Category: Other Writing

PROFESSIONAL WRITING TIP: Put the last sentence first

Here’s a bone-simple way most folks can instantly improve their writing:

Take a look at the last sentence; should it actually be the first sentence?

(HINT: The answer is most often “Yes! #duh! 🤦‍♀️”)

I make my living writing commercial copy (yes, still, despite the rise of AI). At one point earlier in my career I was often asked to “fix up” stuff a client had drafted. One day it dawned on me that, most if the time, the final sentence of a client-written paragraph/section/page should actually be the first sentence. In fact, I quickly discovered that in many cases I could basically just move the final sentence to the beginning, fix punctuation, bill my minimum, and everyone would be delighted.  

It doesn’t matter what type of writing it is—a work email, an article, a speech, a blog post, a product description, a sales page, an essay, even many stories or poems—just put the last sentence first and you’re writing will immediately be clearer and more compelling.

But, why?

What I think is happening here is that most casual writers draft entirely chronologically, “thinking with their fingers” (that is, clarifying their thoughts as they write). As a result, they arrive at the true heart of what they want to say—something I privately think of as “the nugget”—last since, having uncovered that nugget they’d been digging for, they feel a sense of closure and relief and stop writing. They look back at the last few sentences, say “There! Nailed it! This is done!” and walk away. If they revise at all, it isn’t true revision, just proofreading.

The thing is, reading is the opposite of writing (in much the same way that a motor and a generator are opposites: apply current to a motor’s wires, you generate motion at the shaft; apply motion to the shaft, you generate current at the wires). Writers arrive at the nugget last when writing—it’s the product of their process. But readers need to receive that nugget first, because they’ve shown up for the product; they don’t care about the process. (Think about it: people don’t start drinking beer because they took a brewery tour; they take a brewery tour because they already love beer.) First you give them the product, then you have some space to to them why they should care.

Incidentally, there’s a deeper lesson here, which should probably be the first sentence of this post:

Amateurs write chronologically; professionals write the intro last.

In Memory of Pat Robertson

from Harper’s Magazine, November 1988

From an exchange of letters last summer between Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and Pat Robertson, chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network.

August 1, 1988

Dear Pat:

I am sure that you have followed the controversy surrounding the film The Last Temptation of Christ. No doubt you are also aware that some in the Christian community have seized upon this film, without even having seen it, to make scapegoats of Jews.

If the film is offensive, I am confident that all Americans, regardless of their religious affiliation, will condemn it. However, I am sure you will also agree that Jews should not be made scapegoats for a work created by individuals of many diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds. Those who have been blaming Jews have served merely to foster divisiveness and hatred at the expense of the mutual tolerance and understanding that has always been the hallmark of this nation’s religious pluralism.

As someone whose voice is widely respected in the Christian community, you are in a unique position to condemn and counsel those who are using this film to foment anti-Semitism. We urge you to do so, and we would be pleased to bring any statement you make to the attention of our constituents.

Sincerely,
 Abe

August 1, 1988

Dear Abe:

Thank you for your letter, which I just received. Please be assured that I will indeed raise my voice against any suggestion of emerging anti-Semitism that may come about from the release of The Last Temptation of Christ.

However, you must know that when word of the release of this picture came to me I knew immediately that, because MCA [the company that produced the movie] has been identified with Jewish management since its inception, the release of this movie would be viewed by many evangelicals as a Jewish affront to Jesus Christ and the Christian faith. This may not be rational, but as I found during the presidential campaign, perceptions are not always rational. Perceptions, however, quickly become reality.

This movie, as you realize, is an offense to 100 million Christians. It ridicules and blasphemes the faith that we have all committed our lives to. In my estimation, The Last Tempta- tion of Christ will be a great detriment to the framework of brotherhood that you and I and others have worked so very hard to bring about between Jews and Christians in America.

I would urge you to do everything you can to exercise your influence with Lew Wasserman and others at MCA to eliminate this affront to Christianity before the trouble begins.

Sincerely,
 Pat

August 3, 1988

Dear Pat:

I appreciate your prompt reply but must admit to serious disappointment with its contents. You say you will raise your voice against “any suggestion of emerging anti-Semitism that may come about,” but open invitations to anti-Semitism have already come about, and yet you have been and continue to be silent. This is the time for you to speak out and confront those perceptions before they become reality.

