I have discussed this idea with friends who are writers / artists. Call me a cynic, but while many writers / artists aspire to collective shared knowledge, the reality of both the writing and art market is that unique knowledge is an important differentiator and an asset to their careers. If you do find a fascinating, rare 19th century travel journal in some online archive the last thing you are going to do is share it with others like you until you're sure that you're not going to use it as material yourself. The exception to this being other writers completed work (ie long-form articles, books), but that probably doesn't need a focus on writers / artists per se and a more general "aesthete" HN might work better...
That's not my experience at all. I am trying to start a new career as a fiction writer, and writers are very interested in sharing knowledge. I say this for both professional, published authors and wannabes like me.
I was part of a long creative writing course (about 9 months), and our class of 20 formed a bond of helping each other A LOT. Sharing tips, beta reading, posting about prizes, open calls for literary magazines, etc.
In this class, we decided to start inviting published authors to share tips for beginners. We got mostly positive responses. Professional writers would spend about 2 hours with us (online) sharing tips and answering questions. All of them were very transparent about how they write and gave useful tips on how to get published. They said things that would be impossible to learn without talking to a professional author.
So I call you a cynic, as you asked me to, and a wrong one at that.
To understand this more fully you’d need to appreciate two things.
One is that while there are a lot of things that people will share with you (they often want to share their expertise/craft and be good humans), there are a number of things they won’t share with you.
Two is that when you are starting out you are in a position where almost all information from an experienced artisan is helpful. That can mean you may easily miss what they are not telling you.
This is not to say they are misleading you or hold ill will because the information they withhold from the conversation would not be useful to you anyway, as you are not in a position to use it or be a threat to them.
Or, the alternative, is that yours (apparently) and gp’s point of view is not that common as you think it is. So it is not me that have to understand things, it is you that are wrong.
Also, the mentioned example seems very implausible. What makes an author unique is not what source they used for inspiration. Two writers will get the exact same “19th century travel journal” and write to completely different stories inspired by it. In different genres most likely.
I don’t think our points are opposed. I can’t speak for the parent but I am not saying people don’t like you, won’t help you or that they resent you or guard their secrets. They can like you and not tell you important points they’d like to keep secret.
I am saying that if you went in asking certain direct questions about the author’s work you wouldn’t get the same reception.
I agree with your point about the outcome of discovering a journal in a broad sense but think reading parent’s example accurately requires a lot of context of being in the industry, presence at the right events, and knowledge of the zeitgeist. There is still competition.
I think they are opposed. Writers hiding research secrets because they don't want to help the competition seems to be as useless as wannabe founders hiding their idea for a business because they are afraid someone will steal them. It is much more likely that this secrecy is hurting more than helping them, as they don't have some feedback on how to improve the idea.
Also, the existence of secrets among humans due to competition seems to be a moot point. Bringing the discussion to the original point, if said competition prevents the existence of a writers' HN, I believe that is completely false. HN is good for entrepreneurs. The fact that they don't share their sales leads here doesn't matter at all for the existence and quality of HN.
Totally disagree with your first point. It is only valid if you have infinite money and all the best connections and perfect trust. Show me where that exists and I’ll buy it.
Hiding the right secrets in an early company is critical, whether they are technological that you are hiding from competitors or business plan endgames that you are hiding from customers (but perhaps you aren’t aware of them and only the VC sees it). There is a big difference between some person thinking they have a great idea but won’t tell anyone, and determining where you draw the line on sharing product, go-to-market, etc. People who raise enough money have the “that’s the secret part” point of the conversation. The conversation goes better if they communicate that in a way most people don’t notice, though, and so at that point they frequently redirect, deflect or defer.
I think we see the audience of HN differently — from my perception it is predominantly aspirational entrepreneurs, not actual entrepreneurs that make up the majority of engagement here. While no doubt the percentage of entrepreneurs is higher here than just about anywhere else, entrepreneurs have less time and there are just far fewer of them. What I believe is predominant here though, whether entrepreneur or not, is engineer/developer roles.
Regarding your point on competition I think we understand the two cultures of engineers and writers differently. Writing has less constraint, and in my experience that means it is more reliant on ego expression. It can be humbling but a person can also make a great career being a terrible writer. Engineers make things that function. If you are a terrible engineer, your work will rapidly disappoint probably a lot of people, and either you improve, you hide somewhere adjacent, or you leave the profession.
