kurt vonnegut: how to write with style

I came across this outstanding post on Reddit today. Its rare to see something with content this good from such a reputable source on most social bookmarking sites. Vonnegut truly was a master, and this how-to for aspiring writers might as well be the ten commandments for aspiring authors.

How to Write With Style

by Kurt Vonnegut

Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.

These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful-- ? And on and on.

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you're writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead --- or, worse, they will stop reading you.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don't you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.

1. Find a subject you care about

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way --- although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

2. Do not ramble, though

I won't ramble on about that.

3. Keep it simple

As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. "To be or not to be?" asks Shakespeare's Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story "Eveline" is this one: "She was tired." At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.

Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

4. Have guts to cut

It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

5. Sound like yourself

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad's third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.

All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens to not be standard English, and if it shows itself when your write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.

6. Say what you mean

I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable --- and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.

Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

7. Pity the readers

They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don't really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school --- twelve long years.

So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient readers, ever willing to simplify and clarify --- whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.

That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited.

8. For really detailed advice

For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, in a more technical sense, I recommend to your attention The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. E.B. White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced.

You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say.

In Sum:

1. Find a subject you care about

2. Do not ramble, though

3. Keep it simple

4. Have guts to cut

5. Sound like yourself

6. Say what you mean

7. Pity the readers

the votes are in: pidgin ftw

I asked my Twitter followers today if anyone knew of a good IM service mashup program.

I have been exploring ways to streamline my communication to my friends on social bookmarking sites, since about half are on AIM, half on gTalk, and a lot have both. I'm hoping to save redundant IM's to people--which no-one likes--and to hopefully have more reliable messaging, given how often gTalk seems to get overwhelmed.

As you can see, nearly everyone recommended Pidgin, and so far it seems like a great recommendation. It doesn't use the resources Trillian did, and seems much more stable than gTalk or Trillian, with a more streamlined and clean interface similar to what I'm used to on AIM Professional.

meet my high-maintenance girlfriend: digg.

Digg is a high-maintenance girlfriend. She's demanding, time-consuming, finicky, hard to please and will dump you at the first slip-up. She can be great when things are going good, and give you some great results, but you have better be willing to invest the time and energy its going to take to get those results.

Every night I ask myself--is it worth it?

politics & social media: an exploitation of trust?

Its nearly indisputable fact that the 2009 US Presidential election was the first election won using social media. President Obama's campaign utilized Facebook as no candidate had previously. I can almost say with certainty that campaign coordinators were also using services with user submitted content like Digg, Reddit and Mixx. Its only logical, and if the technology is there, why not take advantage of it?

That brings me to my point, however. Is politics utilizing social media to spread a message, or to exploit our naive trust of the social web? When I see content on the front page of Digg, I rarely think about who has submitted it, or why. Its been proven time and time again how easy it is to "game" the system and buy/trade votes on social bookmarking sites across the web.

Who's to say that Obama's permanent place on the Digg front page throughout the entire election was entirely natural? Honestly, if his campaigners were smart, they were voting up the positive stories and burying the negative ones. And if one thing was apparent through out the election, it was that Barack Obama's campaign understood and utilized social media in the most effective ways possible. Its hard to believe that they didn't game the system like so many other Digg users do everyday.

For me, this raises the question: are we too naive? Just because something hits the front page of Reddit or Digg--does that mean its good, solid information? As gaming spreads, even now to Mixx which was touted a refuge for those tired of Digg power users dominance, is not immune.

Recently, I came across a horribly written, outdated, and ultimately pointless post that gave a short description of each social content site. The English was broken, there were words misspelled, and the site offered absolutely no valuable insight beyond a short description of each. This blog post was also on the front page of Mixx. There is no way that could have come to fruition naturally, as anyone reading the post would right away dismiss it as a pathetic joke of an article.

How many other "pathetic jokes of an article" have we read, thinking that in fact the content was good and the research was solid? Are we critical enough of content found in blogs and on social submission sites? Or, are the same people we revolted against, the media conglomerates, spin doctors and talking heads, now using our own weapon against us?

this is how every historical moment should be memorialized...

...with David Hasselhoff singing and dancing in a light-up leather jacket, of course.

google: stop teasing me!

All day week Google's been teasing me with the promise of off-line mail capabilities.

Every time a reminder of this new capability pops up, I check both my personal and work accounts to see if its finally showing up in my Labs tab, but alas... no off-line email. Curses!