Our immediate concern is the scapegoating the film has provoked. Since this film is obviously not a “Jewish affront” to Christianity, I cannot understand why you are willing to let this dangerous and divisive lie spread unchecked. I would ask again that you speak out publicly against anti-Semitism and condemn those who are using this film to foment it.

Sincerely,
 Abe

August 8, 1988

Dear Abe:

I am your friend. Please read this letter carefully. It is obvious from your answer that you did not read my last letter.

Saturday night I was taken to dinner by a millionaire housing developer, who had been a member of the city council of one of our largest cities, who is a prominent Republican, and a national vice president of a major religious organization. He asked me, “What do you think of this movie about Jesus?” I said to him, “What do you think?” He answered immediately, “It is a couple of Jews trying to make a buck.”

There will probably be 50 million people, Catholic and Protestant, who will mirror his sentiments. I can’t do much by myself to stop that, but you can deflect it with the proper strategy.

If the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, an active Jewish organization, comes out against this blasphemous movie and in the process condemns MCA for a tasteless, un-American attack on the cherished religious beliefs of a large group of our citizens, you will have said to all Americans that you are not a part of this movie and that it does not have the endorsement of the Jewish leadership in America.

When you make such a statement I will then be delighted to feature your statement on my television network and to give it as much press as I possibly can in the other media. Then instead of your coming off as shrilly blaming Christians for a problem caused by MCA, you will come off as you are—a champion of all people against all forms of bigotry and intolerance.

Please give this deep consideration because whether we like it or not the thing is going to get Out of hand.

With warm personal regards, I am

Sincerely,
 Pat

August 10, 1988

Dear Pat:

I had asked you, as someone whose voice is widely respected in the Christian community, to speak out against, and counsel, those who are using the film The Last Temptation of Christ to foment anti-Semitism. Certain that you would understand, I pointed out that Jews should not be made scapegoats for a work created by individuals of many diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds. How disappointing your response.

I am flabbergasted at your accusation that the Anti-Defamation League or anyone else is “shrilly blasting [sic] Christians for a problem caused by MCA.” The problem is anti-Semitism, as exemplified by the housing developer’s comments to you.

Did you answer him? Did you tell him that Jews did not write the novel or direct the film? Did you tell him that the issue is not “Jews trying to make a buck”?

Pat, if you didn’t straighten him out, you should have. And you are someone who can straighten out others who might, in your words, “mirror his opinion.”

For you to even suggest that “the Jewish leadership in America” should tell the American people that we are not part of this movie and do not endorse it is outrageous. “The Jewish leadership” is not the film industry—why should anyone believe otherwise? Why should Jews be put on the defensive because age-old false stereotypes unfortunately still exist in some quarters? We will not be blamed for the Crucifixion a second time.

There is one point in your letter with which we agree. The ADL does, indeed, oppose and condemn bigotry and intolerance wherever it occurs. Sad to say, in connection with this film it has come from some who are erstwhile friends.

I ask you once again, Pat, to speak out against the anti-Semitism surrounding this film.

Sincerely,
 Abe

DISCLOSURE: I spent an hour on the phone with a friend today whose kid was getting bullied for being a Jew. The response from our local public school system has been only a shade more supportive than Pat Robertson’s response to Abe Foxman, and a helluva lot less honest.

Yes, I’m asking for your financial support, but I’m also trying to figure out of I set up this Patreon x Mailchimp integration properly

This is a short ask. In addition to these meaningful distractions, I also write disturbing fiction. If you want to support that, you can do so on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/DavidErikNelson

Patrons get both the satisfaction of knowing that they, in some small way, are implicated in the things I do, and also fun bonuses (e.g., stories not available elsewhere, a short film, music, interactive fiction experiments, etc.)

I’m also trying to figure out of my Patreon x Mailchimp integration thingy is working properly (ideally it will automagically add new patrons to an existing email group so I can reliably send them stuff). So, if you become a patron at any level, you’ll get the additional satisfaction of knowing you’ve either confirmed that I’m at least as smart as an 8th grader, or sending me into fits of fury aimed squarely at every major platform that seems to think that UX “just happens.”

Clarkesworld Draft Statement on AI/LLMs (“Artificial Intelligence” and “large-language models”; i.e., ChatGPT, etc.)

This is a good start. Of potential interest to many.

I’m tired of waiting for industry organizations to respond to AI issues. Working draft of my own is here: http://neil-clarke.com/ai-statement/

Neil Clarke, editor-in-chief at Clarkesworld Magazine.

