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February 24th, 2014 | #1 | ||
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On Writing: Give Context
On Writing
Give the Reader the Best Contexting You Can Provide By Alex Linder [index] February 24, 2014 In this thread in this new column I am going to give examples of excellence in writing, along with explanations. We'll begin with this, from the opening page of Clinton Rossiter's The First American Revolution (1953), p.3: Quote:
But even if the writer doesn't know everything, even if he knows very little, at least he knows, or can reasonably speculate, on what he doesn't know. At least...and here's the pitch...he can give the true and accurate context. That is what Rossiter does excellently above. In one short paragraph, you have the American scene just prior to the political revolution. You have in a nutshell what you're dealing with. That is what a writer is supposed to do, but so often these days fails to do. Giving the reader context ought to be pretty close job #1, even for newspaper reporters. Now, they are of course concerned with the five Ws - who, what, when, where, how - but the minute that is done, what else have these folk to do other than place them in context? Say we're reporting on a fire in the mountains ringing L.A. What does context mean here? It means we research and talk to experts to establish: - what is a typical fire season/fire in this area/in the West in general - where/why this fire might be unusual or usual Say we're doing a story on crime in Chicago. What does context mean here? It means, locating this specific spate of, say, weekend shootings within a greater city (Chicago), state (Illinois) and national context. - there are X murders per year. Here's a graph showing average annual murders in Chicago dating back to 1900 or 1950. Show the race of the perpetrators. Show the race of the victims. Show the interracial stats (if the media weren't controlled to exclude these because they speak against forced race-mixing the controlled media universally promote). The writer's job in this kind of fact-based, analytical reporting-analysis is to give the reader everything he needs to gain a true picture of what's going on, so that he can understand it. The reporter's first duty may be to get the facts right, so that his every assertion may be relied on; but his second duty is to fit the facts into a meaningful and non-distortive context. What the controlled media ordinarily do is present a selection of the facts, and very little context, and a context that, whenever the story bridges on matters political, is distorted in line with an undeniable and absolutely predictable agenda. It cannot be overemphasized, when you are the writer, you are the man. You are like a man taking a girl on a date. You are responsible for planning it, for seeing that she is well situated and enjoys herself. That's not a perfect analogy, but it's close enough. You don't make the reader-girl wonder wtf is going on, or if this guy knows what he's doing, you giver her everything she needs to know to make sense of the situation and draw her own judgments. Most problems with writings are simply the same problems we see in people off the page: they live in their own little heads. I'm not even talking about selfishness, though it can be that, I'm talking about simply unawareness, proceeding from a number of sources, of what the other guy needs to understand in order to cooperate with one. On the page, this ego-obliviousness, or trapped-in-selfness, results in people writing things that aren't clear to outsiders. These writers aren't able to grasp that other people aren't in their head and won't know what they are talking about. An effective writer will instinctively understand where his reader is, educationwise and mentally, and with what sort of material he needs to prepare him so that he can easily grasp the story. He won't just plop down a bunch of context-free impressions and expect the reader to make a satisfying meal out of the mess. Writing is not just teaching, educating, explaining, it's also guiding. Show respect for the reader always by giving him the context he needs to evaluate the precise information you're disseminating or the report you're making. When we read the Rossiter start above, we say to ourselves, as reader, "Ahh...now I can settle in...I've got the big picture firmly in head: a couple million people, 3/4 white, mostly English, rural, etc., slowly trickling through to the west." That is firm social-geographical basis for the political story about to unfold. Always give the reader the context he needs to make sense of the story. Disconnected bits of factual flotsam + ideological assumptions never fully articulation let alone examined is a bread made of sawdust: not nutritious at all. Context exercises: Quote:
