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How to Write a Research Paper | A Beginner’s Guide

How to Write a Research Paper | A Beginner's Guide

Original Article Link: Scribbr

 

A research paper is a piece of academic writing that provides analysis, interpretation, and argument based on in-depth independent research.

Research papers are similar to academic essays, but they are usually longer and more detailed assignments, designed to assess not only your writing skills but also your skills in scholarly research. Writing a research paper requires you to demonstrate a strong knowledge of your topic, engage with a variety of sources, and make an original contribution to the debate.

This step-by-step guide takes you through the entire writing process, from understanding your assignment to proofreading your final draft.

Understand the assignment

Completing a research paper successfully means accomplishing the specific tasks set out for you. Before you start, make sure you thoroughly understanding the assignment task sheet:

  • Read it carefully, looking for anything confusing you might need to clarify with your professor.
  • Identify the assignment goal, deadline, length specifications, formatting, and submission method.
  • Make a bulleted list of the key points, then go back and cross completed items off as you’re writing.

Carefully consider your timeframe and word limit: be realistic, and plan enough time to research, write, and edit.

Choose a research paper topic

There are many ways to generate an idea for a research paper, from brainstorming with pen and paper to talking it through with a fellow student or professor.

You can try free writing, which involves taking a broad topic and writing continuously for two or three minutes to identify absolutely anything relevant that could be interesting.

You can also gain inspiration from other research. The discussion or recommendations sections of research papers often include ideas for other specific topics that require further examination.

Once you have a broad subject area, narrow it down to choose a topic that interests you, meets the criteria of your assignment, and is possible to research. Aim for ideas that are both original and specific:

  • A paper following the chronology of World War II would not be original or specific enough.
  • A paper on the experience of Danish citizens living close to the German border during World War II would be specific and could be original enough.

Conduct preliminary research

Note any discussions that seem important to the topic, and try to find an issue that you can focus your paper around. Use a variety of sources, including journals, books, and reliable websites, to ensure you do not miss anything glaring.

Do not only verify the ideas you have in mind, but look for sources that contradict your point of view.

  • Is there anything people seem to overlook in the sources you research?
  • Are there any heated debates you can address?
  • Do you have a unique take on your topic?
  • Have there been some recent developments that build on the extant research?

In this stage, you might find it helpful to formulate some research questions to help guide you. To write research questions, try to finish the following sentence: “I want to know how/what/why…”

Develop a thesis statement

A thesis statement is a statement of your central argument — it establishes the purpose and position of your paper. If you started with a research question, the thesis statement should answer it. It should also show what evidence and reasoning you’ll use to support that answer.

The thesis statement should be concise, contentious, and coherent. That means it should briefly summarize your argument in a sentence or two, make a claim that requires further evidence or analysis, and make a coherent point that relates to every part of the paper.

You will probably revise and refine the thesis statement as you do more research, but it can serve as a guide throughout the writing process. Every paragraph should aim to support and develop this central claim.

Create a research paper outline

A research paper outline is essentially a list of the key topics, arguments, and evidence you want to include, divided into sections with headings so that you know roughly what the paper will look like before you start writing.

A structure outline can help make the writing process much more efficient, so it’s worth dedicating some time to create one.

Write a first draft of the research paper

Your first draft won’t be perfect — you can polish later on. Your priorities at this stage are as follows:

  • Maintaining forward momentum — write now, perfect later.
  • Paying attention to clear organization and logical ordering of paragraphs and sentences, which will help when you come to the second draft.
  • Expressing your ideas as clearly as possible, so you know what you were trying to say when you come back to the text.

You do not need to start by writing the introduction. Begin where it feels most natural for you — some prefer to finish the most difficult sections first, while others choose to start with the easiest part. If you created an outline, use it as a map while you work.

Do not delete large sections of text. If you begin to dislike something you have written or find it doesn’t quite fit, move it to a different document, but don’t lose it completely — you never know if it might come in useful later.

Paragraph structure

Paragraphs are the basic building blocks of research papers. Each one should focus on a single claim or idea that helps to establish the overall argument or purpose of the paper.

Here is an example of a well-structured paragraph. Hover over the sentences to learn more.

Citing sources

It’s also important to keep track of citations at this stage to avoid accidental plagiarism. Each time you use a source, make sure to take note of where the information came from.

You can use our free citation generators to automatically create citations and save your reference list as you go.

Write the introduction

The research paper introduction should address three questions: What, why, and how? After finishing the introduction, the reader should know what the paper is about, why it is worth reading, and how you’ll build your arguments.

What? Be specific about the topic of the paper, introduce the background, and define key terms or concepts.

Why? This is the most important, but also the most difficult, part of the introduction. Try to provide brief answers to the following questions: What new material or insight are you offering? What important issues does your essay help define or answer?

How? To let the reader know what to expect from the rest of the paper, the introduction should include a “map” of what will be discussed, briefly presenting the key elements of the paper in chronological order.

Write a compelling body of text

The major struggle faced by most writers is how to organize the information presented in the paper, which is one reason an outline is so useful. However, remember that the outline is only a guide and, when writing, you can be flexible with the order in which the information and arguments are presented.

One way to stay on track is to use your thesis statement and topic sentences. Check:

  • topic sentences against the thesis statement;
  • topic sentences against each other, for similarities and logical ordering;
  • and each sentence against the topic sentence of that paragraph.

Be aware of paragraphs that seem to cover the same things. If two paragraphs discuss something similar, they must approach that topic in different ways. Aim to create smooth transitions between sentences, paragraphs, and sections.

Write the conclusion

The research paper conclusion is designed to help your reader out of the paper’s argument, giving them a sense of finality.

Trace the course of the paper, emphasizing how it all comes together to prove your thesis statement. Give the paper a sense of finality by making sure the reader understands how you’ve settled the issues raised in the introduction.

You might also discuss the more general consequences of the argument, outline what the paper offers to future students of the topic, and suggest any questions the paper’s argument raises but cannot or does not try to answer.

You should not:

  • Offer new arguments or essential information
  • Take up any more space than necessary
  • Begin with stock phrases that signal you are ending the paper (e.g. “In conclusion”)

The second draft

There are four main considerations when it comes to the second draft.

  1. Check how your vision of the paper lines up with the first draft and, more importantly, that your paper still answers the assignment.
  2. Identify any assumptions that might require (more substantial) justification, keeping your reader’s perspective foremost in mind. Remove these points if you cannot substantiate them further.
  3. Be open to rearranging your ideas. Check whether any sections feel out of place and whether your ideas could be better organized.
  4. If you find that old ideas do not fit as well as you anticipated, you should cut them out or condense them. You might also find that new and well-suited ideas occurred to you during the writing of the first draft — now is the time to make them part of the paper.

The revision process

The goal during the revision and proofreading process is to ensure you have completed all the necessary tasks and that the paper is as well-articulated as possible.

Global concerns

  • Confirm that your paper completes every task specified in your assignment sheet.
  • Check for logical organization and flow of paragraphs.
  • Check paragraphs against the introduction and thesis statement.

Fine-grained details

Check the content of each paragraph, making sure that:

  • each sentence helps support the topic sentence.
  • no unnecessary or irrelevant information is present.
  • all technical terms your audience might not know are identified.

Next, think about sentence structure, grammatical errors, and formatting. Check that you have correctly used transition words and phrases to show the connections between your ideas. Look for typos, cut unnecessary words, and check for consistency in aspects such as heading formatting and spellings.

 

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What to read to become a better writer

What to read to become a better writer

Original Article Link: The Economist

 

The first words are the hardest. For many of us writing is a slog. Words drip with difficulty onto the page—and frequently they seem to be the wrong ones, in the wrong order. Yet few pause to ask why writing is hard, why what we write may be bad, or even what is meant by “bad”. Fortunately for anyone seeking to become a better writer, the works recommended here provide enlightenment and reassurance. Yes, writing is hard. But if you can first grasp the origins and qualities of bad writing, you may learn to diagnose and cure problems in your own prose (keeping things simple helps a lot). Similarly heartening is the observation that most first drafts are second-rate, so becoming a skilled rewriter is the thing. These five works are excellent sources of insight and inspiration.

Politics and the English Language. By George Orwell. Available on the Orwell Foundation’s website

Starting with Orwell’s essay may seem as clichéd as the hackneyed phrases he derides in it. Published in 1946, this polemic against poor and perfidious writing will be familiar to many. But its advice on how to write is as apposite now as then. (Besides, it is short and free.) Orwell analyses the unoriginal, “dying” metaphors that still haunt the prose of academics, politicians, professionals and hacks. He lambasts the “meaningless words” and “pretentious diction” of his day; many of the horrors he cites remain common. To save writers from regurgitating these, Orwell proposes six now-canonical rules. The first five boil down to: prefer short, everyday words and the active voice, cut unneeded words and strive for fresh imagery. The sixth—“break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous”—displays the difficulty of pinning down something as protean as language. But this has not stopped others trying.

Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. By Joseph M. Williams and Joseph Bizup. Pearson Education; 246 pages; $66.65 and £43.99

In “Style”, Joseph Williams, who taught English at the University of Chicago, instructs writers on how to revise their scribblings into something clearer, more concise and coherent. (Aptly for a text about rewriting, it is the latest in a long line of reworkings of Williams’s teachings on the subject, which appeared under various titles.) Unlike Orwell, who devised high-level rules for writers to wield by instinct, Williams proposes nuanced “principles” and shows how to apply them. Whereas, for instance, Orwell exhorted writers to “never use the passive where you can use the active”, Williams explains how passives can sometimes help create a sense of flow. This forms part of his coverage of “cohesion” and “coherence”, which could upend the way you write. Insightful, too, is Williams’s guidance on pruning prose and on the ills and virtues of nominalisations—nouns formed from verbs (as “nominalisation” is from “nominalise”), which often send sentences awry. Such technical details, summary sections and practice exercises make “Style” the most textbook-like work on this list. It may also be the most useful.

On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. By William Zinsser. HarperCollins; 321 pages; $17.99 and £13.99

Less overtly practical than “Style” but far more fun to read is “On Writing Well”. William Zinsser, who was an American journalist and teacher, is a witty commentator on the writer’s craft with a talent for aphorisms (eg, “the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components”). He embraces slippery subjects like “rhythm” and “voice” that tend to defy rules or principles. But he purveys practical wisdom, too, diagnosing stylistic blunders, exploring genres from memoir to business writing, and analysing passages from well-known works and his own journalism. Zinsser is always encouraging. Introducing a marked-up extract from drafts of “On Writing Well”, a spider’s web of self-edits, he counsels: “Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair.” Zinsser also gives fellow writers much to emulate. His paragraph-ending sentences are a marvel.

