Comment by nchmy
2 months ago
Have you considered that your thoughts on Writing Well might be wrong, and that's why people don't read your blog? I tuned out after realizing you have no idea what you're talking about.
2 months ago
Have you considered that your thoughts on Writing Well might be wrong, and that's why people don't read your blog? I tuned out after realizing you have no idea what you're talking about.
But is there a real connection between being wrong and not being read or are you yourself wrong ?
Furthermore, I doubt there are any chances "right/wrong" applies to aesthetical types of philosophical discussions.
> But is there a real connection between being wrong and not being read or are you yourself wrong ?
You don’t need to be a standup comedian yourself to spot bad comedy.
> Furthermore, I doubt there are any chances "right/wrong" applies to aesthetical types of philosophical discussions.
It’s hard to figure out what readers want because you don’t get direct feedback. But if you spend any amount of time in front of an audience, it becomes incredibly clear that some things work on stage better than others. I truly believe charisma is a learnable skill. By treating it as talent we deprive people who aren’t charismatic the chance to improve. Writing is just the same. Claiming that there’s no “right/wrong” here implies that it’s impossible to learn to write in a more engaging way. And that’s obviously false.
I did a clowning course a few years ago. In one silly exercise we all partnered up. Each couple were given a tennis ball, and we had to squish the ball between our foreheads so it wouldn’t fall. And like that, move around the room. Afterwards the teacher got half the class on stage and do it again, while everyone else watched. Then the audience got to vote on which couple we liked the most. It was surreal - almost everyone voted on the same pair. Those two in particular were somehow more interesting than everyone else. In that room there was a right and a wrong way to wordlessly hold a tennis ball between two people’s faces. And we all agreed on what it was.
> You don't need to be a standup comedian yourself to spot bad comedy.
I am not a native english speaker, I don't know anything about humourous form of language in that tongue.
Charisma depends on your audience, and audiences can differ quite a lot. There is no "right/wrong" because what please you as an audience may be considered wrong by another one. "Writing in a more engaging way" aka changing your conceptions of what is right/wrong in order to conform to the current cultural supremacia that is built up everyday by pushing some kind of fast-food culture or idk.
Your story is interesting, and I don't understand how you could be surprised : people that go to clowning classes can share the same taste about what is good/bad ? That's not a very surprising fact ! If you had told me that they were people from different cultures ...
Do you think Baudelaire cared about engagement ? You talked like there were no way taste could dramatically change to the point "ugly" is becoming "good" or vice-versa. Some of the writers and artists I like the most braved the taste™ of the different hegemonic culture of their time, and just trusted their own intuition of what they did want to express, say, create.
Marcel Duchamp is a great example of how a mid level joke can change the art world suddenly (and people's taste with it).
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