Leo Tolstoy on Why Your Writing Sucks
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- Опубліковано 9 жов 2024
- Leo Tolstoy's letters are a treasure trove of writing advice. In many of them, he advises young writers after reading their work. Today, we are going to examine the advice that Tolstoy gave in almost every single one of his letters to young writers.
Click here for my guide on Tolstoy's works!
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I’m the opposite. I write very minimally at first, like just the barebone of the plot, no soul, just facts. And if you read my first drafts you’d say “this is too rushed”. Because it is. But during editing I would add more sensory details and description and make it alive
Hemingway is good. His simplicity is created a benchmark for the importance of the story tha the writing style.
One of the most fun of rewriting for me at the moment is to attend where symbols occurred naturally in the first draft and develop their language. Verbs and nouns are gateways to a world of association, so if you use them right, they build patterns the reader can absorb.
Videos on syntax are SO helpful!!
But sentences are actually made better by adding to them. Rhetoric and thus great and memorable writing usually takes more words than the minimalist style. You could go for the Hemingway style, but Faulkner is better. In my view the asiatic style is better than the attic one. Put on all the bells and whistles you can think of.
Just signed up for your course! Love your content. Looking forward to it
Can’t be more grateful for this, keep it up
You are my writing cheerleader Ian, thanks :)
Will you look into Nabokov's essays? I feel he has a lot of ideas that writers can learn from
Great video, Ian. Looking forward to the writing community.
Hello. I have no problem writing all I think is necessary, but I fear other readers will feel that my story is incomplete. Since my story is about unrequited love, which can happen in any setting, I don't feel the need to make the characters interact with the environment that much, so I fear the reader will feel that the story happens in a void. Any advice? Thank you!
Most readers aren't dissecting yout work that much as long as it catches them and carries them along. The important thing is how ot makes them feel.
I watched 3, 4 minutes of the ludicrous VP debate, and then decided to go see if Ian had anything new.
I am enjoying your videos. I have a quirky story (actually, a series) that is what it is. But I'll see how I can apply your thinking to it. Thank you.
Hey Ian, I got your point about writing transformative novels. I find it very interesting, can you please make a video about this topic itself?
It is interesting to me that Tolstoy gave that advice, because after reading War and Peace (which I found to be a very insightful, well-written book), my main criticism is that I think he could've made the book several hundred pages shorter and it would have (in my opinion) been better. In that book he makes some very intelligent commentary about the nature of war, but he makes the same point over and over from all of these different angles, and for me it seemed excessive.
Yes Tolstoy advising not to write a book too long almost feels like Kafka telling us not to make your storywriting too absurdist.
I wouldn’t cut out a single episode in War and Peace. I might trim the essays he starts interjecting into the text for the back third. It’s like I get how history and god works, man, I picked that up from the rest of the book. Trust me just a little, guy!
You gotta make literary renaissance merch 😂
Why couldn’t I of had a teacher like you in high school? Then again I didn’t do as much reading highschool, I was just busy getting high.
I need more explanation on the verb rule. Is it okay if it's a word, that could potentially be a verb, but is in this case used as a noun instead? For instance, ''search'' is a noun and a verb, I might say ''the search for -'', or what if I use a word that's most often a noun in the style of a verb, like ''map'', - ''to map out X'', luckily I found I did use a lot of verbs, and I am writing more in philosophy than in story, so I'm not sure if that's good if you're not writing a narrative but in a logical format either. Is there editing rules to the style of philosophy?
Henry James used to write a lot of verbs into nouns, the process of nominalization, like saying, ''the writing of excess'' rather than ''writing excessively''.
I would say there seem to be flexible rules in all writing fields, especially philosophy, where Wittgenstein is not at all in the same style as Simone de Beauvoir.
Most Wittgenstein propositions can be quite visually striking in their use of verbs, ''being'', ''divide'', ''determined'', ''thought'', ''prejudge'', which are usually quite abstract verbs that leave up the determination of a general picture in the reader's mind which could potentially take many various different forms of shapes depending on the contingency of the experience and pre-judged set of notions of the reader's point of view.
Therefore the limit of the active concentration of the reader's mind to build the logical picture the philosopher builds is the limit of how far they can read. You might say the more difficult to read philosophy books offer more content in them but require greater effort to visualise, the visualisations change your framework for how you logically think.
Great post. Thank you.
Best title ever.
wow there's a lot of gems for beginners in this video!
Most people's writings can be revised down to nothing because you gotta have something to say. Bureaucratic non-speak is what most people have been trained in over last few decades in academia and institutions. It's meant to be speaking and writing without saying anything important. Watch Andrei Rublev and write like that movie is made. Film is inherently an exterior medium, that movie captures the internal by showing the exterior. Most good works do ...first person works feel weak these days.
Why writing sucks, is to be answered saying: because it is not visual enough. Means, not connected well.
I read Tolstoy’s 365 days of wisdom book and it was almost completely devoid of anything interesting. Made me not care to read his main works 🤷♂️
Does anyone know who the author is on the thumbnail to far left? I keep seeing her on his thumbnails and I’m just curious.
Rupi Kaur I think.
@@isakregal1879 Appreciate it.
Her poetry isn't very good but, she's actually very beautiful.
Ian would you give a shit if I mirrored your content/video style? Love the value punch
Cause I’m stupid.
I always feel bad I can't read his stuff in Russian.
Because I am extra schizo.😞