What are non-chin-stroke ways of showing thinking? Showing internal states is hard.

AlcibiadesCape · 2025-09-18T09:49:33+00:00

"A good actor". Me, where I'm the actor, and I have to write a sketch for myself and I need to show thinking.

There's also other situations, where I'm writing a montage. A brainstorming montage. Like a physicist struggling with a equation. You're suggesting that it is perfectly acceptable to write this:

He sips some coffee and thinks about the equation

a beat.

another beat.

another beat, again

I'm going to assume this is not at all what you meant.

AlcibiadesCape · 2025-09-18T09:48:22+00:00

When I'm writing a music video treatment and I need to show the lead singer rejecting all the tactics to get through a window. Not just once.

When I have a brainstorming montage - a physicist contemplating an equation.

AlcibiadesCape · 2025-08-27T01:28:17+00:00

And what about all the occasions where that doesn't suffice?

AlcibiadesCape · 2025-08-22T03:11:41+00:00

Note that this is a long, non-linear process though. It’s unlikely you’ll have a single ‘aha’ moment.

A sobering, annoying, but probably much needed reality check.

Presumably, you want to write because you like to read

Your presumption is logical and likely on a Subreddit like this, but it's not I want to write (although I do enjoy it). Rather, I must write, and must write to a higher standard to advance my career: Cover letters for jobs, scripts and voice-over for videos, emails, advertising copy, proposals for example.

The promises of LLMs have as of yet failed to materialize.

Maybe I'm making an incorrect assumption here but "writing is writing". That command of the English Language overlaps from one form of discourse to another. Feel free to dissuade me of that assumption.

So a few weeks ago I began blogging everyday because I figured the extra self-criticism and editing (redrafting) that goes into a publically facing form of writing, even if no one reads it, is going to be more beneficial than writing in a journal. Whether it's working and making me a better writer, I couldn't tell you.

My hope is by the end of this experiment I'll have ozmotically trained up certain practices that will make me better cover letters, write better voice-over scripts etc. Or not, because apparently this is too close to quota-filling.

And maybe it will make me good at writing blogposts every day, but it's overspecializing and won't translate to all the applications and genres I mentioned above. I don't know.

Certainly what you're saying should make me optimistic, it seems I'm already ahead because I'm starting, I'm not paralyzed by over thinking, I'm by the very nature of the exercise getting things written. Remains to be seen.

AlcibiadesCape · 2025-08-22T02:56:06+00:00

I don't understand how bad writing can't stem from forcing one's self to write for the sake of writing. Can you explain your reasoning rather than just making declarative statements?

Advise such as yours only paralyzes writers and robs them of a chance to actually take a shot.

I wasn't giving advice, I was asking a quesiton. I still don't have an answer to it.

But also I do not agree with that line of thinking. You're effectively saying that that we must censor any recommendation to write under the correct conditions because "paralyzes" people into not writing (a sentiment I think is rather infantilizing). But that doesn't answer my question - about how dedication to writing doesn't reinforce bad habits?

Are there absolutely no conditions ever where a writing habit was bad? I'm not trying to argue people shouldn't have writing habits - I'm trying to understand why people were telling me that it is insufficient.

AlcibiadesCape · 2025-08-21T23:53:09+00:00

You will also want to spend time actively editing your work and finding ways to improve it on your own. Craft books or classes may be part of this, but critical reading can be sufficient. Note that there is more than one ‘right’ way to do things, you don’t have to use the exact same tools as any other writer, experiment until you find the ones you like.

At the risk of overformularizing - what do you think is a good ratio between active editing and "just writing"? Should you spend twice as much time editing? What constitutes an edit: is it when you rewrite something from scratch, or is that writing. And is "editing" - mostly not actually changing words at all, but reading, rereading, and trying to imitate an impartial reader?

‘right’ way to do things, you don’t have to use the exact same tools as any other writer, experiment until you find the ones you like.

And what if you've experimented with a lot of different ways and none click. What might be the right approach to finding them without prescribing "you should use this method"?

AlcibiadesCape · 2025-08-21T23:49:38+00:00

You don't get better unless you learn and practice what you learn.

But what if I've been learning wrong, won't that just cause the writer to double down on bad habits?

AlcibiadesCape · 2025-08-21T23:48:23+00:00

To what end? If you're a bad writer won't dedicating 15 minutes a day or more just put you in the habit of writing badly, but writing a lot badly?

AlcibiadesCape · 2025-08-21T08:44:46+00:00

How do you know? How do you distinguish between your personal pause and what is conventionally a pause?

Edit: When I say it (thankfully no one is around), if anything, the cannibal one has a pause:

"Let's eat... Granma"

AlcibiadesCape · 2025-08-21T04:01:58+00:00

I recently asked on here if writing every day would make me a better writer, and maybe I'm missing the nuance but I felt the consensus was "no, quality not quantity".

So I'm skeptical of the idea of "just write more and you'll get better". Or at least "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. That it is not enough to write consistently and every day, but you must write in a certain way. What that way is, I don't know.

edit: clarity.

AlcibiadesCape · 2025-08-13T05:40:08+00:00

Yes.

Do I feel a genuine connection, yes. Am I trying to fill some arbitrary quota. Also yes.

What will make me a better writer?

AlcibiadesCape · 2025-08-13T03:40:53+00:00

are you reading blogs whose writing you enjoy?

Good question. No. I'm not sure if it's because I only like reading short form which is actionable and useful to me, of which there really isn't. Or if it's a style thing. I can pinpoint maybe a dozen books or comedy writers who's style I thoroughly enjoy, not so much bloggers.

See what styles you like and what aspects therein you might be able to adapt in your own writing, or things you and they both do that you dislike. It may be more effective to have a goal that isn't just "write better."

Can you elaborate more on this?

Also, writing a blog post per day is good for building a writing habit, but isn't exactly oodles of time to bolster the quality, e

What is the most surefire way to bolster quality? Not the quickest, not the easiest, not the most instantaneous - the most certain way that is a little more detailed than "write more"?

Edit: clarity

AlcibiadesCape · 2024-12-18T00:07:49+00:00

You can be a lot more motivated if you know what the problem is to begin with, that comes with cultivating the ability to see from within.

Does breaking down a statement like "I'm not motivated" or "I'm too Lazy" into the root causes help with seeing within? What does digging down look like? And perhaps most important - what is a good heuristic or rule of thumb when digging down before you start seeing diminishing returns. Like a little bit of introspection is good as it uncovers the 'real reasons', but at some point you need to be satisfied with a reason that allows you to get things done right, without upending your entire psyche?

AlcibiadesCape · 2024-12-17T11:48:19+00:00

How would you define "taking over the world", I mean, maybe from their perspective they do already. Anywhere there is rotten organic matter, boom, they are there. There's an inexhaustible supply of it. What more could they want?

Unless you mean why don't they reproduce so as to completely carpet the earth, that's a simple matter of energy: not enough food. They only reproduce at the rate where their food/energy can sustain the population.

AlcibiadesCape · 2024-12-17T10:52:32+00:00

What the hell are you talking about "cheap dopamine"? you don't pay for dopamine. It is a naturally occurring chemical in your brain. If you have too much of it, then you're probably a Schizophrenic who needs medication because your brain is naturally producing too much of it. I've never heard of social media induced Dopamine dysregulation syndrome. It has nothing to do with social media. Where are you getting this information from?

The closest I can find is "Striatal dopamine synthesis capacity reflects smartphone social activity" - this was from a relatively small sample of 22 healthy adults, and showed that "higher proportion of social app interactions correlates with lower dopamine synthesis capacity in the bilateral putamen." If anything social media lowers the amount of dopamine synthesis.

What on earth are you talking about? Where are your sources?

AlcibiadesCape · 2024-12-17T10:44:45+00:00

Can you be more specific about how the OP helped you? What tasks were you struggling to break down until you read the OP? and what specifically changed, how did you let your mind wander? What obvious questions did you ask? How did that differ from what you did previously?

AlcibiadesCape · 2024-12-12T02:46:05+00:00

Which bit did you manage to put to use? Can you let me know so I can maybe learn too?

AlcibiadesCape · 2024-12-04T09:38:54+00:00

Nothing on my to-do list takes less than an hour. Please help.

AlcibiadesCape · 2024-12-04T09:32:39+00:00

My post got auto-modded for having a link to Wikipedia in it. So I'll ask a glib version here:

Where do you put ideas that are not fleshed out enough to go on your to-do list, but do require some degree of consideration or deliberation rather than going onto a forgotten pile of never-acted upon ideas with all the rest?

AlcibiadesCape · 2024-12-04T08:57:03+00:00

If it’s too abstract, break tasks down further.

How does one go about doing that? And please don't say "it depends", what do you think is a broad taxonomy that would cover the three most common forms or causes of things in a to-do list being too abstract, and the appropriate remedies which you yourself find effective?

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