How the 1% Rule Applies to Writing
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- čas přidán 13. 05. 2024
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Practice does not make perfect. In fact, it keeps you stuck and spinning your wheels.
In this video I walk you through how to get a little bit better at writing every day.
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My name is Tim Grahl, I'm the CEO of Story Grid and I'm the author _The Threshing_, _Running Down a Dream_, and _Your First 1000 Copies_. My partner Shawn Coyne is the creator and founder of Story Grid and he's a writer and editor with over 30 years of experience.
🧰 Additional Resources
• The 1 Thing All Great Stories Have in Common - • The 1 Thing All Great ...
• 'Read a Lot. Write a Lot.' is HORRIBLE advice - • 'Read a Lot. Write a L...
• 19 Ways Writers Fail - • The 19 Worst Writing M...
• Scene Breakdown: Ready Player One - • Scene Breakdown: Ready...
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🙋♀️ Have a question or topic for a future episode? storygrid.com/youtube-questions - Jak na to + styl
My music teacher in middle school said something similar that I will never ever forget... she said, "Practice does not make perfect, practice makes PERMANENT. If you practice poorly, you will perform poorly."
I'm a music teacher, and I use that saying often. It's so true!
James Clear got his info from Anders Ericksson, who was the psychologist who studied deliberate practice and from whom Malcolm Gladwell misinterpreted the "10,000 hour rule." His book, Peak, is a fabulous read and very inspiring. He didn't believe there was such a thing as prodigy, only interest and deliberate practice.
I read Peak years ago, then was puzzled by the popularity of James Clear. I'd never read Gladwell's book so I hadn't heard of the 10,000 Hour Rule. It was kind of weird.
This is the best writing advice channel on CZcams.
Totally! Discovered at about 2 months ago and I just love it. Starting work on my first Memoir which is formatted as a novel and it will be indispensable!
I improve constantly because even when I am not sitting in front of the typewriter pounding out words, I'm absorbing information from other sources, turning it over and over in my mind, integrating it and seeing how it shows itself in the actual act of writing. I don't consider writing to be something that, one day, I'll simply say: ok, this is the formula. I'm human, so there are so many ways that my writing, my expression, intersects with other areas of my life and the larger world at large, so with each iteration, I become in some ways a new writer, a different writer, expressing from a new perspective that flavors my understanding of the world, my surroundings and myself.
Here is a skill that I think is important: (Using Story Grid terminology) - How does the writer transform a blue level or red level of perception into a green level without directly referencing blue or red.
I think this is an important skill because very often we are using scene analysis to reverse-engineer a scene to see why it works and how it works, and yet I find that I still sometimes struggle with understanding (for myself) how to differentiate the levels of perception that appear, line-by-line, in a scene I'm reading when the obvious signposts ("feel", "think" etc) are not present.
"I'm kind of nuts." We few, we happy few...
Tim, you're our kind of 'nuts,' absolutely passionate about what you do. Thank you for that.
So happy to come across this video today, thanks Tim!!
Great food for thought. I really enjoy your topic and delivery. Thank you.
Deliberate practice follows from the deep inner knowledge that your first draft is a steaming pile of sparkly garbage...eventually you're left with more sparkle and less garbage to begin with.
My deliberate practice is this: I write 500 words and have a Story Grid editor check my progress with the goals we have on my individual skills. It has ACCELERATED my growth.
How much are they paying you?
@@ogelsmogel Millions.
@theryanmcrae You’re really fucking up here paying us instead of the other way around. - Tim
Do you think that getting feedback from AI is a good way to improve?
I'm thankful for your vid, you speech helped me think of lots of things and get myself back. Thank you again ❤
Curious if anyone has used/heard of Ready Chapter 1? They are doing a book publishing contest deal and wasn’t sure how legit it was…if so I’ll be dropping all this knowledge I’ve been learning here on Story Grid to blow some minds.
So…math was never my strong suit, but how does a daily 1% increase work out to being 37 times better in a year? Are there 3700 days in a year where you live? Or maybe you meant to say if you did this everyday for 10 years, which is the typical amount given for 10,000 hours to mastery?
No he really means 37 times (37.78 if memory of the actual calculation serves) it is the principle of daily compounding at work - you are allegedly getting 1% better of a bigger amount day after day since you are improving on the improvement as well as the base.
@@NekonataVirino okay that makes sense I guess. For something like playing chess or learning an instrument I can see this being a good metric. For something like writing I just don’t know.
@@guerrillagorilla6537if you're adhering to the science then you will see your improvement. I mean, I'm a terrible writer but can see a hundred fold improvement in my skill and my untrained editors eye in that I follow the 5 commandments of writing and have honed in on those micro skills SG teaches us to practice and get expert feedback on. I mean I still can't write for shit but I can edit it 10 times and produce a reasonable standard without necessarily writing pretty prose. Writing aimlessly isn't going to cut it. Sit with your spreadsheet or beat sheet and tick the boxes for all of the above and yes it will work. Like driving, it takes experience to trust yourself and keep safe. It may take years, but so will any craft. Writing with no talent can be taught with science. SG teaches the science
@@guerrillagorilla6537 It's supposed to show that small changes add up faster than you might think. It's true... but it's also lying with statistics, because 1% is not always 1%. Going from 0% to 1% in any skill is much, much, much easier than going from 70-71%, let alone 90-91% or 99-100%. People can undoubtedly get better at writing, and they can probably do it by improving sub-skills like the video mentions, but trying to get "1% better each day" is almost meaningless, imo.
My writing has improved 99.9% but word choice and sentence structure is still shit unfortunately 😊
Ah, word choice! I know I'm just some rando on here but one thing I do is avoid words like "still," which can have more than one meaning, unless it's actually the correct word ("still water"). As for sentence structure, that takes practice...but you might be one of those who can work well with sentence fragments sprinkled in. Like this.
Keep at it,my friend!
@5Gburn much obliged to you rando person. I appreciate it. I avoid "still, even, rather, quite, seemingly, was, as..." It's a wonder I write anything at all. After 9 months the 2nd draft is gone for a developmental edit 🤞
Every time I hear "valenced language" it makes me roll my eyes. Otherwise, this is fairly useful.