For those not following the inside-baseball of small-stakes, high-prestige sci-fi/fantasy short fiction publishing, Clarkesworld is both an extremely good and prestigious publisher, and has been getting absolutely hammered by asshats bulk spamming their online submissions with hundreds of AI-generated “stories” on a daily basis. The stuff is unpublishable drek, but eats up the time and patience of volunteers and the few paid folks working in these very shoestring operations. Every publisher/editor I’ve talked to in the last few months is having similar issues. It’s a fucking nightmare, because like any invasive, it threatens to choke and kill off the ecosystem where it is running rampant. And that ecosystem is the bottom of the food chain whose peak is the most durable source of our global clout as Americans: Our Storytelling Industries.

 

Michael Jackson on Fire Diorama

Combines the hypnotic analgesia of an “oddly satisfying”-style process video with a weird hallucinogenic tribal jaunt through the semiotic-drift of memory and Europe’s long palimpsestic history of animism and Patriarchal monothiem. 

Also, the pleasure of an Irishman doing his best loving tribute to MJ and sort of almost a brief folk-horror film crammed in the middle.

★★★★★ Recommended; would watch again.

EBOOK SALE! 99-cents!

Wanna check out Detroit’s most extra-dimensionally cosmically cursed house? For a limited time it’ll only cost you a buck.

There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House (a short horror novel by David Erik Nelson)

Stop! Don’t unlock the door, don’t go inside, and whatever you do, don’t look at anything in the library — because this house keeps itself occupied. Fans of the Twilight Zone, cosmic horror, and Detroit will love this “absorbing horror” (Rich Horton, Locus magazine, Recommended Story). “A Real Page Turner” (5-star review and recommended read, Rocket Stack Rank)

Who’s holding the camera?

Jack Teixeira, dressed in camouflage fatigues, his finger wrapped around the trigger of a semiautomatic rifle, faced the camera and spoke as though reciting an oath.

“Jews scam, n—-rs rape, and I mag dump”

from the Washington Post: “Alleged leaker fixated on guns and envisioned ‘race war’”

First and foremost a video like this gets me thinking “Who’s coming to hurt us?”

(Answer: This guy #duh Me and my kids, we scam. He shoots. You get to score points tallied in our blood. End of story.)

But after that, videos like this get me thinking of how the camera fundamentally misdirects: we get so fixated on what’s in the frame, we forget about what’s outside the frame, who is holding the camera, pointing it, choosing what it shows and what it hides.

So I wonder: who was holding this camera? What have they left out? What choice did they make, and why?

Incidentally, if you want to watch a better man than me really stunningly dive into this issue, you can do worse than Errol Morris’s documentary about the American war crimes at Abu Ghraib, Standard Operating Procedure:

The Wiggler: An Expressive Synth Using Daisy Seed and Flexure

First things first, this is a fun little synth and I love the voice. But I’m mostly sharing this video because I really like how the creator guides us through their discovery process, and how the concrete realities of these materials and methods guided their design process. Well worth ten minutes of your time.

The Groundbreaking “Computer Speech” Record from Bell Labs (1963)

Hear the groundbreaking “Computer Speech” record from Bell Telephone Laboratories, which features synthesized speech created by one of the earliest computer speech synthesis systems. Directed by D.H. VanLenten, this record represents a significant milestone in the development of speech synthesis technology. … You’ll also discover how punched cards were used to provide the computer with detailed instructions on how to manipulate the various formants to produce different sounds [and] explore the fascinating technique called formant synthesis, which involves simulating the resonances of the human vocal tract, and the IBM 704 computer used to generate the speech sounds. 

Incidentally, this record predates Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey by four years, and came out at least a year  before he began considering the project in earnest. We know that his work in 2001 was influenced by educational materials from the time; hard to believe this wasn’t one of them. 

Anyway, just for the record: this “talking computer” was exactly as intelligent as ChatGPT or any current AI, and considerably less so than a parrot—and inspired the same blue-sky certainty in the media. Hell, here’s an article about computers talking and reliably taking natural-language instruction within the next decade!!! (It was written in 1959.):

Screenshot of article from December 2, 1959 titled "Talking Computers Foreseen in Decade." The first paragraph reads: "Ten years from now it will be possible literally to speak to an electronic computer and have it answer right back.…" Observers will note that was a somewhat optimistic estimate (the first commercial product that approximated this functionality was released in the 2010s) .