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. By Steven Pinker. Penguin; 368 pages; and $18 and £10.99

An expert on words and brains, Steven Pinker wants to help writers write better by getting them into the minds of their readers. The celebrated psycholinguist argues that “the curse of knowledge” is the biggest cause of bad writing: like children, writers forget that others often do not know what they know. Bad writers tend to dwell on irrelevant points and make logical connections that are logical only to them. Their prose—the type beloved of academics, bureaucrats and businessfolk—abounds in abstract nouns and luxuriates in long sentences. By contrast, good writing (“classic style”, in Mr Pinker’s phrase) assembles concrete words into straightforward sentences that readers find simple to grasp. Why should this be so? Using striking and funny examples, Mr Pinker shows how working memory, which stores syntactic constructions until they are complete, is easily swamped. In closing, he joins the battle over English usage, as our full review of “The Sense of Style” describes.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. Merriam-Webster; 989 pages; $29.95

Every writer needs a reference book to look up troublesome issues of grammar and usage; no one has memorised them all. The quality of such books has improved in recent years, but one from the 1990s has earned its keep since then. Merriam-Webster (mwdeu) is America’s best-known dictionary publisher. This guide contains not exactly definitions, though, but mini-essays: on individual words (can “data” be singular?), confusingly similar ones (such as “comprise” and “compose”) and grammatical conundrums (such as the split infinitive, dangling modifiers and so on).

What distinguishes mwdeu is its relentless empiricism. Where a debatable claim about correct usage is made, it surveys the history of other guides and their recommendations, as well as going to Merriam-Webster’s huge bank of citations from literature, non-fiction and journalism. In many cases, a proposed rule (such as the ban on split infinitives) is shown to be baseless. But in other cases, the guide is conservative. On the “comma fault” (joining two independent clauses with nothing more than a comma), mwdeu finds it in some great authors’ literary work, but warns readers that “you probably should not try the device unless you are very sure of what you want it to accomplish.” Good sense all round

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How to Write a Book (with Tactics from Bestsellers)

How to Write a Book (with Tactics from Bestsellers)

Original Article Link: Reedsy Blog
Written By: Reedsy Team

 

How to write a book:

1. Start with a book idea you love
2. Research by reading genre-prominent books
3. Outline the story
4. Write the opening sentence
5. Write the first draft
6. Set a schedule with achievable goals
7. Find a good writing space
8. Pick a “distraction-free” writing software
9. Finish your draft
10. Edit the manuscript
11. Publish your book for readers to buy

There’s a long, exciting road ahead. So let’s get started.

1. Start with a book idea you love

 

The one thing you absolutely need to write a book is, of course, an idea. If you don’t have that, you’ll never get past the first page of your draft.

You may already know what you want to write about, or you may be at a total loss. Either way, you can settle on a “big book idea” by asking yourself a few simple questions:

  • What do I want to write about?
  • What do I feel is important to write about?
  • Who will want to read about this story/subject?
  • Will I be able to carry out this idea effectively?

Your answers to these questions will help you narrow it down to your best options. For example, if you have several different ideas for a book, but only one that you’re truly passionate about and feel you can pull off, then voilà — there’s your premise!

On the other hand, if you lack ideas, these questions should steer you in a firmer direction. Think about the kinds of books you love to read, as well as books that have made a significant impact on you. In all likelihood, you’ll want to write a book in a similar vein.

Tools to help you find an idea

If you’re grasping at straws, consider using creative writing prompts or a plot generator to get the ball rolling! You might stumble upon an interesting concept or story element that sparks a “big idea” for your book. (And if you’re still uninspired even after trying these tools, you may want to reconsider whether you really want to write a book after all.)

2. Research by reading genre-prominent books

Once you’ve found your big idea, the next step is to research your genre. Again, if you’re writing the book you like to read, you already have a leg up! Reading books in your genre is by far the best way to learn how to write in that genre yourself.

But if not, you’ll want to select a couple of representative titles and analyze them. How long are they and how many chapters do they have? What does the story structure look like? What are the major themes? Perhaps most importantly, do you think you can produce a book with similar elements?

Find out what people are reading

You should also conduct market research on Amazon to determine the most popular books in your genre. If you want your book to succeed, you’ll have to contend with these bestsellers.

Then read those books’ blurbs to figure out what really sells. What do they all have in common, and why might readers find them appealing? Does your book hold up to these standards?

Finally, think about how your book can offer something NEW. For example, if you’re writing a psychological thriller, will there be a particularly sneaky unreliable narrator, or maybe a series of twists that the reader never sees coming? If you’re writing a nonfiction book, do you have a unique take on the subject, or a particularly deep well of knowledge? And so on.

Going above and beyond is the only way to give your book a chance in today’s hyper-competitive market. So don’t skimp on the genre research, because this will tell you where the bar is and how you can surpass it.

3. Outline the story

If you want to write a great story, you need to outline it first. This is especially important if it’s your first book, since you need a solid blueprint to rely on when you get stuck! (Because believe us, you will get stuck.)

So how do you go about creating that outline for your book? We actually have a whole other post on the subject, but here are the essentials:

  • Pick a format that works for you. There are so many different types of outlines: the free-flowing mind map, the rigorous chapter-and-scene outline, the character-based outline, and so on. If one approach doesn’t work for you, try another! Any kind of plan is better than none.
  • Have a beginning, middle, and end. Way too many authors go into writing a book with a strong notion of how their story should start… yet their middle is murky and their ending, nonexistent. Take this time to flesh them out and connect them to one another. Remember: the best books have endings that feel “earned,” so you should try to be building toward it from the start!
  • Consider your conflict points. Conflict is at the heart of any good book — it draws in the reader, conjures tension and emotion, and ultimately reflects the themes and/or message you want to convey. You don’t have to know exactly where your conflict will manifest, but you should have a pretty good grasp of how it works throughout your book.
  • Get to know your characters. If you haven’t done much character development yet, your outline is the perfect opportunity to do so. How will your characters interact in the story, and how will these interactions demonstrate who they are and what matters to them?

If you’d like to outline your story directly in a writing app, we recommend using the pre-made templates in the free Reedsy Book Editor. Simply create your account with one click below and start creating the building blocks of your story — right away. 

4. Write the opening sentence 

Let’s get into the actual writing and make a dent in your first draft. One of the most important parts of writing a book is starting the story! It’s no exaggeration to say your first few pages can make or break your book — if these pages aren’t good enough, many readers will lose interest, possibly never returning to your book again.

First off, you need an opening hook that grabs the reader’s attention and makes it impossible for them to look away. Take a look at the first lines of these hit bestsellers:

“Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” — Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

 

“Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery.” — The Da Vinci Code

 

“If all the Saturdays of 1982 can be thought of as one day, I met Tracey at 10 a.m. on that Saturday, walking through the sandy gravel of a churchyard, each holding our mother’s hand.” — Swing Time

All of these books fall into different genres, yet all their opening lines do the same thing: capture the reader’s attention. You can imitate them by making a similarly strong, slightly furtive statement in your opener!

From there, your job is to maintain the reader’s interest by heightening the stakes and inciting the plot. You should also make the reader care about the main characters by giving them distinct personalities and motivations. (Note that “main” is a key descriptor here; never introduce more than a couple of characters at a time!)

Of course, there are infinite ways to write your first chapter. You might have to experiment with lots of different opening lines, even opening scenes, to find the right balance — but it’s worth the effort to set the stage perfectly.

5. Write the first draft

Many writers believe that the key to writing an amazing book is style: impressive vocabulary, elaborate sentences, figurative language that would make Shakespeare swoon.

We’re here to dissuade you of that notion. While style is great (as long as your prose doesn’t start to become purple), substance is far more important when writing a book — hence why you should focus primarily on your plot, characters, conflict(s), and themes.

Make sure your book is all killer, no filler

Of course, that’s easier said than done, especially once you’ve already started writing. When you get to a patchily outlined section, it’s tempting to keep writing and fill out the page with literary gymnastics. But that’s exactly what this content is: filler. And if you have too much of it, readers will become frustrated and start to think you’re pretentious.

This is another reason why outlining is so important. You need to KNOW your story in order to stay on track with it! But besides outlining, here are a few more tips for making substance a priority:

  • Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action. This advice comes straight from Kurt Vonnegut, and it’s 100% true: if a sentence doesn’t accomplish one or both of those things, try removing it. If the passage still makes sense, leave it out.
  • Be conscious of your pacing. Slow pacing is a symptom of excess description. If the events of your book seem to move like molasses, you’re probably using too much style and not enough substance.
  • Use a writing tool to reduce flowery language. Speaking of great American novelists, Hemingway is a fantastic tool to help you write like the man himself! Simply paste your writing into the app and Hemingway will suggest ways to make your prose more concise and effective.

Keep readers in mind while writing

Want to write a book that people will really enjoy (and buy)? Well, this is pretty much the cardinal rule: you should always be thinking about your audience and trying to write “reader-first.”

For example, sometimes you’ll have to write scenes that aren’t very exciting, but that serve the overall story arc. Don’t rush through these scenes just to get them over with! Even if they don’t seem interesting to you, they contribute to the reader’s experience by building tension and preserving the pacing — and the reader deserves to relish those things.

Create ‘fake’ people who will want to read your book

When considering your readership, you should also keep a proto-persona in mind for marketing purposes. These are constructed personalities that marketers use to better understand their target customers. The more your book can cater to this hypothetical reader, the easier it will be to sell!

Maybe you’re writing a true-crime account for zealous true crime readers. Such readers will have pored over countless criminal cases before, so you need to include unique details to make your case stand out, and craft an extra-compelling narrative to engage them.

6. Set a schedule with achievable goals

Let’s move on to practical ways that you can improve your writing habits. Word count goals play a huge part in creating an effective writing process, especially if you’re trying to finish your book in a certain amount of time.

You should create word count goals for both your individual sessions and per week — or per month, if that’s how you prefer to think about your writing output. For relatively novice writers, we’d recommend the following word count goals:

  • 500-750 words per day
  • 1,500-2,500 words per week
  • 6,000-10,000 words per month

These goals are based on a pattern of 3-4 sessions per week, which is reasonable for a beginner, but still enough to make commendable progress. Even if you only follow our minimum recommendations — 500 words per session at 3 sessions per week — you can still easily finish your book in less than a year!

Speeding up the writing process

If you’re looking for how to write a book as fast as possible, your word count goals should look a little more like this:

  • 1,500-2,000 words per session
  • 9,000-15,000 words per week
  • 35,000-50,000 words per month

The figures above adhere roughly to NaNoWriMo, the event in which participants write an average of 1,667 words/day to complete a 50,000-word book in one month. It’s hard work, but it’s definitely possible to write a book that quickly; hundreds of thousands of people do so every year!

But as any author who’s done NaNo can attest, it’s also a pretty grueling experience. Most authors find it exhausting to write such great quantities for so many days in a row — and they still have to edit copiously once they’re done.

If this is your first book, make sure you take your time, set manageable word goals, and gradually build to bigger goals.

Use writing sessions to establish a schedule

Having a healthy writing routine is the only way you’ll actually hit those word count goals — not to mention it fosters a better relationship with writing overall! To establish a healthy routine, ask yourself these baseline questions first:

  • When do I have the most free time in the day/week?
  • What time of the day do I tend to be most productive?
  • How can I space out my writing sessions effectively?
  • Will I realistically be able to balance my writing goals with other responsibilities?

The best way to set up your routine is to take advantage of your pre-existing schedule and natural patterns. So for example, if you already go to the gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays, perhaps the best time to write would be on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Or if you find yourself most creative late at night (many of us do!), you can plan late-night sessions over the weekend/before your day off, so you can sleep in the next day.

Ultimately, you just want a well-balanced writing routine that facilitates productivity, yet keeps you from burning out. If you find that writing for several days in a row is too much for you, space out your sessions more or try to shake things up by moving to a new writing space. If you can’t keep up with your goals, it’s okay to reduce them a little.

