To me, the difference between the colloquial term “brainstorming” and this site’s term “babble and prune” is the intentional choice to split the activity into two phases: an unfiltered idea generation phase followed by a filtering/editing phase. Emphasis on “unfiltered”, for the anxiety-reducing and writer’s block circumventing reasons you gave.
I’d be grateful for an update down the line, if you come across any unexpected benefits/shortcomings.
Writing an article seems more difficult to me because it involves a choice on two levels—what to write, and how to write it (the outline vs the actual words). How to put these two levels together?
One option is to simply start writing, so both the outline and the actual words are generated in the same pass. You can edit some words afterwards, but you can’t really edit the outline… unless is means identifying some superfluous parts and removing them. Adding a new part would require switching to the generating mode (for that part) again. Reordering parts? Not sure if the text remains fluent.
So, what else is possible? Decide the outline first, and then generate the text with the idea that “I am trying to progress to part B” in the background? Is or isn’t this substantially different from the original version? The difference is that you are having a goal, instead of just writing and seeing where it goes. The similarity is that in the original version you still at some moment need to finish the article, which is also a kind of a goal?
Another risk is that your generator will fluently travel between the predetermined topics A, B, C, D, E, you create a lot of text, on the specified topic, but… it will somehow lack the conclusion? It will be just “a stream of text that ended at some point” rather than “a stream of text that culminated in a punchline”. Unless you maybe think about the punchline first, and then set up the A, B, C to include the prerequisites.
Just don’t change your mind about the outline in the middle of writing the text. Like, at the end of this comment I realized that this way of writing, from the perspective of the bicameral mind, is to simply shut up and keep writing what the gods are telling you. And the version with the outline is… making plans, and then praying to gods to make it happen… and then accepting their verdict, whatever it is?
Or do the change of outline on the level of articles. Like, finish the original article with the original outline, and then use your “this should have been done differently” thought to set up the outline for the next article.
Another risk is that your generator will fluently travel between the predetermined topics A, B, C, D, E, you create a lot of text, on the specified topic, but… it will somehow lack the conclusion? It will be just “a stream of text that ended at some point” rather than “a stream of text that culminated in a punchline”.
There’s a known divide among two styles of writing fiction, one of which is to plan the plot out in advance, and the other is to just start writing and see where it gets you. The latter method may produce events that feel more organic, but has a known failure mode where the author may realize that the story they’ve written ended up having no clear ending and then they have to throw away the last hundred pages of text and try to take the plot in a different direction from an earlier point. (Or in the case of writers such as G.R.R. Martin, have the whole project just sputter out after the plot has just gotten bigger and bigger with no satisfying end in sight.)
To me, the difference between the colloquial term “brainstorming” and this site’s term “babble and prune” is the intentional choice to split the activity into two phases: an unfiltered idea generation phase followed by a filtering/editing phase. Emphasis on “unfiltered”, for the anxiety-reducing and writer’s block circumventing reasons you gave.
I’d be grateful for an update down the line, if you come across any unexpected benefits/shortcomings.
Writing an article seems more difficult to me because it involves a choice on two levels—what to write, and how to write it (the outline vs the actual words). How to put these two levels together?
One option is to simply start writing, so both the outline and the actual words are generated in the same pass. You can edit some words afterwards, but you can’t really edit the outline… unless is means identifying some superfluous parts and removing them. Adding a new part would require switching to the generating mode (for that part) again. Reordering parts? Not sure if the text remains fluent.
So, what else is possible? Decide the outline first, and then generate the text with the idea that “I am trying to progress to part B” in the background? Is or isn’t this substantially different from the original version? The difference is that you are having a goal, instead of just writing and seeing where it goes. The similarity is that in the original version you still at some moment need to finish the article, which is also a kind of a goal?
Another risk is that your generator will fluently travel between the predetermined topics A, B, C, D, E, you create a lot of text, on the specified topic, but… it will somehow lack the conclusion? It will be just “a stream of text that ended at some point” rather than “a stream of text that culminated in a punchline”. Unless you maybe think about the punchline first, and then set up the A, B, C to include the prerequisites.
Just don’t change your mind about the outline in the middle of writing the text. Like, at the end of this comment I realized that this way of writing, from the perspective of the bicameral mind, is to simply shut up and keep writing what the gods are telling you. And the version with the outline is… making plans, and then praying to gods to make it happen… and then accepting their verdict, whatever it is?
Or do the change of outline on the level of articles. Like, finish the original article with the original outline, and then use your “this should have been done differently” thought to set up the outline for the next article.
There’s a known divide among two styles of writing fiction, one of which is to plan the plot out in advance, and the other is to just start writing and see where it gets you. The latter method may produce events that feel more organic, but has a known failure mode where the author may realize that the story they’ve written ended up having no clear ending and then they have to throw away the last hundred pages of text and try to take the plot in a different direction from an earlier point. (Or in the case of writers such as G.R.R. Martin, have the whole project just sputter out after the plot has just gotten bigger and bigger with no satisfying end in sight.)