You're the writer? You're the man. Lead. Dominate. Entertain. Educate. Wow. Make effective and enjoyable and educational communication happen - it's all in your hands. Bring the reader to intellectual orgasm, or if you can't do that, at least make what you're saying so brilliantly sunny the reader can see exactly where you're wrong, or what you're missing, even if you can't yourself. For that's the final fact: none of us can see everything. But at the very least, we can know what we need to get the job done, and supply as much of it as we can, given our limited understandings. Alway have respect for the reader, and this means, in part, giving the reader the means to make sense of the specifics, which in many or even most cases will be new or foreign to him. The only thing left to say is that even if you're not a writer, the lesson above applies to everyone, because we all must communicate continually with the outside world. If you find yourself frequently being misunderstood, it is very often because of your own assumptions. You are in your head, assuming other people know what you are talking about or referring to when in fact they don't. Be the unusual man: think about things from the other guy's perspective: what does he need from you? This will pull you out of yourself (which has the side effect, oddly enough, of making you happier) and make you far more effective as a communicator, as you will be more observant and become more observant through practice. Notice this, too. The #1 fear most people have is public speaking? Why? Because everyone is looking at them. They are self-conscious. Getting through this, which is merely a matter of publicly speaking a few times for most people, allows you to get to where you lose your focus on yourself (which is all self-consciousness is, even when it seems to come from the outside) and to focus on what the audience needs from you, and how to put it in the best form. You can see what I mean here: all these things show angles on the same common problem. Getting stuff out of our heads and putting it under the table under bright light so that we and the other guy can clearly see what we are talking about, and have the same basic picture in our heads. That is successfully contexted communication. You will hear that writing is self-expression, but that is quite wrong. Of course it is, inevitably, as we are all different, but writing is not onanism; there are other people involved, and their needs should come ahead of the writer's, for he is writing for them. He may write in the style he prefers, so that he will reach those who are more naturally of his mental bent, but no matter which particular style he follows or naturally expresses, the need to ask the basic questions and prepare the basic setting in which the communication plays out are always there, waiting to be met, by successful writers, or ignored, by defective expressivists, to be redundant. The world doesn't need more ee cummings; one is rather enough. Still another angle on or example of the same basic problem is the grammatical failure known as unclear antecedent. That's a pronoun such as it or they where no noun has been used. Now often enough the reader may get the gist, but often enough he can't. Either way it's a mistake. "Is what's clear in my head clear to the reader?" Ask yourself this repeatedly. Read what you've written. Can an average reader make sense of it? If not, then you must clarify. Put yourself in the innocent reader's chair, and what you need to know will guide you to both the things you need to say and the best way to say them. Set your reader up for success by constructing for him the context he needs to understand (and then evaluate) the information you provide. That is one of your principal duties as a writer. Last edited by Alex Linder; February 24th, 2014 at 06:06 AM. |
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February 24th, 2014 | #3 |
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I'll play:
In the Milky Way galaxy there is a star called the Sun. The Sun is orbited by 8 planets (well, maybe 13, if one chooses to include dwarf planets). The third planet from the Sun is called Earth. It is situated in a special area astronomers call a star's "Goldilocks Zone": not too hot, or too cold; just the right distance to be capable of sustaining life. And Earth does sustain life, in myriad forms; on land, in the oceans and in the air - including self-aware, intelligent life. Earth is, in fact, the only planet in the universe proven to do so. ....... In recent years, there has been a precipitous fall in the number of honeybees. This is causing great concern among beekeepers, farmers & wildlife biologists, and the likely sharp rise in the cost of honey is the least of their worries. That's because honeybees are the most important pollinators of many crops: if the bees were to die out completely, many items in the wide variety of foods we currently enjoy would no longer be available. ...... There are an alarming number of murders in (insert nigged shithole of choice). It makes many uncomfortable, even angry to see it acknowledged publicly, but it is an indisputable fact that most of these killings are committed by black males. What is disputable is why this small segment of the population perpetrates so much deadly violence. Those on the right focus on the breakdown of traditional morality and the nuclear family; those on the left say it's because of poverty, and the racist legacy of slavery; still others say - far more controversially - that inherent racial differences are to blame. So, what's the answer? Is it this, or that? Or is the reason to be discovered in a combination of answers? That's what this piece is intended explore in depth, examining as many factors involved as possible: city demographics & murder figures, past & present; comparisons of income & murder/violent crime rates between the races today; etc.