Yes, writing a lot is important, but it’s not more important than your mental health! Remember that writing a book is a marathon, not a sprint, and that a consistent, healthy approach is absolutely vital. Here are some tips for making the most of your writing routine.

Don’t skip more than one session in a row

Life happens, and sometimes you won’t be able to make a planned writing session. However, unless it’s a serious emergency, you should try to get back in the saddle for your next session. Otherwise, you’ll lose too much progress and feel discouraged, which typically leads to skipping even more writing sessions, and eventually giving up.

Use a site blocker to stay focused

Distraction is the enemy of routine, and the biggest distraction in our modern world is the Internet. To that end, download a site-and-app blocker to use during your writing sessions so you won’t be enticed by social media or adorable cat memes. We’d recommend Freedom, as you can schedule block sessions in advance and even keep track of your productivity within the app.

7. Find a good writing space

Another major component of how to write a book is where you write, hence why it gets a separate section. If you want to complete an entire book, you absolutely must find a calm, focused space for your writing.

This may be in your house, a coffee shop, a library, a co-working space — wherever you can work productively and without interruptions. It should also be a place that you can access easily and go often. Working from home is the most convenient option in this sense, but it may be difficult if you have family around, or if you don’t have a designated “room of one’s own” (i.e. an actual office, or at least a desk).

What does a good writing space look like?

Try out different locations to see what works for you. Indeed, you may find that you like to rotate writing spaces because it keeps you energetic and your writing fresh! But wherever you go, do your best to make the space:

  • Quiet (noise-canceling headphones can be very helpful)
  • Clean (no clutter, especially if you do chores to procrastinate)
  • Non-distracting (nothing too fun around to tempt you away from writing; turn off your phone so other people won’t bother you)
  • Your own (cultivate a nice atmosphere in your home office with posters and plants, or simply take the same seat at your local café every time — truly carve out a “dedicated writing space”)

8. Pick a “distraction-free” writing software

We’ve already talked about a few different pieces of software to help you with writing a book. But if you haven’t found the right app or program yet, never fear — there’s plenty more where those came from!

Book writing software is a topic we’ve actually written an entire post about, but it’s worth touching on a few of our favorite writing tools here:

Scrivener 🖋️

Scrivener is the downloadable writing software of choice for many writers, and for good reason: it has an exceptional interface and tons of useful features. You can outline chapters with its drag-and-drop system, create labels for elements you want to track, and use various templates to plan AND format your book. If you want to feel like a true professional, you can’t go wrong with Scrivener — and it’s even free to try for 30 days.

Milanote 💭

Or if you’re not much for outlines because your thoughts are all over the place, Milanote can help. The super-flexible interface allows you to “mind map” just as you would longhand, and rearrange different sections as you please. When writing, you can see all your notes at once, so you don’t have to stress about forgetting things. It’s a very refreshing, intuitive way approach that’s worth a try for all disorganized authors.

FocusWriter ✍️

Speaking of intuitive, what’s more intuitive than simply writing on a piece of paper, no distractions — just like the old days? Meet FocusWriter, which allows you to do exactly that. The full-screen default interface is a sheet of paper on a wooden desk: no bells, no whistles, no distractions whatsoever. Seriously, this one will get you in the zone.

The Reedsy Book Editor 📖

We couldn’t leave out one of the coolest word processing, editing, and formatting tools on the market! All jokes aside, the RBE lets you cleanly format your book as you go, so you can watch it take shape in real-time. You can also add sections for front matter and back matter and invite collaborators to edit your text. Plus you can toggle on goal reminders to make sure that you’re on track with your writing schedule. Once you finish writing, you can export the files of your book. But don’t take our word for it: you can try the RBE for free right here.

9. Finish your draft

Getting into the groove of writing a book can be difficult. When there are a million different things to distract and discourage you, how can you keep going with your writing routine and finish your book?

Based on ours and other writers’ experience, here are a few motivational strategies for you to try:

  • Make a list of reasons why you want to write a book. Having a tangible reminder of your true purpose is one of the best ways to motivate yourself, so think hard: Do you want to send an important message? Reach a certain group of people? Or do you simply yearn to tell this particular story? Write down all your reasons and keep them as an ace in the hole for when your motivation dwindles.
  • Find someone else to write with you. Getting a writing buddy is another great way to stay motivated! For one thing, you get some camaraderie during this process; for another, it means you can’t slack off too much. So ask your writer friends if they’d like to meet up regularly, or join an online writing community. With the latter, just make sure you exchange progress updates and proof that you’re actually writing!
  • Reward yourself at important milestones. Sometimes the best motivation is the prospect of treating yourself. If you respond well to this kind of motivation, set a goal, a deadline, and a reward for meeting it: “If I can write 10,000 more words by the end of the month, I’ll go out for an amazing, fancy dinner with all my friends.” This kind of goal is also helpful because you can tell your friends about it, and that very act will hold you accountable.

Don’t give up

Remember how we said you’d inevitably get stuck? Well, that’s what this step is all about: what to do when you hit a wall. Whether it’s a tricky plot hole, an onslaught of insecurity, or a simple lack of desire to write, all writers experience setbacks from time to time.

There are countless ways to overcome writer’s block, from freewriting to working on your characters to taking a shower (yes, that’s a legitimate tip!). However, here are some of the most effective techniques we’ve found:

  • Revisit your outline. This will jog your memory as to planned story elements you’ve forgotten — which may help you find the missing piece.
  • Try writing exercises. It’s possible you just need to get the words flowing, and then you can jump get right back into your book. Luckily for you, we have a whole host of great writing exercises right here!
  • Share your experience with friends. This is another great role for your writing buddy to fill, but you can easily talk about writer’s block with your non-writing friends, too. If you’re struggling, it always helps to vent and bounce ideas off other people.
  • Take a short break to do something else. Yes, sometimes you need to step away from the keyboard and clear your head. But don’t take more than a day or so, or else you’ll lose momentum and motivation.

Most of all, remember to take setbacks in stride and not let them get you down. As platitudinous as that might sound, it’s true: the only thing that can stop you from writing a book is if you, well, stop writing. So keep calm and carry on — every day brings new opportunities and you’ll get through this.

Your aim at this point is not to emerge with an instant masterpiece. The quality almost always emerges in the edit.

10. Edit the manuscript

You can write all day, all night, to your heart’s content… but if no one else likes what you’ve written, you might end up heartbroken instead. That’s why it’s crucial to request feedback on your book, starting early and from as many sources as possible.

Begin by asking your friends and fellow writers to read just a few chapters at a time. However, apply their suggestions not only to those chapters, but wherever relevant. For example, if one of your friends says, “[Character A] is acting weird in this scene,” pay extra attention to that character to ensure you haven’t misrepresented them anywhere else.

Once your book is finished, you’re ready for some more intensive feedback. Consider getting a beta reader to review your entire book and provide their thoughts. You may want to hire an editor to give you professional feedback as well. (Find out about the different types of editing, and which type your book might need, in this post.)

Finally, it might sound obvious, but we’ll say it anyway for all you stubborn writers out there: feedback is useless if you don’t actually listen to it. Separate yourself from your ego and don’t take anything personally, because no one wants to offend you — they’re just trying to help.

11. Publish your book for readers to buy

You’ve persevered to the end at last: brainstormed, outlined, and written a draft that you’ve edited extensively (based on feedback, of course). Your book has taken its final form, and you couldn’t be prouder. So what comes next?

Well, if you’ve taken our advice about catering to your target readers, you may as well give publishing a shot! We have a full guide to publishing right here — and if you’re thinking about traditional publishing, read this article to decide which is right for you.

Get help from publishing professionals

Publishing is another rigorous process, of course. But if you’ve come this far to find out how to write a book, you can pretty much do anything! Invest in stellar cover design, study up on marketing, or start writing an irresistible query letter that will get you an offer.

Whichever route you take, one thing will remain true: you’ve written a book, and that’s an incredible achievement. Welcome to the 0.1% — and may the next book you write be even greater than the first

 

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A (Very) Simple Way to Improve Your Writing

A (Very) Simple Way to Improve Your Writing

Original Article Link: Harvard Business Review
Written By: Mark Rennella

 

Summary.   

The “one idea” rule is a simple concept that can help you sharpen your writing, persuade others by presenting your argument in a clear, concise, and engaging way. What exactly does the rule say?

  • Every component of a successful piece of writing should express only one idea.
  • In persuasive writing, your “one idea” is often the argument or belief you are presenting to the reader. Once you identify what that argument is, the “one-idea rule” can help you develop, revise, and connect the various components of your writing.
  • For instance, let’s say you’re writing an essay. There are three components you will be working with throughout your piece: the title, the paragraphs, and the sentences.
  • Each of these parts should be dedicated to just one idea. The ideas are not identical, of course, but they’re all related. If done correctly, the smaller ideas (in sentences) all build (in paragraphs) to support the main point (suggested in the title)

Most advice about writing looks like a long laundry list of “do’s and don’ts.” These lists can be helpful from time to time, but they’re hard to remember … and, therefore, hard to depend on when you’re having trouble putting your thoughts to paper. During my time in academia, teaching composition at the undergraduate and graduate levels, I saw many people struggle with this.

Often, students would begin with strong ideas, but have trouble focusing their thoughts when it came time to translating those ideas into words  — resulting in essays with loose, distracted, and ultimately, confusing arguments. It’s not that their ideas weren’t valuable. There were just too many of them to digest at once.

Luckily, there is a (memorable) strategy that can help any level of writer greatly improve their work. I call it the one-idea rule: Every component of a successful piece of writing should express only one idea.

You may be familiar with some of the variations of this rule, like the Pyramid Principle or Purdue’s rules of thumb for paragraphs. After all, every great essay, article, or written work is grounded by a foundational idea — one that equally inspires the author and their audience.

In persuasive writing, which we will focus on here, your one idea is often the argument or belief you are presenting to the reader. Once you identify what that argument is, the “one-idea rule” can help you develop, revise, and connect the various components of your writing in a clear and convincing way.

For instance, let’s say you’re writing an essay. There are three components you’ll be working with throughout your piece: the title, the paragraphs, and the sentences. Each of these parts should be dedicated to just one idea. The ideas are not identical, of course, but they’re all related. If done correctly, the smaller ideas (in sentences) all build (in paragraphs) to support the main point (suggested in the title).

Why should you follow this rule?

There are many advantages to using the one-idea rule, but I’ll point out three that are particularly important:

You will sharpen your focus. Many written pieces fail to be persuasive because they include too many ideas rather than too few. Having a clear end goal will keep you disciplined.

You will make more discoveries (and have more fun). Focus gives you freedom. When you have one specific idea you’re trying to portray, you can then experiment more broadly throughout your piece or even take a little detour without losing sight of your main point. You can dig more deeply into certain details, as long as they are related to the title, or your main idea.

You will become more confident. Knowing that you’re following a rule that describes all good writing gives you a chance to assess the quality of your own work, as well as the work of others — including your peers, your colleagues, and even well-known authors. Great writing is a skill, and once you understand how to structure papers in a compelling way, you’ll gain the confidence to decide what makes a piece truly interesting and persuasive.

How to Get Started

This rule may sound simple, but it takes practice to master.

So, what should you do the next time you begin an assignment, and you face the terrifying abyss of a blank page and a blinking cursor? How can you identify what your big “idea” is?

