Psychology gives you 9 tips to write better

Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker explains the keys to excellent writing.

Reading is one of life's great pleasures, no doubt about it.There is no doubt about it. A few days ago we echoed our particular ranking with 50 essential books that must be read once in life, and today we return for more, but from another point of view.

This time we will review the most useful tips for writing when structuring and developing a text, both in the world of art and outside it.

Writing and psychology, much in common.

We are constantly communicating with written words; they are part of our lives and our cultural heritage. We have all felt at some point the need to write down our thoughts or our stories, and writing can be therapeutic.

We may not be literary geniuses like Gabriel García Márquez. Gabriel García Márquez o William Shakespearebut the lure of paper and pen (or keyboard for digital natives) is often presented to us. However, putting down on paper the ideas and reflections that go through our minds can be a complicated undertaking, and if not, just ask writers and their dreaded "blank page syndrome".

Steven Pinker gives us the psychological keys to better writing.

One of today's most renowned psychologists, Steven Pinker, a linguist and cognitive psychologist at Harvard University, has some answers to help us make progress in the art of writing.

In his book The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century (The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century), published in 2014, Pinker gives us advice and offers a complete guide for those of us who want to improve as writers..

In addition, his suggestions and teachings are based on a multitude of scientific research in the field of neuroscience and cognitive psychology: Pinker reviews the findings on how our brains work and teaches us how to improve our ability to write. and teaches us how to improve our ability to write. The author proposes a series of techniques and strategies that aim to understand how our mind works so that we know how to get the most out of it, in this case to be more creative and efficient when it comes to writing.

Psychological tips for writers

Below, we have summarized the six points on which Steven Pinker's teachings are based. If you want to be a writer and improve your stories, this can help you.

1. Put yourself in the reader's shoes (and mind).

Readers don't know what you know. This seems like a very obvious point, but it's not so obvious. If there are people who don't quite understand what you are trying to convey through your texts, the problem is not theirs, but yours. I'm sorry.

The psychological reason for this failure in writing is that our brain tends to take a lot of knowledge, facts and arguments for granted because you already know them, but do your readers know them as well as you do? Probably not, and this is a frequent problem that must be faced with self-criticism and reflection.

Steven Pinker calls this error the "curse of knowledge", and it is the inability of many writers to understand that others do not know what they know. do not know what they know. This leads to unclear texts, where things are taken for granted that put the reader off. In his book, Pinker states that the best method to avoid falling into this error (which, by the way, is one of the most common according to publishers) is to send a draft of the text to a person without specific knowledge, and ask him/her if he/she understands everything, or not.

2. Use a direct style, with images and conversations.

Cognitive psychology never tires of repeating that more than 30% of our brains have functions associated with vision.. Pinker also points out that there is a lot of scientific evidence showing that readers understand and are able to remember more elements of the text that have to do with language that evokes images.

In addition, it is advisable to use a conversational style and conceive the reader as a familiar person: this will make them feel part of the story and the writer's inner world. However, Pinker asserts, writing with a style focused on impressing the reader achieves the opposite effect, and the reader may feel overwhelmed and feel a great distance from what the author wants to convey.

In fact, research found that many college students deliberately used highly complex vocabulary to make themselves sound smarter.. In fact, the most lexically simple texts coincided with authors of higher intelligence.

The trick to finding a good match between reader and author, according to Pinker, is for you as a writer to imagine that you are in a conversation with someone who is of a similar cultural level to you, but who has some less knowledge than you in the field you are talking about. In this way you will be able to guide the reader and get him to discover some things that you already know but that he does not yet know.

3. Put the reader in context

You need to explain to the reader what the purpose of the text is, why you are telling him/her something, what he/she is going to learn with it. One research reported that readers who know the context from the beginning of the reading are better able to thoroughly understand the text.

Pinker himself emphasizes this point, noting that readers must know the background to be able to read between the lines and connect all the concepts and arguments in a more intuitive way. This means that the reader locates himself in the text from his prior knowledge, and that helps him to better understand what he is reading. In fact, if he does not find any reference to contextualize, the reader will be unable to properly understand the lines in front of him, it will be a superficial reading.

