写作方法2012news.ycombinator.com编辑精选
Ask HN：如何写出好句子、好段落、好文章？
Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles?
导读
这篇 HN 讨论源于一个提问：如何写出好句子、段落或文章。提问者指出，常见的写作建议（主动语态、简洁、具体）往往停留在宏观规则，缺少对微观和宏观结构的指导；好的非虚构写作不仅要清晰简洁地表达思想，还要展示思想之间的重叠与互联。评论中给出了具体的句子打磨流程、读者心理学原则、每日练习和书单，对写作者很有实操价值。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
写句子时按“意思→清晰→语气→新颖→韵律”的顺序逐层提问修改，每次改动后重新从头检查。
- 02
让主语尽快接动词，把新信息放在句末强调位置，用旧信息在句首做衔接，先给上下文再引入新内容。
- 03
每天用随机词做10分钟感官写作（调动视觉、听觉、触觉、动觉和自我感知），并坚持至少30分钟博客写作。
- 04
学习故事结构（如《故事解剖》和《千面英雄》），并注意文章的潜台词和语境，避免只靠逻辑平铺直叙。
HN 评论精选
用五个问题按优先级反复打磨句子，可扩展到段落和文章。
我写句子时使用五个“石问”：1. 它是否表达了你的意思？2. 能否更清晰？3. 能否更符合整体语气？4. 能否更新颖？5. 能否更美（韵律）？这五个问题对应意义、清晰（含简洁）、语气、新颖（避免陈词滥调）和韵律（及其他美学）。我先从第一个问题开始依次问，逼自己思考答案；一旦有改动就回到第一个问题重新开始，直到时间限制。时间少就只关注意义，时间多就能玩味词语的声音。这些问题也可用于段落和文章层面。
diiq查看英文原文
When I write a sentence, I use five stone questions1. Does it say what you mean? Can it be clearer? Can it more closely match overall tone? Can it be made more novel? Can it be made more beautiful (prosody)? The five priorities at which the questions aim are meaning, clarity (which includes brevity), tone, novelty (avoiding cliche), and prosody (and other aesthetics). When I've first drafted a sentence, I start from the top of the list, and ask these questions in turn. Asking them forces me to think about an answer; it prevents laziness. As soon as the answer to question suggests a possible change, I make that change, and start again from the top. I repeat until time constraints force me onward. This is a great process, because if I have very little time, I end up concentrating only on meaning. If I have all the time in the world, I get to also play with the sound of the words, and the play of the tongue. Questions about meaning, clarity, tone, novelty, and beauty can also be fruitfully applied at paragraph and treatise levels; but my greatest concern is usually for the sentence. 1. http://diiq.org/five_stone_questions.html
遵循读者期望的心理学原则来组织句子和段落。
《The Science of Scientific Writing》彻底改变了我的写作。它讲的是读者期望的无意识心理学，并列出了要点：1. 主语后尽快跟动词；2. 把想强调的“新信息”放在强调位置；3. 把句子故事中的主体放在开头主题位置；4. 把“旧信息”放在主题位置以连接前后；5. 每个从句或句子的动作在其动词中表达；6. 通常先提供上下文再让读者考虑新内容；7. 确保内容的相对强调与结构引发的期望一致。
verdverm查看英文原文
The article "The Science of Scientific Writing" (www.unc.edu/~haipeng/teaching/sci.pdf) forever change my writing. It's writing for the unconscious psychology of the reader's expectations. It also has a great list of points to keep in mind while writing. 1. Follow a grammatical subject as soon as possible with its verb. 2. Place in the stress position the "new information" you want the reader to emphasize. 3. Place the person or thing whose "story" a sentence is telling at the beginning of the sentence, in the topic position. 4. Place appropriate "old information" (material already stated in the discourse) in the topic position for linkage backward and contextualization forward. 5. Articulate the action of every clause or sentence in its verb. 6. In general, provide context for your reader before asking that reader to consider anything new. 7. In general, try to ensure that the relative emphases of the substance coincide with the relative expectations for emphasis raised by the structure.
通过打破教条、每日感官写作和博客练习、学习故事结构来提升写作。
试试这些：1. 读《Adios Strunk And White》打破 Strunk & White 的教条思维；2. 每天做 object writing：用随机词，花10分钟用所有感官（包括动觉和自我感）来写；3. 每天写博客至少30分钟；4. 学习故事结构，推荐《The Anatomy of Story》和《The Hero with a Thousand Faces》；5. 研究潜台词和语境，程序员常在这两方面很差。
zedshaw查看英文原文
Try this out: 1. Get the book "Adios Strunk And White". Strunk And White is a horrible book to learn how to actually write English well. It's full of contradictions, has some bad grammar in it, doesn't follow its own advice, and tries to make English a proscriptive language rather than dynamic like it is. The Adios book basically breaks you out of the S&W mode of thinking and gets you thinking about different forms and techniques you can practice without being proscriptive. 2. Do object writing every day. There's a site http://objectwriting.com/ that has some, but you can also hit http://wordnik.com/random to get a random work. You then try to write for 10 minutes about or with that word using all your senses, including your kinetic and sense of self. 3. Blog something every day. Doesn't matter what it is but spend at least 30 minutes writing about something. 4. Learn about story structure. A good book is "The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller" and should fit the coder mind really well. Another book is Joseph Cambell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" to learn core mythical story structures. 5. Study subtext and context. If this paragraph is about what to study, the subtext is that I think most programmers can't write for shit because they're too logical, and the context is I'm telling people this on hacker news. Universally I find programmers terrible at both subtext and context of the written word. 6. Spend all the rest of your time learning to not censor yourself so that you have a voice that's yours, not the voice you think you should have. 7. Margaret Atwood had the best advice about being blocked. Paraphrased it's, "Blockage is either a problem of voice or structure. If it's voice, change who's telling the story. If it's structure, change the opening scene." She's damn right, but what do you expect from Margaret Atwood? Shitty advice? 8. Try writing in one form as if it's another. For example, write prose like it's poetry. Write poetry like its prose. 9. Get better at describing or saying the absurd. Stare at something and then describe it from unique points of view or in bizarre ways. 10. Keep a notebook and write down every idea you have, then try to make it happen. Also a great thing for songs and poems. I should actually do this more. There ya go.
推荐《Style》一书，因为它教人如何做到清晰而非只喊口号。
推荐 Joseph M. Williams 的《Style: Toward Clarity and Grace》。书评引用说：“告诉我要‘清晰’就像告诉我要‘击球方正’。我知道，但我不知道如何做。”这本书严谨地研究和教授清晰写作的要素。
spenrose查看英文原文
Here is a well-reviewed book on this topic: http://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-Chicago-Writing-Publishing/dp/0226899152/ From the editorial reviews: "Telling me to 'Be clear,' " writes Joseph M. Williams in Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, "is like telling me to 'Hit the ball squarely.' I know that. What I don't know is how to do it." If you are ever going to know how to write clearly, it will be after reading Williams' book, which is a rigorous examination of--and lesson in--the elements of fine writing.
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