Learning to Write by Reading

Learning to Write by Reading Learning to Write by Reading Learning to Write by Reading By Michael You might think avoiding other influences makes you a more original writer. But nobody can write in a vacuum. Even the meanings of words depend on how others have used them. You didnt invent the English language. Everything you write, you learned from someone else, even if only from your first grade teacher. Only when youre aware of your influences as a writer can you transcend them, instead of unconsciously copying them. Instead, reading other writers (which you already do) and learning from their style will help you develop your own, original style. Besides improving your vocabulary, it will give you a wider array of tools from which you can choose. You may recognize your own style as you read someone elses. Or you may learn what you dont want to sound like. Choosing your influences Which writers should an aspiring writer read? You should read the great ones there, thats vague enough. Start with the classics of world literature, because many people over many years have confirmed theyre worth reading. You can search Google for greatest writers of all time to see a list. Include modern authors as well, because thats what you are. My colleague Mark Nichol suggests four books that demonstrate specific writing skills. But be warned: take advice on what writers to read, but not whom you must imitate. You can never be anyone but yourself. In 18th century England, everyone thought they needed to write like Lord Chesterfield, but that was a bad idea even in the 18th century. Imitate the writers you want to be like its more profound than it sounds. As Ive said before, you are what you read. Reading influences your style, and as you discover your true style, you have an obligation to keep developing it. Even great writers might be imitated for the wrong reasons. Perhaps another writers uniqueness shouldnt be imitated, since you have your own. Perhaps he or she can get away with breaking rules that you and I shouldnt try to, not until we become more skilled. Until we do, no wonder our writing doesnt quite work. Or it might be a writers persona that draws us, rather than their skill. Many aspiring writers long to be irreverent free-spirits, but that doesnt make them good writers. Mixing a drink like Ernest Hemingway will not make you write like him. (Hemingway himself retorted, Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes.) Some great literary figures were great partly because of their suffering, and you may not want that. Some of them were mentally ill. Imitate writers because of how they write, not because of what they write about. Some writers became popular only because they landed on the popular side of popular controversies. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote about his fictitious novelist Kilgore Trout, His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good.† Other writers camouflage their bad ideas with excellent writing, but its dangerous to imitate interesting writers who write badly. Developing your tools Choose the writers who can do what you want to do, so you can learn how to do it yourself. Like many people, my favorite writer Connie Willis could never guess the murderer in Agatha Christie novels. She wanted to learn how to surprise her readers too, so she studied Agatha Christies plots to figure out how she did it, and it paid off. Now critics call her a novelist who can plot like Agatha Christie. If youre writing within a genre, you need to learn the genre, but its more important to learn the skills. In other words, dont say, Okay, I like J.R.R. Tolkien, so I want to learn to write about orcs. Orcs have been done enough already. If you really want to give orcs a fresh face (and orcs are not known for their facial beauty), you first need to learn to write about evil, or danger, or enemies. So find authors who understand those things, whatever their genre. If you are organizing a dangerous quest, you dont need to imitate the way Gandalf organized one in Bilbo Baggins hobbit hole. You could find inspiration for that in Moby Dick or Treasure Island. Professor Tolkien would be ashamed if all you learned from his writings was how to talk like an orc. You can imitate the style of others as you develop your own, but theres no need to imitate their ideas. If youre writing about danger, sure, read how other writers depict danger. Read what they say, then decide what you want to say. It should not be the same thing. That is not the kind of imitation Im talking about. How you feel about danger will be different because youre different. Thats your unique contribution. How to absorb a writers influence Besides reading, what other ways can you learn from an author? Copy out passages that you like. Copying focuses your attention by slowing down your reading. You can learn better by involving the hand as well as the eye. Read out loud. While youre at it, why not read regularly to those who cant read for themselves? That helps you, the aspiring writer, as well as the preschool future reader, or the elderly person with failing sight. Create templates from favorite sentences, similar to the Mad Libs game, and fill the structure with your own words. For example, based on the first line of Edith Whartons Ethan Frome: NAME VERB the NOUN, bit by bit, from ADJECTIVE NOUN, and each time it was a ADJECTIVE NOUN. Adapted original: I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and each time it was a different story. Parody an authors style while writing on a subject that he never would have. Thats how the Bad Hemingway Contest kept going for nearly 30 years. Parodying Ernest Hemingway is an attractive target that has tempted distinguished writers such as E. B. White, Raymond Chandler, F. Scott Fitzgerald and George Plimpton. Imitation doesnt need to be a form of flattery. You can learn a lot about a writers style when you make gentle fun of him or her. W. H. Auden, in his 1962 essay â€Å"The Poet and the City,† says that in his imaginary College for Bards, the only critical exercise required of students would be the writing of parodies. Authors who learned writing by copying out passages, even entire books, include Jack London, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Hunter S. Thompson. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Writing Basics category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Program vs. ProgrammeRunning Amok or Running Amuck?20 Criminal Terms You Should Know