I think HN works for a variety of reasons including the general humility of engineers, the general lack of desire for the spotlight, and the frequency of dramatic and immediate improvement of workflows due to new tools. I don’t know which of these and other reasons are critical but I am skeptical writing has enough of them. Maybe with a new generation of writers.
This is not how fiction writing works, specifically. The hugest fans of fiction writers are other fiction writers. There is a desire by writers to see every other writer succeed just because they love seeing others' work. In my subfield, multiple award-winning authors have rescinded their candidacy for internationally-recognized awards simply because they want other authors they're a fan of to get the spotlight instead.
Yes I think that's fair especially about writing technique if that was the OP's original analogy, and in particular about new writers as you point out.
What I was referring to specifically was inspiration and knowledge of niche events that become the details that bring prose / art alive. These immediately lose their effect if they are reused which is why my friends who are professional writers dedicate an enormous amount of time to research in the hope that these details may jump out to them.
In a lot of contemporary art, a curator's view of work is often hung around a particular piece of research and that must be unique to warrant the attention of the public - my original point was that that research just can't be shared until the work is revealed.
However, maybe to your point, there is a lot of value in a more technical literary HN which encourages meta discussion on the process of writing rather than the content.
I've never saw a software engineer hoard some knowledge for a competitive edge. I guess it's blue/red ocean market difference multiplied by the fact that average engineer can feel pretty successful with his career, whereas an average writer is anything but.
Even in writing, the right combination of execution and being in the right place at the right time is everything, and ideas/knowledge/concepts are like sand at the beach. But yeah like all art "markets" it's massively unevenly distributed, so you'll find way more people who are cynical about it.
There's a genre-specific discord for litrpg and although it was originally geared towards readers many of the authors hang there. Verified authors get a tag and probably even their own channel, but I'm not sure about that since I'm not a verified author. The downside I see for authors is like HN it could prove a distraction, possibly even more so if the general public discovers it for all the usual reasons.
It sounds like a great project for someone who wants to spend the time and energy moderating a forum, slack, discord or what have you. The issue will be gatekeeping "real" and aspiring authors from people who just want a way to @ their favorite author about something. It would potentially be a great place to get advice if people took the time to direct new writers.
As an aside - the podcast Writing Excuses is a great place for new authors to find hours of advice from established authors in several different genres. The show regularly rotates in new guest authors, keeping the topics fresh despite being on their 15th season. Of course like any entrepreneur they have something to sell - their books and writing workshops - but for all that their advice is sincere and useful. https://writingexcuses.com And there is allegedly a discussion forum somewhere on the site although I've never sought it out.
Is it related to the litrpg sub-reddit ? I ended up there semi-randomly (reading far too many Chinese webnovels) and it's a pretty nice place for discovery, as a reader.
Oooh, interesting. Thanks! I think the few litrpg that I've enjoyed could also somewhat fall into the progression fantasy category. At least, the parts that I really enjoyed about them do.
I've spent decades exploring online communities (haven't we all?). From forums to 4chan, from Digg to reddit to hacker news. I would say that hacker news has one of the highest quality, most engaged and passionate user bases around... a rare feat. To replicate a place like this for other interests would be a dream.
I think the recipe for a good, interests based community is limited moderation, small scale, and a non-profit orientation. Because even once great communities on reddit have been poisoned by their massive growth and ad driven leadership combined with heavy handed, political moderation.
Oddly enough, I have found /lit/ on 4chan to be one of the best communities for discussing books and writing. They are more grounded and passionate than most of the other Chans and while you'll still find the occasional edgy post or nonsense, the censorship free and open community has some brilliant minds engaging there.
Discord has potential, but the constant flow of information and the reliance on typically heavy handed moderation make it just a faster version of popular writing subreddits.
I wish someone could make a cheap and easy shell to quickly make "hacker news" like clones that people could run for given interests, to create communities like this one geared towards other interests.
That’s interesting that you laud “limited moderation” while celebrating Hacker News.
I think of HN as standing out for having more comprehensive guidelines than most communities, a user base that respects and voluntarily enforces those guidelines, and formal moderation that allows few exceptions to slip through.
We’re lucky that they’re good guidelines and that we have a community that broadly appreciates them, but “limited” is not a term I’d use for the moderation here.
>I wish someone could make a cheap and easy shell to quickly make "hacker news" like clones that people could run for given interests, to create communities like this one geared towards other interests...
