See, that’s an example of style.
I could have just said: "And now let’s learn about style."
How can some people write so beautifully?
I think I've figured it out.
THREAD: The four elements of writing style:
See, that’s an example of style.
I could have just said: "And now let’s learn about style."
• Your voice
• Your presentation
• Engaging the senses
• Engaging the imagination
Ask your friends what it's like to talk with you.
Perhaps they’ll mention your:
• Tone of voice
• Sense of humor
• Eccentricities
• Viewpoints
In other words, voice is not your choice of words. Voice is your unfiltered self.
In later drafts, you can remove sensitive details.
Until that point, treat it like a confession.
It also happens when you try to "write smart"—using words like "plethora" or “myriad.”
If you don’t use those in conversation, don't use them in your writing. It's out-of-touch.
Style also engages the imagination.
I personally define poetry as finding evocative, unconventional ways to say meaningful things.
In that example, we're describing the effect caused by the hot day—as opposed to directly describing the heat itself.
The more steps you can be removed while still successfully communicating the meaning, the more "elegant" your poetry feels.
A. A first-order statement is a plain description of the scenario:
"The day was hot."
This is how we commonly talk.
"The day melted our popsicles."
The reader can imply that the day was therefore hot.
"Our popsicles melted."
There's ambiguity as to why our popsicles melted. But with a bit of *imagination,* the reader pieces it together.
To get there, we can describe an effect that is unconventional, counterintuitive, or witty:
"Even the bugs were looking for air conditioning."
—C.S. Lewis
In short, I personally define poetry as unconventional third-order descriptions.
One way to engage readers' senses is to be vivid.
To explain vividness, here are writer Venkatesh Rao's remarks on the vividness of author David Foster Wallace:
It's the articulation of the rarely articulated nuances of life—in a way that makes you remark, "Ahh, that’s how I'd put words to that feeling."
• Wait But Why uses cartoon drawings and analogies to explain complex topics.
• Maddox uses dark humor, crude GIFs, and videos to shock and entertain.
If so, consider using them. You want your ideas to resonate.
• Engage a reader's senses—paint vivid landscapes.
• Engage a reader's imagination—have them do a little bit of work.
• In non-fiction, try writing the way you sound. Your unfiltered self is a breath of fresh air amid all the online fakery.
—C. Robert Cargill
Follow me for more writing threads 2x/week.
See my past threads here: @julian
🍌
More from Julian Shapiro
THREAD: I've helped 200+ startups grow their newsletters.
Email marketing tactics 👇
People reflexively ignore welcome emails after signup.
• Delay welcome emails by 45min to bypass this reflex
• Send the email from a person—not the business. Julian Shapiro is more human than https://t.co/8y68CQzBOR
• Use unique subjects:
👎 Welcome
👍 Grammerly = Bye Typos
Make it seamless to refer
• Remind readers at the end of each issue that they can refer others. Include a link.
• Have a web version of every issue so they can be easily shared outside of email
• Consider rewards: Send a monthly bonus issue for referring 5 friends
SEO can be a vanity metric if it doesn't convert to leads.
• Offer readers quizzes to identify the best products for them. Require an email to see results.
• Create Buyer's Guides: Make PDFs with nice visuals to help readers learn skills. Require an email.
When pitching your newsletter on your site:
• Show a sample issue on the page. Prove how high quality your content is.
• Give them control over how often they get emailed. Some want weekly, but others REALLY want monthly. High volume can burn you and your readers out.
Email marketing tactics 👇
People reflexively ignore welcome emails after signup.
• Delay welcome emails by 45min to bypass this reflex
• Send the email from a person—not the business. Julian Shapiro is more human than https://t.co/8y68CQzBOR
• Use unique subjects:
👎 Welcome
👍 Grammerly = Bye Typos
Make it seamless to refer
• Remind readers at the end of each issue that they can refer others. Include a link.
• Have a web version of every issue so they can be easily shared outside of email
• Consider rewards: Send a monthly bonus issue for referring 5 friends
SEO can be a vanity metric if it doesn't convert to leads.
• Offer readers quizzes to identify the best products for them. Require an email to see results.
• Create Buyer's Guides: Make PDFs with nice visuals to help readers learn skills. Require an email.
When pitching your newsletter on your site:
• Show a sample issue on the page. Prove how high quality your content is.
• Give them control over how often they get emailed. Some want weekly, but others REALLY want monthly. High volume can burn you and your readers out.
More from Writing
I want to talk about how western editors and readers often mistake protags written by BIPOC as "inactive protagonists." It's too common an issue that's happened to every BIPOC author I know.
Often, our protags are just trying to survive overwhelming odds. Survival is an active choice, you know. Survival is a story. Choosing to be strong in the face of the world ending, even if you can't blast a wall down to do it, is a choice.
It's how we live these days.
Western editors, readers, and writers are too married to the three-act structure, to the type of storytelling that is driven by conflict, to that go-getter individualism. Please read more widely out of your comfort zone. A lot of great non-western stories do not hinge on these.
Sometimes I wonder if you're all so hopped up on the conflict-driven story because that's exactly how your colonizer ancestors dealt with people different from them. Oops, I said it, sorry not sorry. Yes, even this mindset has roots in colonialism, deal with it.
If you want examples of non-conflict-driven storytelling google the following: kishoutenketsu, johakyu, daisy chain storytelling/wheel spoke storytelling. There was another one whose name I forgot but I will tweet it when I recall it.
