This was actually one of the major things I learned in the course of learning how to write narrative prose. I had to train myself to notice the ambiguity in my own writing, notice when there was less on the page than I thought there was. Before that, thinking something would be clear to a reader because it was clear in my own mind was a mistake I made with appalling regularity.
Recognizing the mistake I was making in writing narrative actually made me a lot more careful about not underestimating the necessary level of specificity to convey what I want conveyed, when communicating in general.
Today's post, Illusion of Transparency: Why No One Understands You was originally published on 20 October 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.