The Probability of Rolling a Yahtzee

The Probability of Rolling a Yahtzee Yahtzee is a dice game involving a combination of chance and strategy. A player begins their turn by rolling five dice. After this roll, the player may decide to re-roll any number of the dice. At most, there are a total of three rolls for each turn. Following these three rolls, the result of the dice is entered onto a score sheet. This score sheet contains different categories, such as a full house or large straight.  Each of the categories is satisfied with different combinations of dice. The most difficult category to fill-in is that of a Yahtzee. A Yahtzee occurs when a player rolls five of the same number. Just how unlikely is a Yahtzee? This is a problem that is much more complicated than finding probabilities for two or even three dice. The main reason is that there are many ways to obtain five matching dice during three rolls. We can calculate the probability of rolling a Yahtzee by using the combinatorics formula for combinations, and by breaking the problem into several mutually exclusive cases. One Roll The easiest case to consider is obtaining a Yahtzee immediately on the first roll. We will first look at the probability of rolling a particular Yahtzee of five twos, and then easily extend this to the probability of any Yahtzee. The probability of rolling a two is 1/6, and the outcome of each die is independent of the rest. Thus the probability of rolling five twos is (1/6) x (1/6) x (1/6) x (1/6) x (1/6) 1/7776. The probability of rolling five of a kind of any other number is also 1/7776. Since there are a total of six different numbers on a die, we multiply the above probability by 6. This means that the probability of a Yahtzee on the first roll is 6 x 1/7776 1/1296 0.08 percent. Two Rolls If we roll anything other than five of a kind of the first roll, we will have to re-roll some of our dice to try to get a Yahtzee. Suppose that our first roll has four of a kind. we would re-roll the one die that doesn’t match and then get a Yahtzee on this second roll. The probability of rolling a total of five twos in this way is found as follows: On the first roll, we have four twos. Since there is a probability 1/6 of rolling a two, and 5/6 of not rolling a two, we multiply (1/6) x (1/6) x (1/6) x (1/6) x (5/6) 5/7776.Any of the five dice rolled could be the non-two. We use our combination formula for C(5, 1) 5 to count how many ways we can roll four twos and something that is not a two.We multiply and see that the probability of rolling exactly four twos on the first roll is 25/7776.On the second roll, we need to calculate the probability of rolling one two. This is 1/6. Thus the probability of rolling a Yahtzee of twos in the above way is (25/7776) x (1/6) 25/46656. To find the probability of rolling any Yahtzee in this way is found by multiplying the above probability by 6 because there are six different numbers on a die. This gives a probability of 6 x 25/46656 0.32 percent. But this is not the only way to roll a Yahtzee with two rolls. All of the following probabilities are found in much the same way as above: We could roll three of a kind, and then two dice that match on our second roll. The probability of this is 6 x C(5 ,3) x (25/7776) x (1/36) 0.54 percent.We could roll a matching pair, and on our second roll three dice that match. The probability of this is 6 x C(5, 2) x (100/7776) x (1/216) 0.36 percent.We could roll five different dice, save one die from our first roll, then roll four dice that match on the second roll. The probability of this is (6!/7776) x (1/1296) 0.01 percent. The above cases are mutually exclusive. This means that to calculate the probability of rolling a Yahtzee in two rolls, we add the above probabilities together and we have is approximately 1.23 percent. Three Rolls For the most complicated situation yet, we will now examine the case where we use all three of our rolls to obtain a Yahtzee. We could do this in several ways and must account for all of them. The probabilities of these possibilities are calculated below: The probability of rolling four of a kind, then nothing, then matching the last die on the last roll is 6 x C(5, 4) x (5/7776) x (5/6) x (1/6) 0.27 percent.The probability of rolling three of a kind, then nothing, then matching with the correct pair on the last roll is 6 x C(5, 3) x (25/7776) x (25/36) x (1/36) 0.37 percent.The probability of rolling a matching pair, then nothing, then matching with the correct three of a kind on the third roll is 6 x C(5, 2) x (100/7776) x (125/216) x (1/216) 0.21 percent.The probability of rolling a single die, then nothing matching this, then matching with the correct four of a kind on the third roll is (6!/7776) x (625/1296) x (1/1296) 0.003 percent.The probability of rolling three of a kind, matching an additional die on the next roll, followed by matching the fifth die on the third roll is 6 x C(5, 3) x (25/7776) x C(2, 1) x (5/36) x (1/6) 0.89 percent.The probability of rolling a pair, matching an additional pair on the next roll, followe d by matching the fifth die on the third roll is 6 x C(5, 2) x (100/7776) x C(3, 2) x (5/216) x (1/6) 0.89 percent. The probability of rolling a pair, matching an additional die on the next roll, followed by matching the last two dice on the third roll is 6 x C(5, 2) x (100/7776) x C(3, 1) x (25/216) x (1/36) 0.74 percent.The probability of rolling one of a kind, another die to match it on the second roll, and then a three of a kind on the third roll is (6!/7776) x C(4, 1) x (100/1296) x (1/216) 0.01 percent.The probability of rolling one of a kind, a three of a kind to match on the second roll, followed by a match on the third roll is (6!/7776) x C(4, 3) x (5/1296) x (1/6) 0.02 percent.The probability of rolling one of a kind, a pair to match it on the second roll, and then another pair to match on the third roll is (6!/7776) x C(4, 2) x (25/1296) x (1/36) 0.03 percent. We add all of the above probabilities together to determine the probability of rolling a Yahtzee in three rolls of the dice. This probability is 3.43 percent. Total Probability The probability of a Yahtzee in one roll is 0.08 percent, the probability of a Yahtzee in two rolls is 1.23 percent and the probability of a Yahtzee in three rolls is 3.43 percent. Since each of these are mutually exclusive, we add the probabilities together. This means that the probability of obtaining a Yahtzee in a given turn is approximately 4.74 percent. To put this into perspective, since 1/21 is approximately 4.74 percent, by chance alone a player should expect a Yahtzee once every 21 turns. In practice, it may take longer as an initial pair may be discarded to roll for something else, such as a straight.