Oh Google, you tease.

ben huh (icanhascheezeburger.com) on social media

An excellent (& short) presentation by Ben Huh of icanhascheezeburger.com on social media as a relationship, and bringing it all back to the basics.

don't hassle the hoff: sweet david hasselhoff music vid

A David Hasselhoff music video involving a flying motorcycle, African tribe, fur parka and dashunds presumably foraging for water in the wild. At least he can say he was drunk when he ate that cheeseburger off the floor...

best picture ever

two excellent FREE windows utilities

I recently downloaded both of these programs while looking for registry and system cleanup utilities. Once again, CNET's recommendation was dead on and these two *freeware* utilities are as good as most big name utilities I've used.

+CCleaner download
+Click&Clean download (requires CCleaner)

Together, these do a pretty nice job of covering the bases. CCleaner gives you some private data/cache deletion options and a good registry utility, and Click&Clean further enhances the program with a quick one-click internet history scrubdown. Works great for speeding up the system a bit, freeing up some space, and getting rid of potentially malicious bugs hiding out in the cache and temp folders.

best reddit headline ever?

the importance of targeted social campaigns

"Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign (1) dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech--and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives--he called them enemies!--hidden out of sight somewhere."


-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness


This quote, used to illustrate the approach of the British Empire to the colonization of Africa (blindly firing into the unknown, and missing their target) speaks volumes to a situation I see all too often in social media. This point was driven home today while talking with a coworker, who brought to light a conversation he recently overheard. The conversation was between a person of authority at an engineering company, and a social media marketer making his sales pitch.

The marketer asserted that the engineering company needed to boost their social presence. This, in theory is a good approach. Social media is either low cost or in many cases, free, and has the potential for huge returns in terms of traffic, branding and visibility. However--how does this apply to an engineering firm? The marketer was throwing around terms like "Digg", "Facebook profile", "Twitter" and "Reddit". These are all incredibly popular forms of social media momentum, and for some buisinesses have proven to net more returns than traditional advertising. The potential exists--but not for every buisiness.

A common mistake I am seeing more and more frequently is that the idea of social presence equaling automatic returns. It rarely works like that. How is Digg going to benefit an engineering firm located in Grand Rapids, MI? Assuming they have a primarily local customer base, and they are not doing work of national importance or interest, it is unlikely Digg will benefit them in any way. Compare the return to the cost. Digg requires users to maintain a very active profile for any chance of success. It requires constant activity, reciprocation and mainentenance. The same can be said for Mixx, Reddit, Propeller and other social media sites, all to varying degrees. The point is, the paid hours spent on Digg are unlikely to provide any quantifiable return to the company.

The same can be said for the "Facebook profile". Given the customer base, who would most likely be older buisiness owners of some sort, its highly unlikely that the first place anyone would turn to find an engineering firm is Facebook. Facebook is only just beginning to gain professional acceptance or clout, and is still vastly dominated by the 13-25 demographic. If the firm was looking for an intern--the first place I would recommend placing an advertisement would be Facebook, but if they are trying to maintain a solid and professional image, a Facebook profile could potentially hurt them in the eyes of potential customers, given Facebook's and social networking's infancy at the present.

Everyone should ask themselves--is a social presence going to discredit my buisiness? Will it make me look less legitimate? Social networking still carries many negative connotations, as the internet is still known for its lack of accountability and annonimity. Does this engineering firm really want to open real-time public dialogue between the company and potentially disgruntled customers?

There are many benefits to social media, and for some buisinesses--it can pay huge divedends, but as many benefits as there are there are also huge time commitments, and the need for a targeted campaign. An effective social media campaign takes a deep, thorough knowledge of each resource, its audience, and how to most effectively use each resource. It also takes someone savvy and knowledgable enough to know when a particular resource is not worth the time, effort and expense.

Glad to hear Twitter may have found its buisiness model. Now, can we all just stop talking about it? Seriously. Stop. No more blog posts about monetizing Twitter!

spoutblog, sundance, and reddit

Posted my first submission to Reddit today in a long time and to my surprise, we hit the front page. I started it off with a few upvotes, but Sundance momentum and interest carried it the rest of the way.

This also supports my theory that news & events--peices with some substance--do better on Reddit than on Digg. I'll be interested to see what happens long-term with Reddit. This has given me motivation to explore Reddit a little more instead of dismissing it.

Oh and it helps that the submission was another outstanding post from Karina Longworth, editor of Spoutblog. Nearly every word she writes should be on the front page of some social news site.