This made me realise that as a reader I care about, not so much “information & ideas per word” (roughly speaking), but “per unit of effort reading”. I’m reminded of Jason Crawford on why he finds Scott’s writing good:
Most writing on topics as abstract and technical as his struggles just not to be dry; it takes effort to focus, and I need energy to read them. Scott’s writing flows so well that it somehow generates its own energy, like some sort of perpetual motion machine.
My favorite Scott essays take no effort to read due to that perpetual motion effect, so the denominator vanishes and the ratio skyrockets; the word count becomes unnoticeable. I’d guess that Scott’s avid readers would mostly say the same.
I’ve been working with a professional editor on a report and it’s amazing how much clearer and punchier the writing is after they’ve done a pass on my rough drafts. But the perpetual motion effect of Scott’s writing is on another level: there’s almost a motive force to it.
Here’s an old comment he wrote in response to Luke’s “What are your favorite pieces of writing advice?” where he explains how he writes; the whole thing is worth reading, I’ll only quote part of it:
There’s that quote about how “the most important thing is sincerity, and if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” So there are two equal and opposite commandments for popular writing. First, you’ve got to sound like you’re chatting with your reader, like you’re giving them an unfiltered stream-of-consciousness access to your ideas as you think them. Second, on no account should you actually do that.
Eliezer is one of the masters at this; his essays are littered with phrases like “y’know” and “pretty much”, but they’re way too tight to be hastily published first drafts (or maybe I’m wrong and Eliezer is one of the few people in the world who can do this; chances are you’re not). You’ve got to put a lot of work into making something look that spontaneous. I’m a fan of words like “sorta” and “kinda” myself, but I have literally gone through paragraphs and replaced all of the “to some degrees” with “sortas” to get the tone how I wanted it. …
The real meat of writing comes from an intuitive flow of words and ideas that surprises even yourself. Editing can only enhance and purify writing so far; it needs to have some natural potential to begin with. My own process here is to mentally rehearse an idea very many times without even thinking about writing. Once I’m an expert at explaining it to myself or an imaginary partner, then I transcribe the explanation I settle upon (some people say they don’t think in words; I predict writing will not come naturally to these people). Then I edit the heck out of it. …
Some people say to write down everything and only edit later. I take the opposite tack. I used to believe that I rarely edited at all because I usually publish something as soon as it’s done. Then a friend watching me write said that she was getting seasick from my tendency to go back and forth deleting and rewriting the same sentence fragment or paragraph before moving on. Most likely the best writers combine both editing methods.
This made me realise that as a reader I care about, not so much “information & ideas per word” (roughly speaking), but “per unit of effort reading”. I’m reminded of Jason Crawford on why he finds Scott’s writing good:
My favorite Scott essays take no effort to read due to that perpetual motion effect, so the denominator vanishes and the ratio skyrockets; the word count becomes unnoticeable. I’d guess that Scott’s avid readers would mostly say the same.
I’ve been working with a professional editor on a report and it’s amazing how much clearer and punchier the writing is after they’ve done a pass on my rough drafts. But the perpetual motion effect of Scott’s writing is on another level: there’s almost a motive force to it.
Here’s an old comment he wrote in response to Luke’s “What are your favorite pieces of writing advice?” where he explains how he writes; the whole thing is worth reading, I’ll only quote part of it: