# Three Principles to Writing Original Nonfiction

If you like reading then you should write too.

# Three Things Writing Will Do For You

1. **Writing makes you smarter.** Thoughts are ephemeral, fast and fleeting. Writing is frozen thought. It is easier to determine if an idea that is written down than an idea that is merely thought or spoken. Writing down your ideas shows you whether they have substance. Detecting when you're wrong is the first step to becoming right. There are many ways to record thought. Writing is the best for improving your rationality because there is nothing to hide behind. Writing is the swimsuit of ideas.
2. **Writing makes you a better communicator.** The skills you learn by writing transfer to speaking. Being good at speaking makes you more persuasive.
3. **Writing scales social connections.** The best job opportunities I've ever received all came from my writing. The smartest people I've ever met all came from my writing too.

# What do I write? How do I write?

I assume you are proficient in English. Besides a basic mastery of language, good nonfiction has three qualities.
1. It gets to the point.
2. It is interesting.
3. It is grounded in reality.

## Get to the Point

Text is a static medium. The listener of a podcast must keep up with the audio stream. The reader of a blog can take as long as he/she needs to understand an idea. Text is low-density too. In terms of bits, the reader of a text document processes less raw information than the viewer of an image. Text concentrates a reader's attention on a single idea.

The reader of a blog tends to think harder than that same person watching a video or conversing in real time. The epistemic rigor is correspondingly higher.

We are products of our environment. An author's environment is the written word itself. I write differently from how I talk. I write so differently that readers of this blog are often surprised to discover I'm a kind levelheaded person in real life. [Mediums overpower messages.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/koa48Qio5LP48xMM2/mediums-overpower-messages)

> me before reading your website: [Lsusr] seems like a really even-keeled friendly guy who'll get along with most people
>
> me after reading about your falling into the Dark Night of the Soul while on a hike with people you didn't like: Gosh, glad I read that AFTER cohosting an event with him
>
> ―from a conversation with [Etirabys](https://etirabys.tumblr.com/)

Paul Graham recommends you [write like you talk](http://paulgraham.com/talk.html). This doesn't mean you should write a transcript complete with "um"s and "uh"s. It does~~n't~~ mean you should~~n't~~ edit. What Paul Graham means is your writing shouldn't be pretentious. Get to the point.

It's possible to go too far in the opposite direction you end up self-deprecating. Self-deprecation is for stand-up comedy. It falls flat when presented in a two dimensions. Get to the point.

Art is often about the experience. I don't read Aaron Diaz's webcomic [Dresden Codak](https://dresdencodak.com/) to learn about transhumanism. I read it because it's a masterwork of visual art with a riveting story. Nonfiction writing is about the ideas, not the experience. Get to the point.

Most beginning writers weigh their text down with unnecessary crap. Superfluity doesn't just waste the reader's time. It obscures the central thesis. Obscuring logic makes sense if logic is your enemy. If you're a rationalist then logic is your ally. Expose your logic.

### Practice

1. Write a blog post at least 300 words long. Make a note of how many words it is.
2. Edit out all pretension.
3. Edit out all self-deprecation.
4. Edit out anything else that talks about yourself. Don't write "As a ___". Truth is unitary. It does not depend on who you are. Don't write "I believe $x$". If $x$ is true then write "$x$". If $x$ is untrue then don't write $x$.
5. Edit out any references to untrue statements. If $x$ is untrue then don't write "$x$ is untrue". Don't write $x$ in the first place. Write "$y$" (which is true) instead.
6. Identify the central thesis. [Edit out anything that doesn't directly pertain to the central thesis.](https://writingexcuses.com/transcripts/1-3/)
7. Remove anything that isn't necessary to prove your thesis. [If you have three reasons to believe $x$ then remove the two weaker ones.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GW57TJArqWt4DGuzm/death-by-a-single-cut)
8. Remove unnecessary words like "very". Write in absolutes.
9. Don't use multiple words when a single word will do.
10. Make a note of how many words are left.

## Invent Interesting Ideas

If an author is bored then the reader will be too. Ideas I understand are boring. That's why I never write about anything I understand.

Writing is an [exploration](http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html) of ideatic space. Your initial hook is no more important than your original plan when you go on an adventure in meatspace. When I went on a cross-country motorcycle trip my original intention was to venture down Baja California. That never happened. I ended up spending half the trip at the bottom of a cliff reassembling a motorcycle engine in the sand. We barely even made it to Mexico.

Does that matter? No. If the trip went as planned then I never would have been threatened by a tweaker with a gun while pinned under my DR650 on a dark forest road in the rain. Writing is like motorcycle riding. It's not about the destination. It's about the enemies you made along the way.

> You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

Good writing is though-provoking. A provoking idea is an idea that seems wrong. The best ideas to publish are those that seem wrong but are actually true.

How do you find provoking-yet-true ideas? Write down things that seem wrong. Edit out the ideas that actually are wrong.

Use precise language grounded in observable reality. Everything you write should be either true or false. Wishy-washy claims reflect muddled thought. Vague language demonstrates the absence of thought entirely. Using concrete language is like power washing your brain. When you put your ideas into concrete unambiguous language it becomes readily apparent which of them which ones are dangerous and which are garbage.

All good ideas are dangerous because their very existence is a threat to the status quo. When people complain about "infohazards" and "threats to the community's reputation" that's confirmation you're writing about something that matters. Dangerous writing is never boring.

### Practice

What's an article you wish someone else would write for you? Write that.

## Write From Personal Experience

The best authors all write from personal experience. For this to work, you need to have experience doing interesting things. George Orwell fought for antifa in the Spanish Civil War before writing *Nineteen Eighty-Four*. Karen Pryor trained dogs and dolphins before writing *Don't Shoot the Dog*.

> With my tongue I can feel the silencer holes we drilled into the barrel of the gun. Most of the noise a gunshot makes is expanding gases, and there's the tiny sonic boom a bullet makes because it travels so fast. To make a silencer, you just drill holes in the barrel of the gun, a lot of holes. This lets the gas escape and slows the bullet to below the speed of sound.
>
> You drill the holes wrong and the gun will blow off your hand.
>
> ⋮
>
> The building we're standing on won't be here in ten minutes. You take a 98-percent concentration of fuming nitric acid and add the acid to three times that amount of sulfuric acid. Do this in an ice bath. Then add glycerin drop-by-drop with an eye dropper. You have nitroglycerin.
>
> ⋮
>
> Mix the nitro with sawdust, and you have a nice plastic explosive. A lot of folks mix their nitro with cotton and add Epsom salts as a sulfate. This works too. Some folks, they use paraffin mixed with nitro. Paraffin has never, ever worked for me.
>
> ―*Fight Club* by Chuck Palahniuk

It doesn't matter whether you're writing about AI alignment or how to paint one's nails. The best writing comes from personal experience. The best history books are autobiographies. It is only by testing our ideas against reality that we can differentiate between right and wrong. Nothing is more empirical than direct personal experience. A randomized controlled trial conducted by someone else is mere hearsay.

The best writing is derivative. We copy each others' techniques. We tell the same stories over and over again. But the best writing is never purely derivative. Memories are non-transferrable. You can't steal another's heart and soul.

### Practice

What is something everyone in your in-group believes but which you have directly observed to be false? Write an essay explaining what you observed.