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February 24th, 2014 | #4 | |
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That's good. Only thing I would add is our galaxy is just one of billions in a gigantic universe - the complete size of which is so immense it can't even be told (so far as I know) - that is the ultimate context. ... I do wonder about that 'the only place that life can be sustained' - to me, hearing that, I immediately suspect it is 1) untrue, 2) ultimately traces back to religious crankery. Why must all life follow the carbon-based forms we see on earth? Since we only know an infinitessimally small percentage of what's out there, I don't see a valid basis for conclusion. I guess I would say for the reasons you cited earth is the only planet IN THIS GALAXY or this SOLAR SYSTEM that can sustain life as we know it. Even that to my ear is nearly circular. I mean, we find tiny organisms in geothermal pools, or living under ice packs up north, so perhaps there are creatures alive on other planets which we just don't know about yet. ....... In recent years, there has been a precipitous fall in the number of honeybees. This is causing great concern among beekeepers, farmers & wildlife biologists, and the likely sharp rise in the cost of honey is the least of their worries. That's because honeybees are the most important pollinators of many crops: if the bees were to die out completely, many items in the wide variety of foods we currently enjoy would no longer be available. That's good. You connected the decline in bees to potential problems in human food supplies, which is the crucial thing. I would say, also room for some speculation on the misuse of the decline in bees to push the usual leftist agenda, but I haven't actually seen so much of that; it was much commoner with the deformed frogs who were the victims of smog and skyscrapers and people eating at MacDonalds inside Walmarts but yeah actually was a...parasite. An all-natural, God-created, home-grown, hand-spanked, corn-fed, pure-D, organic parasite. On the bee thing, I would try very hard to get the numbers, because they really tell the tale. In most things, numbers are superior to qualitative assessments. If I'm an experienced reader, I know the people writing the news tend to hype shiit. Ok, fewer bees. I can dig that. Haven't seen as many around, that checks. But when you say precipitous decline, what do you mean? I could see controlled media meaning anything from 10% reduction to 90% devastation. A number would really help. Couple that with some stats related to beekeeping. I don't even know how that would be calculated. Total number of bees, hives, beekeepers, price to have beekeepers visit your orchards...the writer's job would be to dig up the stats that best encapsulate the changing bee scenario. ...... There are an alarming number of murders in (insert nigged shithole of choice). It makes many uncomfortable, even angry to see it acknowledged publicly, but it is an indisputable fact that most of these killings are committed by black males. What is disputable is why this small segment of the population perpetrates so much deadly violence. Those on the right focus on the breakdown of traditional morality and the nuclear family; those on the left say it's because of poverty, and the racist legacy of slavery; still others say - far more controversially - that inherent racial differences are to blame. So, what's the answer? Is it this, or that? Or is the reason to be discovered in a combination of answers? That's what this piece is intended explore in depth, examining as many factors involved as possible: city demographics & murder figures, past & present; comparisons of income & murder/violent crime rates between the races today; etc.[/QUOTE] That works. But we want the best perspective. The way I think we could BEST do this is with almost tabloidy wow-look-at-this: all this crime, i mean literally like almost ALL this crime, is coming out of one tiny sliver of the community. They're all black, and they're all male, and they're all young. They are the ones making your neighborhood unlivable. Explain to the reader that crime has always been a mans' thing, not a woman's (altho that has changed a little, as women have been pushed to become manlike in recent decades). But that there are radical disparities between crime rates among whites and blacks. And these rates are never written about honestly. Blacks are always portrayed as victims of crimes, either by other blacks or by rough police, but never presented as the main criminals. The interracial crime difference whereby whites are DOZENS of times likelier to be attacked than blacks by whites is literally never mentioned in mass media. This is the most obviously political of the three, there are many ways to go, but if I were truly trying to get someone to understand: - all this crime comes out of ONE tiny sector - the media cover it up. in fact, they go farther. they don't just not-tell, they reality-reverse. they play blacks as the victims when they are actually the perpetrators. use zimmerman-martin as example, as microcosm. - the media do this because their owners are jews, a tribe that sees itself as at war with the white host population. falsifed information is a way to enhance jewish power and open up white society for predation. So in this way the person you're teaching comes to see where crime is coming from, why it's deliberately miscovered in the media, and who are the real forces in society doing battle. he is know equipped to read the codes in any story about crime he comes across. |
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February 24th, 2014 | #5 | |||
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Quote:
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"First: Do No Good." - The Hymiecratic Oath "The man who does not exercise the first law of nature—that of self preservation — is not worthy of living and breathing the breath of life." - John Wesley Hardin |
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February 25th, 2014 | #6 |
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Good job, N.B. and Alex
I appreciate the opportunity to observe and learn. |
February 25th, 2014 | #7 | |||
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but yes, in a long piece, you could go into the whole history of crime before and after civil rights. my point wasnt even journalistic. i'm thinking...to myself...how do i best convey this to people. there's a real art to telling someone the right thing in just the right way. giving them all the info they can handle, presenting it most memorably, depending on their station. writing or speaking, that is. |
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February 25th, 2014 | #8 | |
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"First: Do No Good." - The Hymiecratic Oath "The man who does not exercise the first law of nature—that of self preservation — is not worthy of living and breathing the breath of life." - John Wesley Hardin |
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February 25th, 2014 | #9 |
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Glad you appreciate it. I should have yielded to convention years ago and done more regular columns...just always liked doing more random, irregularly shaped items. Chunks, bits, fragments...to me, I love that geodic feeling...start 'em off with a little granitey dross and them BOOM goes the dynamite! that was the spintro...
