写作方法2019lithub.com编辑精选
给写作者的建议：别轻信别人的建议
Some Writing Advice: Don’t Take Others’ Advice
导读
这篇文章主张：写作建议大多因人而异，甚至有害，与其照搬别人的规则，不如保持怀疑、自己判断。值得写作者读，是因为它把“该听谁的建议、什么时候建议才有用、真正的功夫该下在哪里”讲得很实在。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
对任何写作建议都先怀疑：判断建议者是否达到了你想达到的成功水平，以及他的环境是否与你的相似。
- 02
建议只有在你手头有正在写的文字时才用得上——先写出来，哪怕写得很糟，再拿建议去对照修改。
- 03
与其读“写作指南”，不如花时间读优秀作家的作品；风格手册只能把很差的文字修成勉强可读，成不了好作家。
- 04
动笔前先积累素材、把人物立住：从想象、亲身经历和阅读中取材，人物真实了，落笔多半只是机械劳动。
HN 评论精选
判断建议的价值，要看建议者的成功水平和环境是否与你匹配。
我认为“不要听别人的建议”本身就是条好建议，至少也是“对别人的建议保持怀疑”。我在学术科研领域工作，各职业阶段的人挤在一起，我经常见到经验不足、也不算成功的人特别热衷于给更没经验的人大讲如何生活、如何做事，最常见的是研究生给刚入学的研究生讲。给指示、感觉别人在听，对多数人有自我肯定作用，我常见这种冲动压过“建议是否真的有用”。对我个人而言，判断一个人是否有资格给我建议有两条：1）他是否享有我渴望达到的那种成功？2）他取得成功的环境是否与我的相当？
el_cujo查看英文原文
I think "don't take other's advice" is just good advice in general, or at the very least "be skeptical of other's advice". I work in academic science where a lot of people of varying career stages are squished together in close proximity, and I encounter many situations where inexperienced and not that successful people are way too willing to shower even less experienced people with advice on how to live/do things. This seems to be the most common with graduate students talking to slightly newer graduate students. It's self-affirming for most people to give instructions and feel like they are being listened to, and I too often see this impulse outweighing the idea of the advice actually being useful. For me personally, two things that determine if somebody is in a position to give me advice are: 1)Are they enjoying a level of success that I would like to achieve? 2)Is the environment in which they achieved success comparable to my own?
建议无法替你落笔，先写起来，读作品比读建议更有用。
但人们寻求建议是有原因的：写作很难。我一直想写作，也向一些很不错的作家求教，他们给了很好的建议，但再多的建议也无法作用到一张白纸上。所以我写了，起初写得很糟。写作很难：你脑子里有个喜欢的想法，拿起键盘写下来，结果写出来的却是别的东西。你得强迫大脑说出它真正想说的。读别人的建议没问题，前提是你有东西可以拿建议去应用；不过对我来说，读那些人写的东西比读他们的建议更有收获。
ibudiallo查看英文原文
But there is a reason people seek advice: writing is hard. I've always wanted to write, and I sought the help of some pretty good writers. They gave me great advice. But no amount of advice can be applied to a blank page. So I wrote, pretty badly at first, you can see it on my blog. Writing is hard. Imagine, you have an idea in your head, and you like it. You grab a keyboard and write it down, somehow you write something else, not the idea in your head. You have to force your brain to say what it means to say. There is no problem with reading other's advice, as long as you have some writing to apply it to. However, in my case I benefit more from reading what those people write, rather then read their advice.
风格手册作用有限，真正提升要靠大量阅读优秀作品，别迷信语法禁令。
我还要补充：大多数“如何写作”或“风格指南”书没什么用。它们能帮你把很糟的文字改成勉强能用的文字，但没法让你成为好作家；要做到那点，你得花上千小时读高手作家的作品。读斯特伦克和怀特这类风格指南，你会碰到一堆胡扯。我特别受不了的一条是禁止使用被动语态，那纯属胡说。别浪费时间在“消灭被动语态和分裂不定式”的幻觉里，那不会让你的文章变好。
Veen查看英文原文
I’d add to this that most “How to write” or “style guide” books aren’t useful. They can help you to turn really bad prose into serviceable prose, but they can’t make you a good writer. For that you need to spend thousands of hours reading the work of expert writers. If you read a style guide like Strunk and White, you’ll come across a lot of nonsense. A particular bugbear of mine is the prohibition against passives, which is utter rubbish[0]. Don’t waste your time hunting down passives and split infinitives under the illusion that it will make your writing better. It won’t. [0]: https://youtu.be/suAASPc_s0A
好写作靠有趣的素材和立得住的人物，动笔前大部分工作已经完成。
这似乎过于偏激。写作很难、很具体，细节因人而异，所以给出普遍适用的写作建议几乎没意义；但我不认为这就意味着不能针对某种特定风格给建议。我发现，想成为好作家，你需要有有趣的素材可取材，可以来自想象、亲身经历、读过的材料，或最可能是以上全部，但首先是在做世界构建。我特别喜欢福克纳这段话：“先把人物装进脑子里。一旦人物在你脑中，而且是对的、真实的，他自己就会干活了。你只需跟在他后面，记下他做的和说的。这是摄入然后孕育。你得了解这个人物，相信他，感觉他是活的……大部分写作必须在动笔之前完成。”
yowlingcat查看英文原文
This seems overly reactionary. Writing is hard, and specific, and the devil is always in the details as it relates to a person, so it's almost nonsensical to give generally applicable writing advice. But, I don't think that makes it impossible to give advice as it pertains to a particular style. I've found that if you want to be a good writer, you need interesting material to draw from. That can come from your imagination, your lived experiences, other material you've read, or most likely all of the above, but you're engaging in world building first and foremost. I particularly like this Faulkner quote: “I would say to get the character in your mind. Once he is in your mind, and he is right, and he’s true, then he does the work himself. All you need to do then is to trot along behind him and put down what he does and what he says. It’s the ingestion and then the gestation. You’ve got to know the character. You’ve got to believe in him. You’ve got to feel that he is alive, and then, of course, you will have to do a certain amount of picking and choosing among the possibilities of his action, so that his actions fit the character which you believe in. After that, the business of putting him down on paper is mechanical. Most of the the writing has got to take place up here before you ever put the pencil to the paper. But the character’s got to be true by your conception and by your experience, and that would include, as we’ve just said, what you’ve read, what you’ve imagined, what you’ve heard, all that going to giving you the gauge to measure this imaginary character by, and once he comes alive and true to you, and he’s important and moving, then it’s not too much trouble to put him down.”
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