It's difficult because there is not a lot of news or pressing issues in fiction. Contemporary fiction is not robust enough for it to be the basis of an aspiring writer's study. Canonical works are. This is distinct from coding, where new methods, and news about developments in technology, are directly applicable to the best work being done. You would need to create a sense of urgency about literary criticism, but this requires an abundance of reading on the part of the user base.
> there is not a lot of news or pressing issues in fiction
Are you sure about this? One of the biggest publishing houses is being sued by the DOJ to stop a merger. Publishing houses have recently started splitting advances into thirds and quarters over 2-3 years. There's an unprecedented quitting of agents, leaving many authors afloat with no rep. Barnes & Noble recently and suddenly changed how they market hardcover childrens literature which will likely sink debut authors.
This was all subjects within the last 2/3 weeks btw.
Writers are adjacent to journalists. They do not want for news, and realistically their perspective is over represented in media currently, unlike software developers.
This is confusing to me. It almost sounds like you're saying that because journalists write articles, that makes their articles relevant to journalists, no matter what the article is about. By that logic, all articles are related to writing, because they're from the perspective of writers. This can't be what you mean, but that's what I'm inferring, and I'm having trouble figuring out a different interpretation.
To my knowledge, coverage of the journalism industry isn't a huge part of the news cycle, certainly not as much as coverage of the software industry is!
Anyway, there's plenty of stuff on HN that isn't about software development: in the top 10 front page articles right now, there's a news story about an Albanian cyberattack, a link to WikiHouse, a warning about a potential privacy breach on virtual meeting software, product announcements for YC Summer 2022, etc.
It's more "stuff that may be of interest to people in the software industry", and I have no trouble imagining how you could fill a link aggregator with "stuff that may be of interest to writers".
You may be right, but I think the general news stuff comes after people have gotten value from the met need.
It could be that a wave of similar sites will emerge for a bunch of niche topics and it just so happens that hackers were on the internet first. That hypothesis matches the data too.
I mean there are people with arts degrees who went through adjacent if not identical accredited programs and early careers, now working professionally in journalism and writing fiction. The broad perspective, if not the specific niche of the perspective, is well-represented.
This is functionally not the case with engineering schools. Are there any experienced CS or CpE majors working as journalists for major mainstream media organizations? There may be, I honestly don’t know, but they are at least rather hard to find.
Hacker news exists and has value in part because what we had before were predominantly press releases and wikis run by often a single person. Writers with very few exceptions didn’t have the depth of practical experience necessary to provide insights and context, while technology needing commentary was rapidly emerging.
A lot of the early would-be peers such as slashdot and ars got absorbed by media companies and now they are not the same. It helps that HN does not have to make money, and from what I have seen is extremely well moderated.
I have no idea what your logic is right now beyond making a point that's spoken from a place of complete ignorance of an industry one doesn't work in and, upon being confronted with that ignorance, doubling down with even less logic.
The original point of issue was the claim that industry-specific news pertaining to writers isn't needed. Whether or not computer scientists are writers has nothing to do with the incorrect claim, which I've given examples to portray its incorrectness.
I think some of our definitions are different. I guess to translate, my point is this: a news site for fiction writers may be wanted, but a news site and a community like HN are different things. The community is not a given even if people want news. In addition to the necessary components I mentioned in another post there are sure to be significant others: e.g. a large number of people are profitably employed as developers and spend a good portion of their workday looking like they are working while browsing online. I assume science fiction writers probably spend a lot of time online, but also that there are far fewer of them than successful engineers/developers.
You have given an example of people in a specific subfield wanting to spread awards around, unless you’re referring to something else. I’m not denying the reality of that. That is very different from what we are discussing as well.
You think it will work, I’m skeptical it will work. That’s ok.
You claim you are skeptical that it "will work" when I have pointed to multiple already existing communities where it is currently working in this very thread.
Or maybe your position is it already exists and is called Publisher’s Marketplace? I ran a quick check and it looks like there are around two orders of magnitude difference in traffic between HN and PM. I don’t think it could support/be supported by a community.
PM is of course supported by a community; it runs on a subscription model and is actually reporting based on people telling it what's up.
I think you are speculating on a place of ignorance about a community you're not a part of and assume you can simply deduce the state of a community anyways, even when your priors are completely wrong.
The original question was “is there a HN for writers”. Your post, in my view, proves me right. PM is not a HN. I don’t pay a subscription, there isn’t a paywall. Without logging in I can’t tell where in the IRL/pseudo anonymous usernames range it is but I’ll continue to speculate that it’s more on the IRL range.