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February 25th, 2014 | #10 |
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the thing to me is most of them are so intellectually slight they dont even realize that the conventional wisdom they do nothing but recirculate is just one jew-formulated position, and it's anti-whtie and often enough just plain wrong.
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February 25th, 2014 | #11 |
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Yet they imagine themselves to be part of the elite, shaping the minds of the Great Reactionary Herd.....
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"First: Do No Good." - The Hymiecratic Oath "The man who does not exercise the first law of nature—that of self preservation — is not worthy of living and breathing the breath of life." - John Wesley Hardin |
February 25th, 2014 | #12 | |
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even where they are willing and capable to tell a real story, the editors tend to get in the way. it really was a better profession back when writers were drunks rather than graduate-degreed cultists there was so much more freedom even as late as 1960 than there is now.. i really recommend this book, if you want to sense how america and journalism have changed, it's like a time capsule of a better place and time and people |
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February 25th, 2014 | #13 | |
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That's irregular as hell. But I won't belabor it here because I know N.B. is vulnerable to feelings of weightlessness, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, and I don't want to torture him any more than is absolutely necessary. About his weightlessness, and the weightlessness of the our entire planet, that is. I'm not even going to mention the progressive tilting of the Earth's axis. |
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February 25th, 2014 | #14 | |
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February 25th, 2014 | #15 |
Switching to glide
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I've always thought of Alex Linder as a WN Hunter Thompson. Mostly because of the similar truly impressive levels of drug and alcohol use. I kid, I kid...
His stuff, when it's good, has the same sort of feel. Entertaining, and it sounds cliché, but it rings authentic. I only have one rule for writers: Don't bore me. I can get that anywhere.
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February 25th, 2014 | #16 | |
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*thanks ELF
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February 25th, 2014 | #17 |
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Someone recently recommended this book to me.
