Hi Luke, Just want to mention I'm also a published fiction/non-fiction writer. There are many unhelpful youtube channels about writing, but yours is definitely thoughtful and helpful to aspiring writers. Keep up the good work

Excellent. Thanks again. Very happy I found your channel.

Gramsci did a bang up job of describing fascism.

Interesting topic. I do feel what Orwell says apply primarily to political talk, that's often vague and nonsensical on purpose. I can see how it would improve creative writing as well, but I can also see how creative writing can benefit from not following some of these rules. Not everything has to make sense and sometimes beauty is the only goal of writing. It could be bias from my own mother tongue and culture though (French, in case my first name didn't give it away), where convoluted writing is often celebrated (and often explains why our language is a tough one to learn). I guess it's all a question of balance.

It’s a bit ironic that a lot of the strictures against bad writing here would seem to apply to Shakespeare. For instance, there is the straightforward and unpretentious, “dye every ocean red”, and then there’s, “the multitudinous seas incarnadine”. Or how about, “I wish God did not forbid suicide”, as opposed to the excessively flowery, “… or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter”. Nor is flowery language necessary for poetic purposes. I think it was Ruskin who observed that there were more purple passages in Keats’s “Endymion” than in the extant works of Sophocles. No, Shakespeare was simply and gloriously anticipating Zero Mostel’s advice in “The Producers”: “When you got it, flaunt it, baby, flaunt it.” English has got it-and I say this as someone who finds Shakespeare's continual elevation more than occasionally nerve-wracking. (So did Ben Jonson.) I often wonder why writers of English, a language with perhaps the largest vocabulary of any in the world, constantly rail against using all its resources, and the fine distinctions to be gleaned from them. It is also a bit troubling to hear that old but quite successful metaphors are deemed to have become mere cliches, rather than (for the most part) enriching the common tongue. I rather think it is indolent minds that become cliched. In fact it is often people who regard themselves as down-to-earth, common folks, using plain and simple words, usually for want of any others, who are the most liable to be dominated by cliches. There is no linguistic solution for this, and to act as if there were rather exacerbates the real problem. Of course high-flown language can be used pretentiously by pretentious people. However what makes them pretentious is not their vocabularies. These are moral questions, not matters of usage.

Language is a tool for communicating. If you're not communicating clearly, you're misusing language! Ambiguity has its place in writing, but concrete details are what communicate ideas.

Why was the background music not Weird Al's Word Crimes? 😂

How do you people always find ways to get into my keep of playlists?

Thanks. I had a friend who's really good at writing, brilliant, and terse, and many times she said I was confusing. So that's what she meant! I wanted to know how to avoid it. What I got was I needed to be a better person, which is true, but I don't know how to do so effectively, as in making permanent improvements. It was just obvious to her and her habit since she was a kid, but I couldn't figure it out, so I thought it's all trial and error with no direction. Thanks.

Sometimes we can't blame the writing for our own lack of understanding.

This video roused me.

You made me laugh so hard that i chocked. grew up reading poetry and when you live in an oppressive country, you learned to read the press written in ways that were not actually what they said. But this is another thing... and prose is another beast. I'm afraid (for myself), that I find the paragraph making sense... but then it's what I thought it alluded to rather than what it was actually saying. This was great, and I'm certainly guilty of these sins. But I wonder, that if the goal of writing is to decieve and convince, politically or/and economically, then isn't that kind of writing the whole point? In other words, should we give the masses what they want?

Orwell sounds like a GBN commentator.

Hey I just wanted to ask for some advice because I’ve had an idea for a short story to get started with writing but I keep trying to write the perfect sentence instead of waiting till I edit later. It’s crippling me but I can’t seem to shut off the critiquing part of my brain during the creative process and it’s rather frustrating. Do you have any ideas how I can combat this?

It sounds like he’s talking about dual-personalities inside us all, one that shares the same traits as everyone else, and then the one that they actually are, but the one they actually are is itself a product of the other, not so real one. That there is no original image to reflect, everything is a reflection of a reflection, there’s no true self or way to bond selves. It seemed to make sense to me before I tried to explain it though.

I disagree with you that vagueness automatically leads to frustration. I for example enjoy ambiguous fiction that leaves it to me to draw a conclusion or imagine on my own what it means instead of getting spoon fed how I have to take it. But maybe that is my Asian side that lets me accept ambiguity much better than most westerners who feel the need that everything has to be concrete while I enjoy the mood that the words create. So, what seems a corruption to Orwell is in my opinion just a different approach. And well, the object driven narratives we usually see in western literature could benefit from a little more holistic and resonance based poetry of the east. I hope my "spoon fed" qualifies as cliché! I utilise complex vocabulary in situations where I incline towards the depiction of sophisticated characters. And the passive gets used in cases of depressive characters or just to show the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Thus I would say I break with all of the suggestions quite often, but usually quite deliberate.

Be HONEST about you want to say. Say it as truthful, meaningful, yet simple and short formulated as you can? Like that? Only embellish when it adds to the intended meaning. And... I could have said this probably way shorter! (too tired now to try, sorry). Litrerally 5 minutes later: SAY WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY AS HONEST AND SHORT AS POSSIBLE. (There. Done!)

Damn you can see the degradation of the English language first hand today with all the new -phobias that’s been popping up.