Writing tip: let\u2019s talk about the INACTIVE PROTAGONIST. I\u2019ve seen a lot of amazing books lately with incredible plots, intricate worlds, and just really great writing with one recurring issue, which is the inactive protagonist. I think it can get tough when you\u2019re writing (1/10)
— Briston Brooks (@briston_brooks) January 26, 2021
Often, our protags are just trying to survive overwhelming odds. Survival is an active choice, you know. Survival is a story. Choosing to be strong in the face of the world ending, even if you can't blast a wall down to do it, is a choice.
It's how we live these days.
Western editors, readers, and writers are too married to the three-act structure, to the type of storytelling that is driven by conflict, to that go-getter individualism. Please read more widely out of your comfort zone. A lot of great non-western stories do not hinge on these.
Sometimes I wonder if you're all so hopped up on the conflict-driven story because that's exactly how your colonizer ancestors dealt with people different from them. Oops, I said it, sorry not sorry. Yes, even this mindset has roots in colonialism, deal with it.
If you want examples of non-conflict-driven storytelling google the following: kishoutenketsu, johakyu, daisy chain storytelling/wheel spoke storytelling. There was another one whose name I forgot but I will tweet it when I recall it.
I can second this observation through personal experience. I was only able to start writing because "it's just dumb weeb fanfiction quests, who cares." 100,000 pages of dumb weeb fanfic later, and I actually got better... but only because I was trying my best with every page.
"It's dumb weeb fanfiction" gave me permission to be bad, to vomit things onto the page that I knew fell far short of what I wanted it to be. To just write and write instead of laboring over six paragraphs for weeks like I'd always done before.
But I still *wanted* to be good.
Writing is HARD. And unfortunately, most people don't appreciate just how hard writing (or communication in general) is, and that cultural attitude infects writers, too.
You must give yourself permission to be bad. And realize that all writing is practice.
IT. COUNTS.
And as the folks in my mentions are pointing
... it's an excellent way to find out what actually resonates with other people - putting work out there. Even your early bad stuff you'll cringe at later.
What resonates is NOT easy to tell, because we all, inherently cringe at ourselves, a lot.
I think the mistake a lot of people make is that they write to make a good work instead of writing to make themselves a better writer (who will eventually be able to make good works). The second promotes training and builds humility while the first is just narcissism.
— Dan Kim (@CloneManga) October 31, 2020
"It's dumb weeb fanfiction" gave me permission to be bad, to vomit things onto the page that I knew fell far short of what I wanted it to be. To just write and write instead of laboring over six paragraphs for weeks like I'd always done before.
But I still *wanted* to be good.
Writing is HARD. And unfortunately, most people don't appreciate just how hard writing (or communication in general) is, and that cultural attitude infects writers, too.
You must give yourself permission to be bad. And realize that all writing is practice.
IT. COUNTS.
And as the folks in my mentions are pointing
It gave us hellcow, so it clearly worked
— Argatson (@warhammer651) October 31, 2020
... it's an excellent way to find out what actually resonates with other people - putting work out there. Even your early bad stuff you'll cringe at later.
What resonates is NOT easy to tell, because we all, inherently cringe at ourselves, a lot.
\u201cDumb weeb X\u201d is a concept with a lot of power.
— J (@Becquerl1) October 31, 2020
You May Also Like
Trading view scanner process -
1 - open trading view in your browser and select stock scanner in left corner down side .
2 - touch the percentage% gain change ( and u can see higest gainer of today)
3. Then, start with 6% gainer to 20% gainer and look charts of everyone in daily Timeframe . (For fno selection u can choose 1% to 4% )
4. Then manually select the stocks which are going to give all time high BO or 52 high BO or already given.
5. U can also select those stocks which are going to give range breakout or already given range BO
6 . If in 15 min chart📊 any stock sustaing near BO zone or after BO then select it on your watchlist
7 . Now next day if any stock show momentum u can take trade in it with RM
This looks very easy & simple but,
U will amazed to see it's result if you follow proper risk management.
I did 4x my capital by trading in only momentum stocks.
I will keep sharing such learning thread 🧵 for you 🙏💞🙏
Keep learning / keep sharing 🙏
@AdityaTodmal
1 - open trading view in your browser and select stock scanner in left corner down side .
2 - touch the percentage% gain change ( and u can see higest gainer of today)
Making thread \U0001f9f5 on trading view scanner by which you can select intraday and btst stocks .
— Vikrant (@Trading0secrets) October 22, 2021
In just few hours (Without any watchlist)
Some manual efforts u have to put on it.
Soon going to share the process with u whenever it will be ready .
"How's the josh?"guys \U0001f57a\U0001f3b7\U0001f483
3. Then, start with 6% gainer to 20% gainer and look charts of everyone in daily Timeframe . (For fno selection u can choose 1% to 4% )
4. Then manually select the stocks which are going to give all time high BO or 52 high BO or already given.
5. U can also select those stocks which are going to give range breakout or already given range BO
6 . If in 15 min chart📊 any stock sustaing near BO zone or after BO then select it on your watchlist
7 . Now next day if any stock show momentum u can take trade in it with RM
This looks very easy & simple but,
U will amazed to see it's result if you follow proper risk management.
I did 4x my capital by trading in only momentum stocks.
I will keep sharing such learning thread 🧵 for you 🙏💞🙏
Keep learning / keep sharing 🙏
@AdityaTodmal