These three steps can help sharpen your focus.

1) Find an angle.

Maybe you’re writing on a topic that was assigned to you by an editor or a professor. Maybe you’re brainstorming a piece to pitch to a media outlet. Or maybe there is a subject you want to tackle but your focus feels too broad. Whatever the case, you have to come up with an angle — a clear and refreshing perspective on the topic at hand that presents a specific, unique, and well-supported argument or “idea.”

If you don’t know what argument you want to make, then you’re in trouble. To figure it out, ask yourself questions about the topic that tease out details related to it:

  • What do I know about this topic?
  • What do I not know about this topic but want to learn?
  • What inspires me about this topic?
  • Would others also find these issues interesting?

As you answer these questions, useful insights, questions, and unknowns will arise. For instance, perhaps you are interested in writing about “Mental Health on College Campuses.” Answering the questions listed above, may lead you down a path of discovery:

  • What do I know about this topic?
    • “I’ve seen on the news that many college students are depressed or dropping out.”
  • What do I not know about this topic but want to learn?
    • “I don’t know many details about mental health issues on college campuses specific to this pandemic.”
  • What inspires me about this topic?
    • “It would be great to discover new solutions to the problem or find the best existing solutions, and explain them clearly to readers.”
  • Would others also find these issues interesting?
    • Students themselves, and institutions trying to support them, may be interested.

From here, you might start out with the goal of writing about “solutions to mental health problems faced by college students.” That’s a good start, but it’s still too vague, and may be challenging for you (someone just beginning to study the issue) to tackle effectively.

The good news is that you can narrow down your idea. Coming up with a headline is a great way to do this. For example, you might title your paper, “3 Ways Colleges Can Address Mental Health Issues Among Students.” Notice how your focus immediately narrows. This will help you stay on track and investigate a clearer solution to the problem you have identified.

2) Find evidence.

Now that you have chosen a single idea or issue to discuss, assemble facts, evidence, or data that may be useful or surprising to others, and that also support the point you want to make. Sticking with our original example, research a few ideas about “mental health in college” to draw a reader’s attention:

  • Stats about college enrollment and dropout rates in the last two years
  • Percentage of students feeling isolated
  • Greatest mental health challenges students are facing
  • What universities are currently doing to help
  • What universities are not doing to help
  • Preventive measures for mental health problems
  • Stigmas around discussing mental health
  • Impacts of virtual class vs. in-person class

As you research, a few of these ideas may jump out to you as directly supportive of your argument. Be sure to record them. Likewise, take note of any evidence you come across that counters your argument. If you are able to call out and address counterpoints before the reader discovers them, you will strengthen your main idea.

While you’re brainstorming details to include in your essay, be careful to exclude examples that aren’t obviously related to that main idea (e.g., cafeteria food on campus), unless that information provides some pertinent information or context (e.g., bad food depresses students).

3) Outline.

Organize the pertinent evidence or examples you have discovered to create an outline for your piece. If all of your examples are obviously related to the main topic, then it will be relatively easy to order them into a story with a beginning, middle, and end. The main elements of the outline are marked in bold:

  1. Main Idea / Title: 3 Ways Colleges Can Address Mental Health Issues Among Students
  2. Explore Related / Supporting Issues
    • Problems and paradoxes
      • Statistics about enrollment and drop-out rates in the last two years
      • Students feeling isolated despite being grouped in dorms
      • Stigma around talking openly about mental health
      • How should instructors help and reach out to students?
    • Responses and resolutions
      • Preventive measures for mental health problems at school
      • Creating psychologically safe spaces on campus
      • Using Zoom to help people wherever they are
      • Finding novel ways to gather
  3. Conclusion: Colleges can do more to create safe spaces for students to vocalize their mental health needs. The more students who seek help, the more lives will be improved. Those students will walk away with skills that can help them now, and in the future.

You can gut check your idea by sharing your outline with an audience, like your trusted peers, family members, or friends. Pay attention to their reactions. Ask them questions about what they liked or didn’t; what they didn’t understand; what they want to know more about. These are exactly the kinds of question about an essay’s main idea that you should ask yourself each time you work on a paper. Then, adjust your outline (including the title when appropriate) based on what you learned from your discussions.

This should be enough to get you off to a strong start. If you continue to practice, you can turn this exercise into a productive habit. It can be particularly useful when you face an assignment that seems either uninteresting or too difficult. Find just one foundational idea that interests you about any subject, and you will be able to summon the motivation, energy, and direction required to finish the task, and do it well.

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15 Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills Dramatically

15 Ways to Improve Your Writing Skills Dramatically

Original Article Link: Grammarly
Written By: Karen Hertzberg

Learning a variety of tricks to improve writing skills isn’t as difficult as you may think. We’ve put together a list of steps to help you make dramatic improvements to the quality of your writing in short order.

Becoming a better writer takes practice, and you’re already practicing. No, seriously—you write a lot. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a writer, you put thoughts into text more often than you realize. At the very least, you write emails—a lot of emails—post on social media, make updates to your résumé and LinkedIn profile, and message your friends. If your job requires it, you also create things like reports, presentations, newsletters . . . it’s a long list.

So, you’re already writing. Now, to improve writing is just a matter of becoming conscious of the things you can do to give your text more structure and make your copy crisp and readable with a conversational style.

Give your writing structure

It’s fine to rattle off a stream of consciousness when you’re writing in your journal, but if you actually want to communicate with others you’ll need to bring some order to those rambling thoughts. Here are some tips.

1 Make sure you’re clear on the concepts you’re writing about.

Albert Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” Before you start writing, take a moment to mentally explain the concept to the six-year-old who lives inside your head. (We all have one, don’t we?) If your writing goal is to achieve a specific result, ask yourself what that result should be. Before you dive into writing, have a clear purpose. Then stick to it.

2 If the message is complex, outline it.

It doesn’t take much thought-organizing to compose the average text message, but if you’re writing something more complex, with multiple angles, questions, or requests, get all that stuff sorted before you sit down to write. Making an outline, or even just some quick notes about the topics you want to cover, can save you time answering clarifying questions later. 

3 Anticipate your readers’ questions.

Improving writing involves putting yourself in your readers’ shoes (you could call it empathy). Do they have enough context to understand what you’ve written for them? If not, fill in the blanks. But . . .

4 Don’t over-explain.

If you’ve taken the time to organize your thoughts in advance, you should be able to keep things simple. The idea is to give readers just enough to understand what you’re communicating without overwhelming them with trivial details. If you find yourself getting in the weeds with more details than you need, look at each piece of information and ask whether it’s essential to help your reader understand your message. If not, get rid of it.

Tighten your writing

We sometimes write like we talk, and that can be a good thing. It keeps our writing conversational (more on that in a moment.) But rambling, wordy writing makes your text hard to read, and it can make you sound as though you lack conviction. Start practicing these tips to improve your writing skills.

5 Go easy on the prepositional phrases

When I was a neophyte writer, someone showed me how prepositional phrases made my writing unnecessarily wordy and complex. It was an epiphany!

Prepositions aren’t difficult to understand, but the concept does require some explanation. Get smart about prepositions here, and then try to simplify them whenever it makes sense. Your writing will get a much-needed clarity boost.

6 Eliminate the filler words and phrases

Some words show up in our writing all the time, and yet they don’t contribute much of anything. Although these filler words and phrases sometimes add color or even meaning, most of the time they contribute nothing but clutter. Here are thirty-one of them you can eliminate right now.

7 Don’t pad weak words with adverbs.

Adverbs—those words that often end in -ly—modify verbs and sometimes adjectives. They’re okay once in a while, but when you find yourself using them all the time, you’re probably making weak word choices. Instead of “ran really fast” write “sprinted.” Was something “extremely funny”? Nah, it was “hilarious.” The scenery may have been “very beautiful,” but your writing’s going to shine if you refer to it as “gorgeous,” “lush,” “verdant,” or “bucolic.”

Make your writing more conversational

8 Stick with simple words.

Bestselling author John Grisham said, “There are three types of words: (1) words we know; (2) words we should know; (3) words nobody knows. Forget those in the third category and use restraint with those in the second.” There’s a difference between having a rich vocabulary and dropping million-dollar words into your writing just to show off. Unless it’s your intent to be poetic, keep your language simple and direct.

I’m certain sure you are able to can deliver the quality of work we’re looking for. Let’s discuss talk about it in our meeting next week.

9 Use contractions.

English speakers use contractions—you’re, I’m, we’re, they’re, can’t, didn’t. Your writing will sound stiff and formal without them. For example:

I am sure you are able to deliver the quality of work we are looking for. Let us discuss it in our meeting next week.

Now, let’s add some contractions. Doesn’t this sound less stuffy?

I’m sure you can deliver the quality of work we’re looking for. Let’s talk about it in our meeting next week.

10 Try transcribing yourself.

Record yourself talking. You can learn a lot about conversational writing using this one weird trick! (Sorry, Buzzfeed, we tease because we care.)

Try transcribing a conversation you’ve recorded (with the other person’s permission, of course). Transcribe a couple of minutes of the conversation word-for-word. Then, fix or remove any false starts and remove filler (um, uh, like, you know)—et voila!—you’ve got yourself some conversational writing. The process of transcribing and editing will help you learn what to do and what not to.

11 Throw away the grammar rule book . . . within reason.

We, the Grammarly team, give you permission to start sentences with conjunctions. And (see what we did there?) unless you’re writing something formal, we’re perfectly okay with you ending some sentences with prepositions. 

12 Keep your sentences simple.

Literary greats can write long, complex sentences with flair. Why not you? Well, for starters you’re probably not trying to write like Tolstoy, Nabokov, or Faulkner. Short, less complicated sentences are easier to read. Keep it simple, silly! But do vary your sentence length so your writing has a nice flow.

13 Read it out loud.

Speaking of flow, reading your writing aloud can help you determine whether it flows smoothly. If it sounds choppy and clipped, add a few longer sentences to break up that steady, monotonous beat. If you find yourself stumbling over parts, you’ve probably found an overly complex sentence that needs rewriting. 

14 Infuse your personality into your writing

Letting your personality shine through is the best way to develop a writing style. Use the phrases and slang that you would normally use (within reason). When it’s appropriate, throw in a relevant personal anecdote. In all but the most formal or professional writing settings, be yourself when you write.

15 Practice, practice, practice!

The ultimate way to improving writing is to learn what weakens it in the first place, and then set your mind to fixing (and eventually preventing) the glitches. The more you write, edit, and proofread, the better you get at it.

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8 Tips for Improving Your Writing Style

8 Tips for Improving Your Writing Style

Original Article Link: Masterclass

 

There are many types of writing styles, though many of them incorporate simple words, short sentences, and direct language that engage readers. While you should preserve your unique authorial tone, you can also improve your writing style with deliberate choices about structure and usage.

What Does Writing Style Mean?

Writing style is the voice and tone a writer uses to convey a story or express an idea. Every writer has their own personal writing style based on how they use words, their level of formality, their sentence structure, and their overall approach to the art of writing. A good writer uses different styles of writing depending on the purpose of their text. For example, blogging has a more casual tone while business writing requires more formal language.