The advice is clear: as authors we must locate the reader, show him what the subject of the text is and what we want to explain to him.. Although some writers refuse to do this in order not to take suspense and mystery away from the text, the truth is that it seems much more reasonable to conquer the reader from the first moment and get him to keep his attention and interest throughout the reading than not to trust that, without being able to contextualize, he will manage to finish even the first paragraph.

4. Creativity (but common sense) when it comes to following the rules.

This is not to say that spelling and grammar rules should not be followed, but when we are writing we should also leave some room for creativity and improvisation. The dictionary is not a holy book, Pinker argues. What's more: dictionary editors are responsible for reflecting the trends and uses of certain terms in each new edition, and that can only be achieved by being connected to society, which is the engine that gives meaning to language.

Of course, it is necessary to know the rules well in order to be able to understand them: it is necessary to know the rules well to be able to break them from time to time with a good dose of creativity.. Creativity, of course, must be a sign of quality, not an opportunity to show that we have tried to be "too clever". If you do not know the rules of writing in a language, it is better not to try to reinvent the wheel and stick to orthodox canons in your texts. There will be time to innovate later.

5. Never stop reading

This and other writing guides are interesting and valuable tools, but if you want to improve as a writer, you must if you want to improve as a writer, you need to read a lot, day by day..

Pinker's vision is very clear: to be a high-quality writer, one must immerse oneself in books and varied texts, trying to learn new languages, literary resources, new terms and idioms with which to grow as a thinker and, therefore, as a writer.

It's simple: keep learning and researching, it's one of the keys to broaden your mental horizons and, consequently, your writing skills.

6. Revise texts thoroughly and patiently

To be an excellent writer, it is not recommended that you try to write great texts on the first try, against the clock. In fact, that is a skill that few, very few, master. In fact, it is much it is much better to devote a lot of care and time to revising and reconstructing your texts..

Steven Pinker believes that revision is one of the keys to good writing. "Very few authors are self-demanding enough to capture the exact words that best explain what they want to convey. Less is more. This is achieved with the ability to revise and refine each paragraph, each sentence. When we write, we need to revise and rephrase to get the message across clearly and adequately to the reader," argues Pinker.

More writing tips

Beyond the recommendations and writing guidelines that have been proposed by this psychologist, keep in mind the following.

1. Be clear about whether it is an artistic or purely expository text.

Artistic literature is based on the principle of "show, or describe", i.e., it tries to generate sensations.that is to say, it tries to generate sensations and climates that subtly transmit the desired concepts and feelings to the reader.

On the other hand, literature whose objective lies outside the world of art, must bet everything on the concretenessThe text should be structured in such a way as to ensure that it conveys a specific set of ideas in a straightforward manner, leaving no room for ambiguity.

Therefore, being clear about whether the text corresponds to one or the other type of literature is key in order to consider from the outset how to structure the text and choose words. However, there are some forms of writing that can build bridges between the two types of literature; for example, in popular science, artistic elements are combined with the need to describe hypotheses, scientific laws, experiments, etc.

2. Do not mix topics in a chaotic manner.

Remember that the human mind understands and memorizes information better if it is presented in thematic blocks.. That is why if, for example, in one paragraph you are talking about a topic and in the next you move on to another, it is not convenient that in the third paragraph you return abruptly to the first topic addressed, leaving aside the previous one; try to distribute the explanation of concepts by "blocks".

Similarly, if you are explaining a story, avoid making time jumps (flashbacks or flash-forwards) constantly; every time you do so, you will make it more difficult for the reader.

3. If you write a narrative, don't try to make the main character very likable.

What makes a protagonist interesting is not the set of positive qualities he or she possesses; in fact, if you go too far in making him or her into someone who fits the model of the "ideal citizen," it may be too unrealistic, making it difficult for readers to connect with that person.

So, instead of idealizing the protagonist, make readers identify with the character, which means exposing his or her flaws and imperfections.This involves exposing their flaws and imperfections. In this way, in addition to placing someone with a deeper and more nuanced personality at the center of the story, you will be able to create novels and stories with a wide creative freedom, to the point that you can even use as a protagonist someone who in another narrative might even have played the role of an antagonist or "villain".

A final thought

The ability to communicate through texts and books is something that can be learned. It is only necessary to practice and put our talent to work.

These strategies and techniques to improve writing that Steven Pinker has given us can help us to empathize with our readers and get our message across in the best possible way. Let's write!