写作方法2020julian.com编辑精选
如何写得一手好文章
Writing well
导读
Julian 的写作指南主张用短句、要点和极简表达来提升清晰度与说服力，本质上是面向传播与转化的商业写作教程。值得写作者读，是因为它把"简洁"推到极致，也因此暴露了这种风格的代价：高赞评论集中讨论它牺牲了节奏、语气与言外之意。读它可以当作一次风格选择题：你要的是效率，还是让读者被文字带着走。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
短句和要点能提高清晰度，但通篇如此会让文章变成伪装成散文的 PPT，失去让读者沉浸的节奏感。
- 02
写作前先明确目标：是要快速说服陌生读者，还是要打动人、留下余味——两种目标对应完全不同的句式和语气。
- 03
不必把每个意思都直接说尽，用暗示、意象和环境铺垫让读者自己得出结论，读者会把它当成自己的想法。
- 04
修改时别只看"能不能删词"，还要比较两个版本各自带给读者的感受：让人共情读者的版本，往往比下指令的版本更有力。
HN 评论精选
过度追求简短的"干货体"会牺牲节奏与共情，改稿未必越短越好。
这篇我读得很吃力。短句和要点太多，像一份伪装成散文的 PowerPoint。作者丢掉了节奏——变成 ideas 的断奏式猛击。我更愿意被文字温柔地引导，让我觉得是在潜移默化中学到东西，而不是被开颅灌顶。他还举例示范改稿，但我认为改后的版本更丑：用 "additional" 来指被删掉的东西很别扭，"talking points" 则让人以为作者只想造金句、不想教育读者。我更喜欢原段落，因为它让我体谅读者的难处，也让我愿意为读者多花力气。
jgrahamc查看英文原文
I found this very hard to read. There are so many short sentences and bullet points that it looks like a PowerPoint presentation masquerading as prose. What he seems to have lost with this approach is a rhythm. It's a staccato battering with ideas. I'd much rather be seduced and cradled by writing that made me feel I'm learning by osmosis and not trepanning. EDIT: The author illustrates how his writing goes wrong by saying that the following paragraph: To be brief on the sentence-level, remove words that don’t add necessary context. Extra words cause readers to slow down and do extra work. That makes it harder for them to recognize the sentence’s point. And when you bore readers, they quit reading. is better rewritten as: Your sentence is brief when no additional words can be removed. Being succinct is important because filler buries your talking points and bores readers into quitting. It's not. The two sentence rewrite is ugly. The first sentence is weird because it uses "additional" (which sounds like adding something) for things that will be removed. The second sentence uses "talking points" which makes it appear the writer is aiming for sound bites and not to educate the reader. I much prefer the first paragraph above. Partly because it makes me empathize with the trouble readers might have and makes me want to work for them. When I read the first paragraph I imagine myself, the reader; when I read the second I'm being instructed by a voice that sounds like it comes from a cold machine.
先分清文体与目的：这套方法适合营销型短文，但语气与风格才决定文字的生命力。
这是一篇写得好的写作教程，它自己也做到了它提倡的事，在清晰、简洁、有说服力上说得在理。但它讲的不是广义的"写得好"，而是特定的写作：写给尽可能多的读者、推销某个想法、服务或产品的短文。这种写法写不出伟大的小说——海明威以冷峻客观著称，乔伊斯以驳杂、普鲁斯特以冗长同样成名。语气和风格才是关键：选词、句序、论证结构、正负情绪的拿捏，都在塑造读者的感知。作者只在第四节略略带过，还承认需要展开。缺了这些，文字就传递不出生命力。这种纯功能、干硬、不妥协的风格有风险也有代价，也可能把读者当成需要被教育的被动对象。
CaptArmchair查看英文原文
This is a well written tutorial about writing well. It practices what it preaches. And it makes good points about clarity, succinctness and persuasiveness. This isn't a tutorial about "writing well" in general. It focusses on a particular way of writing: writing short articles that sell a specific idea, service or product to as many readers as possible. It's a practice that won't make great or enjoyable novels, though. And while Hemingway became famous for his terse and objective prose, so did the eclectic writing of James Joyce or the long winded storytelling of Proust. I feel that tone of voice and style are crucial in one's writing. The words you choose, ordering of your sentences, the construction of your argument, attention for positive or negative sentiment,... shape the perception with your audience. The author only briefly glosses over those points in his fourth section, before admitting it needs expansion. And yet, without developing those, your writing won't yield much life to the topic you want to brings across. This brings me back to the style of this tutorial. It's well written in a particular context, bring a point across as quickly and efficiently as possible, but it's written in a style which I don't enjoy at all. It's a purely functional, dry, uncompromising way of writing. It's a style that comes with risks and trade offs. This type of writing might come off as treating the reader as a passive agent that needs to be educated. And the key in doing so is applying well known devices to achieve that