4 Types of Writing Styles

There are four general stylistic categories that writing falls into. These different types of writing styles are differentiated by their purpose. Writers will use one of these general styles while also incorporating their own personal style into their piece:

  1. 1. Expository writing: An expository writing style is used for delivering facts and information rather than storytelling. Examples of expository writing include nonfiction books, scientific writing, technical writing, and news articles.
  2. 2. Descriptive writing: A descriptive style uses figurative language and sensory details to paint a picture in a reader’s mind. Poets use this type of writing style in their work.
  3. 3. Narrative writing: Narrative style has a plot, characters, and setting and is used in creative writing. It is the style writers use to craft a novel, novella, or screenplay. Examples of narrative writing style include Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Old Man and the Sea” and The Shining by Stephen King.
  4. 4. Persuasive writing: A persuasive writing style tries to influence readers to adopt the writer’s point of view. Examples of persuasive writing include letters of recommendation, academic writing, and cover letters.

8 Tips for Improving Your Writing Style

To be a better writer, you need to know how to be direct and clear, while also putting your own stamp on your writing. Follow these eight writing tips for improving your style:

  1. Be direct in your writing. Good writing is clear and concise. Lose filler words, like unnecessary adverbs and prepositional phrases, simply take up space and weigh a sentence down. Say exactly what you mean in the most direct way.
  2. Choose your words wisely. There are many ways to write a sentence, and there are different words you can choose to convey the same idea. Always choose the simpler of two words. Use familiar vocabulary instead of lofty words from the English language. Simple words are more direct and easier for all readers to understand. Use a thesaurus if you need a little help finding a replacement or an easier way to say something.
  3. Short sentences are more powerful than long sentences. A story loses steam with wordiness. Short sentences are easier to comprehend, something that readers appreciate. Avoid trying to pack too much into a line. Every sentence should contain one thought or idea.
  4. Write short paragraphs. Keep your paragraphs short and manageable. Each one should consist of sentences that support the same idea. Short paragraphs are easier to digest. They also create a more visually appealing layout on the page. Academic writing often consists of lengthier paragraphs, as they need more information to support each theme. In less formal writing, shorter paragraphs are the norm.
  5. Always use the active voice. Use the active voice and adhere to subject-verb-object sentence structure. It’s the most direct path to making your point. With the active voice, the subject is doing something, which is more exciting than the passive voice, in which something is being done to the subject. The passive voice might be grammatically correct, but it creates long, complex sentences and is a weaker way of presenting information.
  6. Review and edit your work. Proofreading your first draft should be the first step in your editing process before you hand your story over to a professional editor. Tighten your writing, check your word choice and sentence structure, and hone your voice to improve your style.
  7. Use a natural, conversational tone. Your writing style relies on your own, unique voice. Communicate in your comfort zone. In other words, write like you converse. Shape ideas with your original thoughts and voice, and do your best to avoid clichés. Your writing style should reflect your personality.
  8. Read famous authors. Pick up any book by Mark Twain, and you’ll know it’s his writing simply by the tone of the story and the words he uses. Great writers put a stamp on their writing with a signature style. Along with works of fiction, read Strunk and White’s famous style guide The Elements of Style. Learning how other writers create their style. Then do the same with your own writing.
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Sorry, But Speed Reading Won’t Help You Read More

People are as likely to read thousands of words per minute as they are to run faster than the speed of light

Original Article Link: Wired
Written By: Mark Seidenberg

 

THE LATE NORA Ephron famously felt badly about her neck, but that’s minor compared to how people feel about their reading. We think everyone else reads faster than we do, that we should be able to speed up, and that it would be a huge advantage if we could. You could read as much as a book critic for the New York Times. You could finish* Infinite Jest*. You could read all of Wikipedia. So, how fast can people read?

Reading speed is obviously going to depend on factors such as readers’ skills and goals and whether they are reading Richard Feynman’s lectures on physics or TMZ.com. But let’s just do some cold, hard calculations based on facts about the properties of eyes and texts.

  • About 7 to 8 letters are read clearly on each fixation.
  • Fixation durations average around 200 to 250 milliseconds (4 to 5 per second).
  • Words in most texts are about five letters long on average. 4 fixations per second = 240 fixations per minute
  • 240 fixations × 7 letters per fixation = 1,680 letters per minute
  • 1,680 letters/6 (five letters per word plus a space) = 280 words per minute

The exact number of words per minute is far less important than the fact that this value cannot be greatly increased without seriously compromising comprehension. Some people claim to know the secret to becoming a superreader and are happy to share it—for a modest fee.

 

Reader: save your money. The gap between what is promised and what can be attained is huge, so huge as to have attracted the periodic attention of consumer protection agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission. What is claimed cannot be true given basic facts about eyes and texts. Unless we redefine reading as rapid page turning, deleting the bit about comprehension, people are as likely to read thousands of words per minute as they are to run faster than the speed of light.

There is one simple, guaranteed way to increase reading speed: skimming. There is a trivial sense in which these texts are being read rapidly, but very little is being comprehended. We should call this Quote-Unquote Reading or Sorta Reading rather than speed reading.

The holy grail is increasing reading speed without sacrificing comprehension. As Woody Allen put it in a joke, “I took a speed reading course and read ‘War and Peace’ in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.” To avoid the negative connotations that came to be attached to the “speed reading” label, the schemes are marketed as “power reading,” “breakthrough rapid reading,” “mega-reading,” and “reading dynamics for speed, comprehension, and retention.” These systems recycle the same methods, changing the wrapping. Newer methods use screen-based technologies (computers, pads, smartphones) to change how the text is presented.

The Myth of the Speed Reader

The come-on is that the only barrier to reading at warp speed is bad habits. It’s a variant of the trope that people only use n percent of their brains: we only use a fraction of our reading capacity. Speed-reading programs focus on modifying readers’ behavior in three ways. Remarkably, all of them were laid out in an obscure 1958 book, Reading Skills, by Evelyn Wood and Marjorie Barrows. Speed is not emphasized, and the term “speed reading” does not appear. But the methods that Wood and Barrows recommended for helping poor readers became the foundation for speed reading.

 

Method 1: Take in More Information at a Time
Readers are supposed to learn to taken in bigger chunks of text by training their eyes to process information in the periphery and using specialized techniques for scanning the page. There’s the strategy of using a finger to guide the eyes across the page in a zigzag pattern; another method is to move your finger down the center of the page in order to read down, a line at a time, rather than from left to right. The problem with such methods should also be obvious: they flagrantly defy constraints imposed by the visual system. The injunction to take in whole lines, paragraphs, or pages cannot be achieved by the human visual system, short of growing additional cells on one’s retina. We cannot will ourselves to recognize more letters in the periphery any more than we can will ourselves to hear sounds in the dog-whistle frequency range.

Method 2: Eliminate Subvocalization
Most people have the sense that they are saying words to themselves (or hearing them) as they read. Speed-reading programs appeal to the intuition that this habit slows reading. Speed-reading programs exhort people to suppress subvocalization, providing exercises to promote the practice.

 

The sensation that you use information related to the pronunciations of words while you read is not an illusion. However, skilled readers do something different: they mentally activate the phonological code that allows one to hear the differences between PERmit and perMIT in the mind’s ear. The fallacy in the argument against subvocalization is in equating phonology with speech. Using the phonological code doesn’t limit the reader to the rate at which speech can be produced because there’s no speaking involved.

What if the inability to use phonological information efficiently is one of the main characteristics of reading impairments? What if skilled readers cannot prevent themselves from activating phonological information because it is so deeply integrated with spelling and meaning in writing systems and in the neural circuits that support reading?

These what-ifs are indeed the case, as established by several decades of research. Speed-reading schemes would improve reading by eliminating one of the main sources of reading skill.

Method 3: Eliminate Regressive Eye Movements
Read it right the first time. But, like phonology, regressive eye movements serve a useful function, and eliminating them makes it harder to read, not easier. They don’t only occur because a text has been misread; they also allow readers to enhance their understanding beyond what could be obtained on the first pass. Some looking back is also inevitable because of the nature of language. Sentences unfold in a linear sequence, but the messages they convey often do not. The efficient coping strategy—the one that skilled readers discover—incorporates intermittent regressions as one component. We have ways to eliminate them, but they won’t make you a more efficient reader. Just annoyed.

Functional Form

Reading speeds might increase if there were a way to deliver information to the visual system more efficiently than conventional formats. The ancient Greeks experimented with a method called boustrophedon (literally, ox turning, referring to the ox’s reversal of direction at the end of plowing one row to start the next one). Texts were written bidirectionally, left to right on one line, then right to left on the next. This method would seem to allow reading to proceed continuously, uninterrupted by line sweeps. Try it.

Here we have a nice normal first line.
.siht ekil nettirw eb dluoc enil txen ehT
Wow that is pretty deeply unpleasant.
?bad Not. ?method this about What
No way! These “fixes” make reading harder, not easier!

 

Bidirectional reading was one of those little experiments during the development of writing that didn’t work out. However, modern screen-based technologies afford other possibilities.

A method called rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) seems more promising. A text is presented at a single location on a screen, one word (or sometimes a few) at a time. It was developed for research purposes in the 1960s. When personal computers became common, it was sold as a reading improvement tool; now there are apps. A YouTube video presents Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in this format. The text is delivered at a spot on the screen, like a series of flash cards. Readers are liberated from having to decide how much time to spend on each word because that is set in advance, and saccades, regressive eye movements, line sweeps, and page turning have been eliminated.

Was the “Raven” video encouraging? The text is presented at about 278 words per minute, within the skilled reading range, yet requires extra effort to understand. Every word, whether door or morrow, is displayed for the same amount of time. The reader loses control over the rate of transmission and, with it, the ability to allocate reading time intelligently. The experience feels like stalking the text rather than reading it.

In laboratory studies, college students could read with RSVP at up to 700 words per minute with good comprehension, about triple their normal speeds. Alas, the experiments also found that subjects could only sustain reading at high speeds with good comprehension for short bursts. With longer texts, the RSVP reading experience is monotonous and exhausting.

The Shortest Answer is Doing the Thing
If reading at megaspeeds is not feasible, does that mean reading can’t be improved? Not at all.
The serious way to improve reading—how well we comprehend a text and, yes, speed and efficiency—is this (apologies, Michael Pollan):

Read. Reading skill depends on knowledge acquired from reading. Skilled readers know more about language, including many words and structures that occur in print but not in speech. They also have greater “background knowledge,” familiarity with the structure and content of what is being read. We acquire this information in the act of reading itself—not by training our eyes to rotate in opposite directions, playing brain exercise games, or breathing diaphragmatically. Just reading.

As much as possible. Every time we read we update our knowledge of language. At a conscious level we read a text for its content: because it is a story or a textbook or a joke. At a subconscious level our brains automatically register information about the structure of language; the next chapter is all about this. Developing this elaborate linguistic network requires exposure to a large sample of texts.

Mostly new stuff. Knowledge of language expands through exposure to structures we do not already know. That may mean encountering unfamiliar words or familiar words used in novel ways. It may mean reading P. D. James, E. L. James, and Henry James because their use of language is so varied. A large sample of texts in varied styles and genres will work, including some time spent just outside one’s textual comfort zone.

 

Reading expands one’s knowledge of language and the world in ways that increase reading skill, making it easier and more enjoyable to read. Increases in reading skill make it easier to consume the texts that feed this learning machinery. It is not the eyes but what we know about language, print, and the world— knowledge that is easy to increase by reading—that determines reading skill. Where this expertise leads, the eyes will follow.