As I said earlier, I think our definitions are different. Yours is a very broad take on a news site. Mine is more of a direct analog to HN.
You are correct I am not a part of the science fiction writing community. The fact that I am not in no way precludes me from having valid positions on the viability of a community model translation from one community to another based on a more broadly informed macro perspective. It might even be the more accurate perspective as members tend to be biased toward their communities.
Communities occasionally fork... I participate on a slack channel that was a fork of the community on one of the chat rooms/channels on SE.
The codadict split was largely in part of (and I am intentionally being very vague here as if you dig it gets ugly and that doesn't need to be discussed here) a disagreement on the additional policies that moderators need to follow, religious laws ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_on_Shabbat ), SE management at the time, and the broad SE community consensus. To put it lightly, it is a mess. If you want to find an external source, Jon Ericson's one sided retrospective is a starting point.
It resulted in one of the more popular moderators leaving, joining a site/project in development and having a pull on the related communities to shift there.
Not involved in either community but I somehow don't think stackexchange's "make the answer ready to copy paste and don't link to external content" ethos applies well to creative writing.
The different Stack Exchange communities have very different ethos, and thus their answers have some very different vibes. In particular, the ones related to creative writing (especially https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/ ) are full of speculative and creative conversations that, while still constructed around the Question/Answers paradigm are not quite so draconianly managed as the technical Stack Exchanges.
I know I'm not the only one, but I sometimes get a bit distracted on SE/SO from the "hot network questions" sidebar and go down rabbit holes of reading answers to questions from different fields. People come up with a lot of interesting, thoughtful answers, especially in worldbuilding.
Hacker news partially works because of the way the community is built; there are people here at all stages of their careers, which is unusual. (Anywhere from successful startup founders, to teenagers just interested in the topic.)
A corrollary community of writers would be wonderful, though I do think it would likely require the backing of an institution parallel to Ycombinator.
Fortunately, there are many organizations that offer community for writers; most major cities have writing centers such as Richard Hugo House in Seattle, or The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. If you're looking to connect with such a community, these types of places are wonderful resources, though they tend to be offline focused.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Screenwriting/ was awesome. Max Landis would literally pass on good spec scripts posted on the internet by randos to his hollywood agent back in the day, and regale the hordes with making of anecdotes from "American Werewolf in London" ;)
Yeah I think without dang, HN would be a very different place. The tone and guidelines enforcement is a result of the HN culture, the HN culture comes as a direct result of the moderation feedback dang and other HN mods have consistently given.
While I would love to join a community (I used to use writing.com a ton) of HN but for fiction writers not startup owners plus us hangers on, I don't know if that can be done without a good moderation team.
I have quite a few friends who don't work in tech who regularly read and even comment on HN simply because the discourse is worth it.
I'd invest a few dollars into the "clone dang" kickstarter. At the very least he should consider writing a book on fostering communities through tasteful moderation.
Definitely would count myself as a not-tech-industry person (graphic design manager instead with a passing interest in linux) who pulls up HN every morning. :) Far more interesting topics on here at it's worst than most news sites at their best.
It's for SFF writers, and it skews towards trad pub. There are (easy to meet) membership requirements: You need to have earned some money as an author, or have been published somewhere pro-ish.
I've been a member for many years. It's a useful community.
If you are willing to kickstart one, there's this generic hacker news clone I maintain where you can create a writing community. Make a "Writing" category of post tags and I will put it in the public category list :)
What kind of fiction writing do you do? Scribophile and Absolute Write are more general communities. If you're into science fiction & fantasy, consider the Dream Foundry. Are you published somewhere & can you join a writer's association?
HN is heavily moderated, and it has a nerdy subject matter that selects for a certain type of audience. Those both help, but I think the biggest thing that makes HN so great is its peculiar business model.
I don't know if YC keep this site running purely out of love or if it's a calculated ploy to make money, but if HN is profitable for YC then it's in a very indirect and hard-to-quantify way - e.g. YC startups using HN as a recruitment platform. Dang doesn't have money-hungry VCs breathing down his neck telling him to maximize "engagement" - the day that happens will be the day HN devolves into an unreadable, unusable pile of garbage, like what happened to Reddit.
There aren't many communities like HN because there aren't many organizations that have the resources to run a site like this without running it into the ground because they have dollar signs in their eyes. The few that do exist are probably small forums focused on a super-niche topic or hobby, but if I knew of them I wouldn't post them here because I wouldn't want to spoil the secret.
