Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on High School, Human Capital, Signaling and College Admissions - Less Wrong

12 Post author: JonahSinick 08 September 2013 07:45PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 September 2013 09:53:00PM 2 points [-]

"How to write" books are often an awful mess of superstitious prescriptivism.

I've only encountered one such, many books which repeated each other though usefully to the novice, and a few books which are excellent.

Comment author: katydee 17 September 2013 07:23:10AM 3 points [-]

I've only encountered one such, many books which repeated each other though usefully to the novice, and a few books which are excellent.

Any particular recommendations?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 September 2013 10:25:51PM 1 point [-]

Currently reading this one, it's pretty good: http://www.amazon.com/Self-Editing-Fiction-Writers-Second-ebook/dp/B003JBI2YI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1378421718&sr=8-2&keywords=self-editing+for+fiction

It's not a basic book for new writers, though, as one might guess; I like it because it has some very low-level advice not contained in other books.

Comment author: shminux 17 September 2013 10:59:24PM 1 point [-]

Hmm, I wonder if there are any stats on how applying the book's advice affects a) acceptance rate and b) popularity. a) is hard to measure, but b) should be easy: take a few bestsellers vs a few random published books and see how severely the advice is violated and whether the bestsellers are better at compliance.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 18 September 2013 12:55:59AM 0 points [-]

Presumably a) could be measured via the same techniques by comparing a sample of a publishing house's published books with a sample of their rejected manuscripts.

Comment author: shminux 18 September 2013 01:12:27AM -2 points [-]

RIght, if the latter were easily accessible. Besides, most of the rejects are probably terrible in other ways, masking the issue.

Comment author: kalium 17 September 2013 10:28:31PM 0 points [-]

That looks really interesting! I'd been thinking of Strunk and White and the like when I wrote my comment.