra pessimist, I'd say it is a trope among failed writers. Sometimes they use narrative devices that work best in novels, but they end up being applied to normal every-day articles and the result is something that seems out of place. Arguably if HN is to use LLMs to curate and administer submissions and comments (which it has been doing already), one would hope they can short-circuit this for all of us and scan the article/blog post, providing a summary directly underneath the submission/comment reply box. Reason being is, a lot of the time many paragraphs are spent belaboring one or two points that would best work in a tl;dr way and jump over these narrative passages, framings and backstories that serve very little to the points themselves.
- Hbruz0 6d ago
  Well, isn't it related to writing ?
- kevin_thibedeau 6d ago
  This is New Yorker style. Paint an elaborate scene and get to the point later on.
  - analog31 6d ago
    No. The New Yorker never gets to the point. — Long time subscriber.
- delis-thumbs-7e 5d ago
  How should have the author written the article then for it to work better?
hermanradtke 6d ago

tuberreact 6d ago

> "Knowledge has to be packed and unpacked. And in order to do that we increase and decrease the complexity in semantic waves. One key tool for packing is Nominalization, that helps the reader pack the knowledge they’ve received into a concept to be stored in memory. But if you only speak in tightly packed abstract concepts students get lost. And thus you drop down in abstraction and teach through examples, stories, images, that help students digest the contents." this is top tier writing. thanks for sharing

arrowleaf 6d ago
Really? While reading I couldn't help but think about how I wish this article on writing well were... written well. That block quote loses me in the first sentence, I had to re-read it a few times. "Good teaching requires alternating between two views, going up and down levels of detail. Sometimes you zoom out and give students one word for a big idea, calling a whole chain of events a "collapse." This 'Nomiinalization' lets them hold the idea in mind instead of the whole story. But summary words alone can lose students, the abstract loses meaning as details are forgotten. So you zoom back in with examples, stories, pictures, concrete cases. Those reinforce the idea of the summary word."

delis-thumbs-7e 5d ago

Problem with giving advice on writing is that quite often you end up going against your own advice in the very text you give that advice. But the main point stnds, you should indeed know what you want to say. Tell the audience what you are going to say, then say it, and tell them you said it. Few observations: 1) it says for noj-fiction, but I think the trunk analogy is even more prescient in fiction. The Invisible Ink by Brian McDonald basically just hammers on this over and over again: know what you want to say and say it. 2) the author does not say it directly, but it is obvious that he learned to write the right way: by reading. You must read to be able to write. Just going througha few writing manuals won’t do, you must go the woods to find trees kemosabe. Fell in love with an author. Read all types of texts. Good writing is good writing.

meisterfeister 4d ago

Pyramid principle