I wonder if you've read it, N.B.? |
February 25th, 2014 | #18 | |
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"First: Do No Good." - The Hymiecratic Oath "The man who does not exercise the first law of nature—that of self preservation — is not worthy of living and breathing the breath of life." - John Wesley Hardin |
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June 9th, 2014 | #19 |
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On Writing
Can Writing Be Taught? By Alex Linder [index] June 9, 2014 Can writing be taught? Some say yes. Some say no. They are both right. But they are not talking about the same thing. To the extent writing is error identification, it can be taught. That part is science. Instruction availeth in spreading its standards. To the extent writing is the artful arrangement of words, it's largely beyond instruction. Mediocrity develops. Genius unfurls. Some people can paint. Some can't. Some can sing. Some can't. Some can write. Some can't. It's inborn. You can't teach anyone to create word art any more than you can teach someone to create oil art or vocal art. The ability to write is genetic. Teaching pretty much taps out at conveying the rules of spelling and grammar and simple construction; beyond that, about all that can be done is a modest enhancement in the ability to avoid the grosser cliches. Teaching can't really bring anything truly positive, genuinely artistic out of the student, it's wholly involved with avoiding or reducing the negative. Which is still something valuable. Next week I'll go into the reasons for widespread semiliteracy in an age of universal public education. If you've read or listened to what I've said about homeschooling, you know the answer already. Today I want to focus on one thing: cliche aversion. Even those with little talent can improve their writing by recognizing and avoiding cliches. By cliches I mean a much broader concept than what is normally intended by that word. Wherever an adjective is ordinarily coupled with a noun - that is a cliche. Breaking up these word-blocks by replacing the adjective or the noun is a good way for non-artists to improve their writing. You don't need deep talent to think about what you're saying. Rather than, as a woman, being satisifed, even proud, of your ability to come up with the cliched expression, you can and should instead look for reasons not to use the typical expression. Little thinking goes into most writing. Lacking artistic talent is not the same as lacking the ability to think. So think. Think about the words you are using. Don't go with the conventional expression if you can come up with something better. Something closer to the reality. This will make your writing subtly different, and it will burr the reader, gently rasp him, like a slightly too cool breeze. It will make him just a bit more alert than he usually is, and that's a good thing. He will have to pay attention. You're not just producing boilerplate like everyone else does. This is not the same thing as innovation for innovation's sake. If a cliche is effective, then there's no reason not to use it. I like 'the bottom line.' I think it effectively conveys the sense of the thing, even if everyone uses it and it's as cliched an expression as it gets. Same thing with 'at the end of the day.' So I use them. But if I didn't like them or didn't think they worked, I wouldn't use them just because they are now conventional. Just because everyone else does something is not a reason to do it - nor is it a reason not to do it - the other mistake that has become common, particularly in non-verbal settings. We are talking about improving writing here; if you're happy communicating with others in cliches, then that's great. They will like your verbal comfort food, and you won't have to put in any effort beyond a modestly logical structuring. But if you desire to write something a little more refined, a little more interesting, a little more artful, a little better, then thinking about the word-couplings you use, the cliches in the broadest sense, is a good place to start. Good writing, for the untalented, will begin with active thinking. The words you use are a matter of choice. You are the master. You do not have to use the same words in the same way others do. It works like this: someone says 'cutting edge.' It's original and effective. It's easy to see in your mind. A million people copy the use. Eventually someone artistic gets bored. Changes it to 'bleeding edge.' Which is also effective and picturesque. The pioneer gets the arrows, as has been said. Eventually the masses follow this too. The alteration becomes the cliche. Now I have used pushing edge, just to give it a different twist. It is not as sharp as the original or the first alteration, but it has some value in bringing out a different aspect of the operation in question - the straining. It's perfectly grammatically valid, too. Why does the edge have to be cutting or bleeding? It doesn't. It can be whatever you want it to be - that makes sense. See, you have to think. You have to figure something out - if you can. That's where the talent comes in. But whether you have lots or little talent, you can still think about what each word and each term means. These slight little alterations won't precisely substitute for genuine talent, but they will set your writing apart in an effective and legitimate way. You are not expressing things differently for reasons of self but for reasons of sense. You want to bring out a different angle or aspect of the thing in question, and, in a meta-sense, convey to your readers that you are paying attention to the world around you and the language you choose to describe it. This serves the meta-meta purpose of enhancing literary culture, which is necessary in a world in which writing must compete with video, which was not the case in the 19th century, obviously. So today's lesson is to consider a cliche as a much broader category than you have in the past, and consciously choose to decouple the usually coupled in order to achieve new and legitimate discriminations and depictions. I will come back to this matter of cliche in future columns, but until then, just try to notice in your reading the thousands upon thousands of undeclared or, might we say, amateur cliches of which most writing -- most professional writing, even -- is composed. Legitimate individuation, like preventing forest fires, is up to you. It's, by definition, not something someone else can do for you - beyond alerting you to the problem, as I have done here. If you wish to subcontract your sentence-formation choices to the mass-average, then you'll be like everybody else, and you'll reap the same not-very-satisfying result. But verily I say unto, thinking will make you a deeper and more interesting person, and this will reflect in your writing.// |
July 10th, 2014 | #20 | |
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http://www.freep.com/article/2010110...les-of-writing
For fiction writing. Quote:
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