Excerpted from Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It by Mark Seidenberg. Copyright © 2017. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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How Allan Gurganus Became a Writer

How Allan Gurganus Became a Writer

The author of “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” and “White People” on growing up in a gossipy village and the ways America has changed.

Allan Gurganus and I grew up, thirty years apart, in the small town of Rocky Mount, situated on the Tar River in eastern North Carolina. A life-size portrait of Gurganus hung in our local library’s entryway, and I used to leaf through a copy of his best-known novel, “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All,” while waiting for my piano lessons to start. (Gurganus knew my music teacher, Gene Featherstone, socially. “A sweetheart,” he assured me.) For me, Gurganus was proof that you could come from the place where I lived—a place steeped in propriety, religion, and tradition—and become a writer.

After high school, Gurganus studied painting at the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, but he dropped out, and, with the Vietnam War on, became eligible for the draft. He ended up an enlisted man, assigned to the U.S.S. Yorktown. After three years of service, he went to Sarah Lawrence, and studied with Grace Paley, and then to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where his teachers included Stanley Elkin and John Cheever. Cheever sent one of Gurganus’s stories, “Minor Heroism,” to The New Yorker, which published it, in 1974, when Gurganus was twenty-six. It has been described as the magazine’s first work of fiction to feature a gay character.

Gurganus moved to Manhattan in 1979. “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All,” which is narrated by a ninety-nine-year-old woman who married a veteran of the Civil War when she was fourteen, was published ten years later. It sold more than four million copies and remained on the Times’ best-seller list for eight months. Gurganus’s work is socially incisive, tender, and erotic; race, sexuality, Southern masculinity, and the Church continually engage him. Le Monde called him “a Mark Twain for our age, hilariously clear-eyed, blessed with perfect pitch.”

He spent fifteen years in New York. During the aids epidemic, he lost friends and lovers, many of whom he remembers in his second novel, “Plays Well with Others.” He has also published a novella and three collections of stories. About thirty years ago, he returned to North Carolina, moving into a home in the historic district of Hillsborough. When my first book came out, he sat in the front row at a reading in Chapel Hill, and invited me and my two children to visit his house. Recently, I went to see him there again. It is a convention of treasures: William Morris wallpaper, ancestral oil paintings, stained-glass windows sourced from a demolished Gothic church, and a portrait that once hung in the actress Cécile Sorel’s Paris apartment. We spent two days together, and later I called him on the phone and we talked some more. Our conversations have been edited for length and clarity.

Your house is extraordinary. The aesthetic feels entirely your own.

 
People either get it or they run. I love beautiful things, I love ugly things, and what mixes the two is what I love best. As a child, I always imagined myself having a house like this—a house made of playrooms. No one can tell me not to paint in the kitchen. Now I have a live-in helper, and I see him and his cats experiencing the space as a new form of freedom.

What brought you to Hillsborough?

 

I guess Hillsborough did. I left New York City after a funeral. My last lover-slash-friend, who’d been suffering from aids, died at thirty-two. At his burial, I looked back at the city in the distance. I thought, Now I don’t have anything to do this afternoon. This is the end of the line. Everyone I’d been taking care of had died. I saw my opportunity to get out. It was a relief to feel that it was over.

North Carolina was the only place I could think of—it was an automatic setting. I knew what bloomed and what I could and couldn’t expect from nature. It was almost as if I was being assisted by some of the forces I had lost to the pandemic.

Chapel Hill was too expensive. I needed a fixer-upper, another patient but one that could be resuscitated. On a village side street, I saw a manse that hadn’t been painted in thirty years, and a woman sweeping the sidewalk with a broom. It had three-inch bristles. She had no teeth but maintained a façade of respectability via the broom. I said to my friends—whoever gets that house will be the luckiest person on earth. Six weeks later, I owned it.

I settled in, expecting to be Henry David Thoreau in his worst mood. I had come to hide. Someday, I might regroup, regather myself. But people bring you casseroles and cakes and ask after your politics; before you know it, this little town has pulled you back into the enormous world again.

Was it difficult being one of the high-profile, liberal characters in a Southern village?

Living with people has a way of taking the edge off the extremes of belief. There was never anyone who threw rocks at my window. I was a native, after all. They just considered me eccentric—but I tried not to scare the horses.

You titled your first story collection “White People.” How did readers respond to that title?

I’d always been told to write about what I know. And, if I know anything about anything, it’s a scrap or two about white people. How we are obsessed by rules but attracted to leaders who break them best. How we take pride in all our ancestors accomplished but accept no blame for everything they got wrong. As you remember, Rocky Mount was and is sixty-per-cent African American, so our childhoods accepted that as a universal. Don’t all workers come by bus from one side of town to clean and cook for the other? The employed made life seem possible and dignified for the employers. This was as acknowledged if ignored as oxygen is acknowledged and ignored.

 

The book’s original cover, brilliantly designed by Chip Kidd, understood this. It was ninety-per-cent black with delicate white lettering, formal as a wedding invitation. It made an ironic statement, hinting that this comic fiction was a kind of deranged “how-to” handbook on maintaining Caucasian standards! It seemed funny at the time.

You appear to like old things.

My house is not a museum. It’s less about ownership, more a form of foster care. Being seventy-five myself now, I’ve become a snob for excellent usage, noble wear and tear.

Speaking of hard usage, I’m thinking about our birthplace. Like many small towns, it has struggled to thrive in recent decades.

Rocky Mount once had such richness. I still come into town expecting to see 1959—everybody’s farm truck, double-parked. Now you find a hundred empty storefronts. Now it’s like an Edward Hopper painting, stuffed with solitude.

We attended the same high school, Rocky Mount Senior High.

My class was a starter experiment at integration. They sent the most gifted kids from Booker T. Washington. The first day, one student’s locker was smeared with dog shit. I’ve always thought those pioneers were the bravest people I knew—one of five or ten, looking after each other, bearing the pressure of being exemplary.

Hurricane Floyd was a turning point for the town—your story “Fourteen Feet of Water in My House,” from 2006, was inspired by it, right?

 

Yes. My brother is a man of few words, and he still lives in Rocky Mount. He called me as the flood was starting and said, “Come home.” I knew he meant it. I got in my car and drove as close to Rocky Mount as the water allowed.

I was stuck on a bridge, looking out at a devastated landscape. Someone had a motorboat and recognized me as having been vice-president of the student body in 1965 and invited me on board. Only steeples showed above the waterline. Riding down my old street was like being in Venice—the names of each neighbor came clear to me. Water, once considered a luxury, was now pure menace. It was like going home to Pompeii. You saw the way it used to be and the way it was now. You could imagine all those couches, sodden wreckage.

I eventually had to leave—there was no dry place to stay. Almost half the town’s houses were rendered uninhabitable. Hog waste had ruined everything and left everything toxic.

One fact about living in North Carolina—with its hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes, you’ve always got titanic, colossal subject matter.

That story strikes me as a work of climate fiction, the way it honors the flow between person and place.

Yes. All the things we count on as terra firma turn out not to be so firma after all. Disaster throws you back onto your internal resources. You wonder, Are they ever adequate?

Why did your family choose to settle in Rocky Mount?

Those decisions were made long before I had a vote. But, for a writer, there’s no greater gift than being born into a benign, gossipy village, where you’re somewhere between the top and bottom, and endlessly reëvaluating where your station is, day to day. The kind of place where selling the Chevy and buying a Buick can make a gigantic difference in your social standing downtown. It’s such a beautiful petri dish. I’m grateful to have been born there. I wouldn’t have wanted to be born into money in Manhattan, caught in the endless drama of holding on to the apartment or losing it.

 

My parents lived in a suburban ranch house with a two-acre lawn that had to be mowed constantly, by me, it seemed. My grandfather had a hobby farm six miles out of town in Little Easonburg. We’d go and ride the bowlegged pony and have Saturday lunch. We’d each dig up a sweet potato, put it in a cold stream, then cut it open with our pocketknives and eat it raw.

I’ve never tried one that way.

Do. At the general store near my grandfather’s farm, there’d be a steady gathering of people—Black and white, having conversations out in the open. Sometimes I saw a movie-star-handsome stranger in a white shirt, chinos, and worn shoes. He was clearly a Yankee, listening and soaking it up. Fifteen years later, when I was at college, I took out a copy of “On the Road” and realized I’d seen Jack Kerouac. Turns out his sister, married to a television repairman, lived across the road from our granddad’s acreage. Even though I was growing up in obscurity, here came ghosts and harbingers of a writer’s life.

Were you an old soul as a child?

I think I was and am. I think I’ve been around before. Maybe I needed to repeat a grade?

From our conversations, I know that you and your three brothers all had artistic streaks. I wonder, how were you encouraged to develop an artistic sensibility?

My mother was the encouraging presence. She supplied drawing paper on the breadbox, a staple. But we were only allowed one sheet of paper a day, and we would draw on both sides. We learned to turn our mistakes to advantage—a good skill in art and life.

My father was less supportive, once destroying a painting of mine before I could place it in an art show. So I was caught between nurturing forces and destructive religious tantrums.

 

How did the requisite, insistent spirituality of eastern North Carolina affect you and your work?

There was a contest between my parents: which church we four boys would attend. My mother had been born in Chicago to an upper-middle-class universalist tradition, nearly Quaker. My father and his family were beer-drinking, cigarette-smoking party people until they all got saved one weekend by door-to-door Baptists. They all came down with it, like they had the flu. And they never recovered.

My father’s best friend was Jesus Christ. Dad had no local male friends. But, when he talked about Jesus, his eyes would fill with tears. Dad was a humble and weakened animal when Jesus’ name arose. My brothers and I were jealous of Jesus. He got the best half—we got the discipline.

I felt unchallenged by the Presbyterian hymns and embarrassed by the bebop of the Baptists. We seemed to live at church. I memorized the catechism, read “at” the Bible, and adored the stories. I grew up on that stuff and still use it all the time.

I wish there were a secular version.

Maybe Broadway musicals?

It has always seemed to me that the Bible primes us for literary culture—it is full of the grotesque and the passionate. Can you say more about stories or moments you find yourself moved or nourished by?

The Parable of the Prodigal Son has always been my favorite. I love the economy of its presentation. In memory, it’s as complex as a novel. I have a theory that Anton Chekhov loved this passage and learned everything from it. The speed of incident and the depth of emotion seem to suggest his most powerful stories. Maybe I’m drawn to the story because it involves a favorite son and the one left out.

 

The essentialized language of the King James Version seems to have been encouraged by the conclave that translated it—a scholar was assigned a certain number of words and was expected to stand and read his passage aloud. Any unit of the book that did not receive complete approval was reassigned. So the work has a miraculous orality—a rhythm, a pace, the urgency of a told secular tale.

We both embrace and reckon with our Southern backgrounds in our work, but do you ever find it limiting to be regionalized?

If everybody is from somewhere, isn’t every writer a regional writer?

But maybe geography is fate. There’s something about your very own landscape. Something about arriving eighty years after a desperate war fought on the ground you know from childhood. There’s something about having slavery as the subject matter front and center—it makes you put up or shut up. In his second Inaugural Address, Lincoln wondered if our nation could ever outlive the curse of slavery. In every region, that question is still being answered.

Can you describe your unexpected military experience during the Vietnam War?