goal as quickly and efficiently as possible. Push the right buttons and you'll be able to build the desired sentiment with your audience. This shines through, for instance, in his second section - objectives - where his bullet points read as: > Open people’s eyes by proving the status quo wrong. > Identify key trends on a topic. Then use them to predict the future. While this isn't inherently wrong, these are bold tactics that create huge expectations at the start of the article. As an author, you better make sure you can deliver on your promise when you go down that road. Worst case, you may come of as presumptuous, even pretentious, and lose a big chunk of your target audience, while the readers that stick likely already are part of the parish you're preaching to. Writing only becomes better when you go on a journey of identifying your own intentions, and confronting your own trepidation. Why do you want to write? Who do you want to convince? Why do you want to convince them? What do you hope to achieve with your writing? What is your relationship with the reader and what defines your relationship with your readers? What is the importance to you, personally, in writing down your thoughts? What is it you want to express through your writing? Answering these questions as you practice your writing will provide the building blocks you need to define your style, your tone of voice, the pace of your writing and so on. Without a due amount of self reflection, authors might risk treating this type of writing into a golden hammer. Writing only becomes compelling if there's clear, genuine, personal investment in the content itself. Without it, "writing like Paul Graham or Derek Sivers" risks turning into a cargo cult like practice which produces boring, look-a-like writing.
直接陈述不如留白与暗示；诗性写法让读者自己得出结论，反而更有说服力。
这篇文章的风格让我想到维特根斯坦：短促、冷静、近乎数学陈述，毫无诗意。某些场合也许合适，但读起来很烦，我不会称它为"好写作"。这里推崇的"清晰"，前提是凡能思考的都能用文字直接表达而不失真——显然不成立。语言是很差的传情达意媒介，所以好作家的技巧是：不直接描述，而是铺设线索、暗示和整体氛围，让读者心里自行展开思考，抵达你想让他抵达的结论。这是诗性的方法，也就是"言外之意"。经验上它比直述有效得多，还因为读者会下意识把它当成自己的想法。做到这点需要优美的句子、节奏和意象，而本文费了很大劲（甚至迂腐地）把这扇门关上。
lqet查看英文原文
The style of this article reminds me of Wittgenstein: short, clinical, almost mathematical statements, with no poetical ambition whatsover. I understand that there might be situations in which such a style is appropriate, but this article is just very annoying to read. I would not definitely not call it "good writing". The kind of "clarity" presented here as good writing works well if you assume that everything that can be thought can be directly expressed in words, without substantial loss. This is clearly not the case. Language is a very poor medium to transmit throughts and feelings. So the "trick" every good writer uses is this: don't describe something directly, but instead try to construct some secondary clues, hints and a general atmosphere that will start a thought process in the reader's mind which leads to the conclusions you want to bring across. This is the poetic approach, it could also simply be called "writing between the lines". In my experience, this approach is a much more effective transmitter of ideas than trying to describe them directly, also for the simple reason that the reader will subconsiously assume that it is his own idea. You need beautiful prose, rhythm and images to achieve that, as those open up this additional dimension. The article undertakes considerable (even pedantic) effort to leave that dimension closed.
好的表达往往是在长度与趣味之间找到平衡点：短到不拖沓，长到说清一个想法。
我觉得什么算有吸引力的写作？HN 的评论。好的 HN 评论比推特长、比长文短，能在合理时间内表达一个有趣的想法，恰到好处；而且总带着一点隐含的、玩闹式的掉书袋，读起来更有趣。写这条评论本身也很有趣，因为连我自己都不知道我是不是在反讽。
young_unixer查看英文原文
You know what I consider engaging writing? HN comments Good HN comments are longer than tweets but shorter than essays, they strike a perfect balance of expressing an interesting idea in a reasonable time. And they always have an underlying, implicit amount of playful pedantry that makes them even more fun to read. This very comment was fun to write because not even I know if I'm being sarcastic or not.
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