Writing style, coding style

03 March 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

image by Cool Writing Style

I've got a writing club at work. We meet during lunches and sometimes we sit in silence and write, and about once a week we have a more formal meeting where we discuss things, brainstorm, plot out ideas together, etc.

There's probably a lot I could talk about that we've learned during these meetings and interacting together. I kind of feel like it's my version of Pixar's Braintrust. We vet each other's ideas and try to be straight with each other. Maybe some other day I'll post some other things I've learned, but today I want to express an unexpected discovery from this group.

I was talking with one of the guys there (there are 4 of us, so not a very big group) about him just diving in and starting something that he's been planning for a while. That's how I write, and I think a lot of would-be writers get stuck because they want to plan the story until it's perfect and then write. I was worried he was falling into that trap, so I was urging him to just write.

I know there are different writing styles. There are discovery writers who just start writing and discover their story along the way. There are architectural writers who plan out the story and then write it. There are also hybrids and that's me. I plan a little and then dive in. That means I usually end up re-writing it many times, but that's my style.

My friend is not a hybrid. He's definitely an architect.

But I was convinced he just needed to start writing or he would never start. So I tried to give him an analogy with programming. I asked, "When you're fixing a bug, don't you just need to dive into the code and look around, poke some things, and start coding before you know how to fix it correctly?"

He said no.

His method is to look at the code and plan the right move, the right way to fix the bug. And then he starts coding.

That surprised me. I mean, it makes total sense now, but to think that writing styles correlate with coding styles was surprising.

Admittedly, this is just one anecdote with two test subjects, so it's not sound science. We'd have to research more to prove the correlation, but I think there's something interesting there. My sense is that these two are correlated because it has to do with how your brain works.

I just never thought those two would match up. What kind of a writer or coder are you, architect or discovery?