I dropped out of college in 1966, leaving myself vulnerable to the draft. I claimed conscientious-objector standing in a county where there’d never been an applicant. Our local office lost my paperwork twice and I was soon offered a choice: six years in federal prison, without the option of choosing my cellmate, or a tour of military duty in some branch of the service. I was eighteen years old. I had no lawyer. My parents were Republicans. And this is how I found myself as one of three thousand sailors on board the U.S.S. Yorktown.

The U.S.S. Yorktown was three football fields long, and it was floating in the South China Sea. Its toilet stalls had no doors on them. I was sleeping in a room with sixty-five other men, bunks stacked five high. We had no privacy. No dignity. No choices. Assigned haircuts. Your name and serial number stencilled across every article of clothing, to help identify the body.

But I found a library: two thousand books. It adjoined the chapel. Its fiction was arranged in alphabetical order. So I just started with the “A”s. I kept notes. I filled sketchbooks. I maintained a fragile sanity. In art school, I had copied the Old Masters. So now, as a writing reader, I imitated Dickens, Jane Austen, Henry James. This library’s books had likely been selected by a well-meaning committee of admirals’ wives. Many had nautical themes: “To the Lighthouse,” “The Old Man and the Sea,” “Now, Voyager.” Writing fiction of my own, I became a free civilian subject. I could dodge between centuries. And change my gender when necessary. It was a prisoner’s satisfaction. But it helped draw me nearer the victims of this war—a war that, obeying my country’s orders, I was tacitly fighting, making my parents proud. I’d never lived anywhere but among white, straight, middle-class people. At sea, one could not afford to be unpopular. Guys disappeared overnight. Teaching myself how to survive every kind of company made me respect Charles Dickens all the more.

 

My job: encoding and deciphering secret messages. It seemed typical that serving here to avoid federal prison I’d been granted a top-secret clearance. This left me in a controlled space where no one could approach without giving me time to hide my copy of “Pride and Prejudice.” I was like a monk in a cell a thousand miles due south of Hawaii. All I cared about was what I learned every day at a school that I operated myself. There was nobody to talk to about anything but hot rods and old “I Love Lucy” episodes. But that drove me deeper into my notebooks: my inventions based on earlier experiments by geniuses I loved as honeymooners love honeymooners. Someday this will matter, I told myself. My ambition did not know to be embarrassed. Someday, in peacetime, I’ll find a reader who is stirred by this which I’ve made.

Can you talk about “Minor Heroism,” your first story in The New Yorker, and how it came to be?

Because I’d been such a disappointment to my father, I had to write that story first. I started with my bratty version of him; then added his disturbingly accurate description of me. Gertrude Stein said, “Everybody is absolutely correct.” So the story became a battle with itself that finally allowed for an armistice. “Minor Heroism” was a sample of what I was going to do next.

I submitted it for John Cheever’s class at Iowa. I had worked on it for a year. It was as finished as anything I’d ever done. He secretly sent it to William Maxwell at The New Yorker. Maxwell liked the story and was deeply sympathetic, a martyr to quality. He was extraordinarily careful and patient.

Later, I got more than two hundred and fifty letters from men who’d had problems with their fathers. It didn’t seem to occur to my father that the story might be about him. He chose to see it as an achievement, not addressed to any particular person. It was wonderful that he could consider it a positive step in my life.

And what was working with John Cheever like?

His only teaching had been as a volunteer instructor at Sing Sing prison. At Iowa, he conducted class like a cocktail party—conversational. He was misunderstood by a lot of Midwesterners, but I knew how to talk at parties.

He’d had a heart attack and couldn’t stop drinking, so his family sent him to Iowa in a wild hope that he’d find himself. He lived at the modest university hotel, one step down from the Holiday Inn. He was famous and isolated—invited to dinner at the president’s house but otherwise eating in the student cafeteria. It was a strange exile for him. It had been a while between books.

 

He was working hard at writing “Falconer.” He drank a lot, but he also got up every morning and wrote at eight. He showed me where in the hotel he stored his book. He put my phone number as the one to call if something happened. I was instructed to save the manuscript. Luckily, I never had to do that.

Ours became a real friendship. We’d take long walks to see the buffalo in the zoo. It was consoling to talk to someone who had written so many beautiful sentences but who was still at it, working to redeem and improve himself, to recover. He was a true mentor.

“Minor Heroism” was published fifty years ago. I wonder what you think about the ways the culture has changed since then.

Everybody knows that something’s different. Even kids sense it. Something overtook us. Even the weather changed. We found ourselves psychically dragged to a whole new part of the woods. In the Before Time, we invented Hollywood and jazz and Apple design. We’d had such energy and natural taste: Henry Ford’s assembly line and James Dean’s bluejeans. The character of Lincoln made manifest by how he stood and looked. We were, as they say, the envy of the world. And our simplicity was earnest. It was unfaked. So where did our standards go? How could we have fallen for a shyster, and a failed one? The opposite of smart and the opposite of honest.

It seemed that some crucial percentage of the intelligent population disappeared overnight. Those people who made the design decisions, the unacknowledged brainiacs, even the employees who remembered the birthdays of their least-loved co-workers—missing in action. How could the superego of a whole nation have fallen asleep all at once?

I have a partial answer regarding this subtraction: aids. Eight hundred thousand dead ones. Otherwise, explain why this country seems suddenly so different, so less good? As one witness to the pandemic, I saw how many great artists and moral powerhouses were lost. I think the texture of American life was coarsened by their radical absence. The questioners, the risk-takers, the artistic promissory notes snuffed out in so few years. Some filter that had been positioned since the founding of our Republic was torn open. And what resulted? Today’s tabloid sewage.

Everything from hat design to ethics were suddenly reshaped by a new set of party-politics influencers, strictly the second tier. Certain righteous ones, just about to make their contributions, were yanked out of action at the worst possible time. We lost so much when we lost those beginning geniuses. So when I think back to the Before, looking from the After of right now, I covet those symphonies not written, art movements that died aborning. What should have become our illustrious history now registers as deficit spending. We all live and feel their losses every day. And a large part of our sadness is being perpetually unable to describe what’s been taken away from us.

There are people who would choose Donald Trump over Abraham Lincoln. And we live with them.

Did you and your father ever heal things between the two of you?

Our connection improved toward the end of his life. It shocked him to see so many of my friends die of aids. As a World War Two veteran, he knew the tragedy of early death. Of course gay people were blamed for aids as if we’d invented it. He once told me how unfair he found that.

Later, he was hospitalized with lung complaints. I booked a flight to Florida. He answered the phone. “Daddy,” I said, “it’s Allan—I’ll be there tomorrow. Can I bring you something?”

He responded very slowly, “I still believe in God. You boys are the best thing that ever happened to me. I love you.” He died two hours later.

At least we’d got that. He had withheld as long as he could.

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Danny’s workmate is called GPT-3. You’ve probably read its work without realising it’s an AI

Danny's workmate is called GPT-3. You've probably read its work without realising it's an AI

ABC Science / By technology reporter James Purtill
Original Article Link:
 

Two years ago this weekend, GPT-3 was introduced to the world.

You may not have heard of GPT-3, but there’s a good chance you’ve readits work, used a website that runs its code, or even conversed with it through a chatbot or a character in a game.

GPT-3 is an AI model — a type of artificial intelligence — and its applications have quietly trickled into our everyday lives over the past couple of years.

In recent months, that trickle has picked up force: more and more applications are using AI like GPT-3, and these AI programs are producing greater amounts of data, from words, to images, to code.

A lot of the time, this happens in the background; we don’t see what the AI has done, or we can’t tell if it’s any good.

But there are some things that are easy for us to judge: writing is one of those.

From student essays to content marketing, AI writing tools are doing what only a few years ago seemed impossible.

In doing so, the technology is changing how we think about what has been considered a uniquely human activity.

And we have no idea how the AI models are doing it.

Cheaper, faster, more productive

Danny Mahoney’s workmate never leaves, sleeps, or takes a break.

Day after day, the AI writing assistant churns out blog posts, reviews, company descriptions and the like for clients of Andro Media, Mr Mahoney’s digital marketing company in Melbourne.

“Writers are expensive. And there’s a limit to how much quality content a human can produce,” Mr Mahoney says.

“You can get the same quality of content using AI tools. You just get it faster.”

How much faster? About three times, he estimates.

He still has to check and edit the AI-generated text, but it’s less work and he’s cut his rates by half.

We asked GPT-3 to write a limerick for the ABC audience

In Perth, Sebastian Marks no longer bothers with content agencies at all.

About a year ago, he saw an ad for an AI writing assistant and signed up.

The AI tool now writes pretty much everything for his company, Moto Dynamics, which sells motorcycles and organises racing events.

Its output includes employee bios, marketing copy, social media posts, and business proposals.

“Once we’d started feeding data into it and teaching it how to work for us, it became more and more user-friendly,” he says.

“Now we use it essentially as an admin.”

Millions of words per minute

The particular AI writing tool Mr Mahoney uses is called ContentBot, which like many of its competitors was launched early last year.

“It was very exciting,” says Nick Duncan, the co-founder of ContentBot, speaking from Johannesburg.

The trigger for this explosion was OpenAI’s November 2021 decision to make its GPT-3 AI universally available for developers.

It meant anyone could pay to access the AI tool, which had been introduced in May 2020 for a limited number of clients.

Dozens of AI writing tools launched in early 2021.

LongShot AI is only a year old, but claims to have 12,000 users around the world, including in Australia.

“And there are other products that would have ten-fold the number of clients we have,” says its co-founder, Ankur Pandey, speaking from Mumbai.

“Revolutionary changes in AI happened in the fall of 2020. This whole field has completely skyrocketed.”

Companies like ContentBot and Longshot pay OpenAI for access to GPT-3: the rate of the most popular model (Davinci) is about $US0.06 per 750 words.

In March 2021, GPT-3 was generating an average of 4.5 billion words per day.

We don’t know the current figure, but it would be much higher given the AI is being more widely used.

“It’s been a game changer,” Mr Duncan says.

What about student essays?

There are dozens of AI writing tools that advertise to students.

Among them is Article Forge, a GPT-3 powered tool that claims its essays can pass the plagiarism checkers used by schools and universities.

Demand for the product has increased five-fold in two years, chief executive officer Alex Cardinell says.

“It’s the demand for cheaper content with shorter turnaround times that requires less overall effort to produce.

“People do not want AI, they want what AI can do for their business.”

Lucinda McKnight, a curriculum expert at Deakin University, confirms that students are early adopters of AI writing tools.

“I can tell you without doubt that kids are very widely using these things, especially spinners on the internet.”

Spinners are automated tools that rephrase and rewrite content so it won’t be flagged for plagiarism.

“It can produce in a matter of seconds multiple different copies of the same thing, but worded differently.”

A screenshot of OpenAI's list of prices for using GPT-3
A screenshot of OpenAI’s list of prices for using GPT-3.(Supplied: OpenAI)

These developments are shifting ideas around student authorship. If it becomes impossible to distinguish AI writing from human, what’s the point in trying to detect plagiarism?

“We should be getting students to acknowledge how they’ve used AI as another kind of source for their writing,” Dr McKnight says.

“That is the way to move forwards, rather than to punish students for using them.”

So, can AI write good?

When GPT-3 launched two years ago, word spread of its writing proficiency, but access was limited.

Recently, OpenAI has thrown open the doors to anyone with a guest login, which takes a few minutes to acquire.

Given the prompt “Write a news story about AI”, the AI tool burped out three paragraphs. Here’s the first:

“The world is on the brink of a new era of intelligence. For the first time in history, artificial intelligence (AI) is about to surpass human intelligence. This momentous event is sure to change the course of history, and it is all thanks to the tireless work of AI researchers.”

In general, GPT-3 is remarkably good at stringing sentences together, though plays fast and loose with the facts.

Asked to write about the 2022 Australian election, it claimed the vote would be held on July 2.

But it still managed to sound like it knew what it was talking about:

“Whoever wins the election, it is sure to be a close and hard-fought contest. With the country facing challenges on many fronts, the next government will have its work cut out for it.”

Mr Duncan says you “can’t just let the AI write whatever it wants to write”.

“It’s terrible at fact-checking. It actually makes up facts.”

He uses the tool as a creative prompt: the slog of writing from scratch is replaced by editing and fact-checking.

“It helps you overcome the blank-page problem.”

Mr Mahoney agrees.

“If you produce content purely by an AI, it’s very obvious that it’s written by one.

“It’s either too wordy or just genuinely doesn’t make sense.”

But with proper guidance, GPT-3 (and other AI writing tools) can be good enough for standard professional writing tasks like work emails or content marketing, where speed is more important than style.

“People who create content for marketing tend to use it every day,” Longshot’s Ankur Pandey says.

“Most of the focus of this industry is content writers, content marketers and copywriters, because this is mission critical for them.”

Then there’s coding: In November 2021, a third of the code on GitHub — a hosting platform for code — was being written with Copilot, a GPT-3 powered coding tool that had been launched five months earlier.

US technological research and consulting firm Gartner predicts that by 2025, generative AI (like GPT-3) will account for 10 per cent of all data produced, up from less than 1 per cent today.

That data includes everything from website code and chatbot platforms to image generation and marketing copy.

“At the moment, content creation is mostly using generative AI to assist as part of the pipeline,” says Anthony Mullen, research director for AI at Gartner.

“I think that will persist for a while, but it does shift the emphasis more towards ideas, rather than craft.

“Whether it is producing fully completed work or automating tasks in the creative process, generative AI will continue to reshape the creative industries.

“This technology is a massive disruptor.”

How do AI writing tools work?

Until recently, decent text generation AI seemed a long way away.

Progress in natural language processing (NLP), or the ability of a computer program to understand human language, appeared to be getting bogged down in the complexity of the task.

Then, in 2017, a series of rapid advancements culminated in a new kind of AI model.

In traditional machine learning, a programmer teaches a computer to, for instance, recognise if an image does or does not contain a dog.

In deep learning, the computer is provided with a set of training data — eg. images tagged dog or not dog — that it uses to create a feature set for dogs.

With this set, it creates a model that can then predict whether untagged images do or do not contain a dog.

These deep learning models are the technology behind, for instance, the computer vision that’s used in driverless cars.

While working on ways to improve Google Translate, researchers at the company stumbled upon a deep learning model that proved to be good at predicting what word should come next in a sentence.

Called Transformer, it’s like a supercharged version of text messaging auto-complete.

“Transformer is a very, very good statistical guesser,” says Alan Thompson, an independent AI researcher and consultant.

“It wants to know what is coming next in your sentence or phrase or piece of language, or in some cases, piece of music or image or whatever else you’ve fed to the Transformer.”

At the same time, in parallel to Google, an Australian tech entrepreneur and data scientist, Jeremy Howard, was finding new ways to train deep learning models on large datasets.

Professor Howard, who would go on to become an honorary professor at the University of Queensland, had moved to San Francisco six years earlier, from Melbourne.

He proposed feeding Transformer a big chunk of text data and seeing what happened.

“So in 2018, the OpenAI team actually took Professor Jeremy Howard’s advice and fed the original GPT with a whole bunch of book data into this Transformer model,” Dr Thompson says.

“And they watched as it was able to complete sentences seemingly out of nowhere.”

Transformer is the basis for GPT (which stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer), as well as other current language models.

Professor Howard’s contribution is widely recognised in Silicon Valley, but not so much in Australia, to which he recently returned.

“In Australia, people will ask what do you do and I’ll be like, ‘I’m a professor in AI’. And they say, ‘Oh well, how about the footy?'” he says.

“It’s very, very different.”

But how does the AI form sentences?

The short answer is that, beyond a certain point, we don’t know.

AI like GPT-3 are known as “black boxes”, meaning it’s impossible to know the internal process of computation.

The AI has trained itself to do a task, but how it actually performs that task is largely a mystery.

“We’ve given it this training data and we’ve let it kind of macerate that data for months, which is the equivalent of many human years, or decades even,” Dr Thompson says.

“And it can do things that it shouldn’t be able to do. It taught itself coding and programming. It can write new programmes that haven’t existed.”

As you might guess, this inability to understand exactly how the technology works is a problem for driverless cars, which rely on AI to make life-and-death decisions.

Meanwhile, new and more powerful AIs are being unveiled almost every week.

“I documented one coming out every 3-4 days in March through April,” Dr Thompson says.

“We’ve now got 30, 40, 50 different large language models [like GPT-3], and sometimes they’re being released weekly.”

GPT-4 is expected to be unveiled within months.

This week, Google’s DeepMind released its most impressive AI yet, called Gato, which is designed to be good at lots of tasks.

Its makers describe it as a precursor to an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which is a long-anticipated AI that can understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can.

In theory, potentially any human occupation could be replaced by an AGI.

“We used to say that artificial general intelligence and the replacement of humans would be like 2045,” Dr Thompson says.

“I’m seeing the beginnings of AGI right now.”

AI tools performing creative human tasks is no longer the stuff of science fiction, or something that will happen in 10 years’ time.

For Danny Mahoney in Melbourne, it’s already begun.

“I think people really underestimate how useful it is at this point,” he says.

“Anybody who spends any significant amount of time on the internet is reading AI content without even realising.”

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Writing has advanced through history despite ancient anxiety around the new technology

Writing Has Advanced Through History Despite Ancient Anxiety Around the New Technology

ABC RN By Anna Kelsey-Sugg for Counterpoint
Original Article Link:
 

Firsts can be murky.

For instance, there’s some doubt over whether Thomas Edison really came up with the idea of the motion picture camera — or whether he pinched it. 

There’s also a question mark over whether “ignored” Australian inventor Henry Sutton should be credited with the first televisions.

And there are shadows of uncertainty in another major technological development — writing.

“Writing could’ve been invented many times in many different places,” says Louise Pryke, an ancient history specialist at the University of Sydney.

But she says history points to one place above others, and — though it’s rarely recognised — to one incredible woman.

It also reveals a common thread from ancient history to today: a fear of the new.

From signs to an alphabet

Pictograms kick off the history of writing. They’re representations of things — for example, an image of an ox to depict that animal.

The earliest evidence of this comes from ancient Mesopotamia, roughly equivalent to modern day Iraq, Dr Pryke explains.

These started appearing somewhere around the archaic period, 3500 BCE. Then, around 2900 BCE, they evolved into signs.

“That’s where we start seeing the cuneiform script, which is the oldest known form of writing,” Dr Pryke says.

“Cuneiform is basically the major language of communication in the ancient near east for about 3000 years.”

It’s a transition from recognisable images to something more closely aligned to an alphabet, and it involves “signs which can represent multiple things”, Dr Pryke says.

“You need to have some understanding of the writing in order to be able to decipher them [and] there’s hundreds and hundreds of [signs and symbols], so it’s incredibly difficult to learn.”

 

Close-up of a square piece of pale rock with a series of lines, circles and other shapes and symbols inscribed in it.
Cuneiform writing, seen here on a stone from c3100–2900 BC, Mesopotamia, was incredibly complicated.(Getty: Sepia Times)

 

This doesn’t stop the early scribes. Cuneiform writing turns up in Sumerian sources and other ancient languages such as Akkadian, Babylonian and Hittite.

Writing along with handicrafts, weaving and making beer were each considered “a precise intellectual skill” and a type of wisdom, and they were all originally associated with women in ancient Mesopotamia.

“Scribal traditions in Western culture are often very much focused on male writers, people like Hesiod and so forth. But in ancient Mesopotamia scribal traditions, there’s a lot of influence from royal women [and] royal religious practitioners,” Dr Pryke says.

Enheduanna wrote hymns to the goddess of love and war, Inanna, and possibly a myth called Inanna and Ebih, as well as a collection of 42 temple hymns.

“So she has all these amazing things. And what’s really cool about Enheduanna is — this is the earliest writer we have written evidence for — but she talked about writing in a way that that is really understandable to modern writers.

“She talked about spending long nights labouring over her creations, how difficult the creative process can be, and her sense of inadequacy in trying to encapsulate complex divine qualities with the written word.”

Even history’s first-known writer had a critic on her shoulder.

‘There are too many printed texts’

From cuneiform, the Old Canaanite script emerged in what we now call the Middle East, around 3,500 years ago. Then, around 10th century BCE, the Phoenician alphabet emerged, to which it’s thought that all known modern alphabets are related.

These developments were happening in parallel to other big changes in how people were living, for example moving towards urban centres.

“The early development of [modern] writing is thought to be powered by economic developments, like people needing to write down more complicated economic transactions as trade is developing,” Dr Pryke says.

But not everyone was excited about the explosion of this new technology.

The proliferation of writing, and of books, concerned ancient Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger. He complained that, “In the reading of many books, there is only distraction”, says US-based researcher and writer Joe Stadolnik, who has written about the history of writing. 

And 12th century Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi worried that people would “read sloppily, because there are too many printed texts”, he tells ABC RN’s Counterpoint.

Dr Stadolnik says 14th century poet Petrarch also weighed in claiming that too much literature was “not nourishing the mind … but killing and burying it with the weight of things”.

And in a story reported in Plato’s Phaedrus, the ancient inventor of writing, an Egyptian god named Theuth, proclaims writing as “an elixir of memory and wisdom”.

But, as Dr Stadolnik explains, in Plato’s telling, Thamus, the Egyptian king of the Gods, is not so sure.

Thamus says: “This invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it because they will not practise their memory … You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding. And you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction.”

Dr Pryke says the anxiety Plato wrote about demonstrates that there are “universal anxieties that turn up around new technology”.

But she says this concern of writing belonged to a minority.

“In earlier ancient writing, there seems to be more of an appreciation of how writing skills are a reflection of high status and increased wisdom; [that] the ability to write things down is a way of enhancing our ability to think rather than diminishing it.”

Ancient scribes were “constantly talking about their own status and their own wisdom and the high cultural value of what their writing brings to history”, she says.

That includes ancient writers everywhere from China to Mesoamerica to the Indus River Valley, where early forms of writing existed.

“Writing is one thing that just pops up all over the place,” Dr Pryke says.

It’s all part of its happily murky history.

History’s first named writer

At around 2300 BCE the earliest known writer emerged; an author named Enheduanna.

Her name means “ornament of heaven” and she was a princess and a priestess of the moon god in ancient Mesopotamia, Dr Pryke says.

She’s the first-known recorded writer, but if you haven’t heard of her, you’re not alone.

And Dr Pryke would like to see that change.

“Why don’t we know this? It just drives me nuts,” she says.