Moderation is such an interesting art. There is moderation like trimming a bonsai tree... the effort is to keep everything healthy and beautiful, but not to avert the nature of the plant, to embrace its natural growth... then there is moderation like on reddit, which is politically and advertising motivated to force the community into a given shape, like trimming hedgerows. Either step in line or get pruned.
If anything HN feels like it has a lighter touch with moderation than most other places online, and I have never seen them outright censor certain political views or show any sort of favoritism towards any one company or group. I think much of that comes from having a small, passionate community that can manage the task of behaving and debating in good faith.
If someone could figure out the method for crafting communities like HN for other interests... that person would be a treasure to the internet.
I think a lot of similar-ish communities happen on subreddits. I would venture to say that most other fields don't have either (1) the inclination and ability to run and moderate an independent site or (2) the sheer stubbornness to "not be Reddit" that I see on here.
Forums are also still a thing, and many have thriving close-knit and heavily-moderated communities for people of a common field or interest.
I am not a writer, although I know a few. The most interesting place I've encountered, and a place that almost inspired me to write myself, was the one and only sci-fi convention I ever attended. Note that it wasn't really a convention focused on TV/movie/comics fandom, although a few of those creators were on panels too. Mostly it was sci-fi and fantasy novelists discussing industry topics in panels, taking questions and hobnobbing with attendees between sessions. I'd definitely recommend trying to find a convention with a more writer-y focus, especially if you are interested in genre fiction.
The NaNoWriMo folk were really good at this 10 years ago, but I haven't visited that group in a while.
There's also a really good erotica forum which I won't link in public here, but they have a complex application process. The people who get through are mostly respectful, incredibly intelligent and creative, and have quite a bit of ambition. They motivated me to start learning proper writing techniques like outlining and rhe whole Aristotle stuff.
Also I find that screenwriting groups are very mature. The novelist groups tends to want fame and something else, but screenwriters are more interested in what makes a truly good story.
I feel it's very difficult to find communities for writing (not fiction writing, but like, "writing for web" or "content writers") without it devolving into shilling or self-promo.
I have been a part of and creating online communities for 20 years now and there is not going to be anything like HN for "normal people" anytime soon.
The reason HN works is because we are all in the same area and somewhat experts (or trying to be). The problem is that NO OTHER community is online nearly 100% of the time. So there is no writer HN, no science HN, the only thing that comes close is Reddit or 4chan because those are kids, who are also online 24/7.
Real people are in the real world, only techies and kids live online.
I think, that to a first approximation, the HN-for-X is HN.
The problem facing a dedicated HN-for-X site is that X-experts, spend most of their time doing X instead of talking about doing X with people-aspiring-to-do-X.
I mean Steven King is mostly writing books and when he gives advice he scales it by writing it down (or having it video recorded).
The other commenter mentioning reddit is probably right that it is closer to HN. All my writer friends use vocal.media though if you want to check that out
As a slight tangent to your discussion, here are links to Brandon Sanderson's BYU lectures on creative writing[1], and other general writing advice[2]
I like that these are not behind some sort of paywall like a "Masterclass" or something.
He also runs an award winning podcast [3] since 2008, which brings forwards famous authors and gets them to share advice on writing.
It's not quite the cozy one-on-one forum style discussion amongst peers that you were wishing for, but if OP is looking for some guidance.
Btw, have you look at the screenwriter's subreddit [4]? I feel they have a much tighter focus on the "writing" aspect, than other general writing related subreddits or forums.
Great question, would be great to have a general "HN for other professions" thread!
One that I can share is econjobrumors.com, but I also have to strongly warn about it. It's a forum for econ PhD students and academics to discuss the academic job market, but unfortunately, due to its no-sign-up anonymous posting feature and looser moderation policy than HN, it's been taken over to some extent by right-wing trolls - it's even made the news at one point about how it might drive minorities and women out of the profession, that's how bad it was (is?). But last time I checked (a few years ago) it was still very active and even used by young academics from other disciplines (especially math) to discuss their job market, and I saw several "Is there an EJMR for Y?" posts, indicative that there were useful signals for people on the academic job market between all the noise.
The mainstram writing groups are terrible. The average writing ability on many of the writing groups are actually lower than the rest of reddit.
I think it attracts hobbyists who refuse to take any advice. It's like how some grandmas refuse to use timers when cooking pasta. These groups are full of people who are always challenging the norm. They spend more time criticizing Stephen King and R.A. Salvatore's writing over making any meaningful output.
I don't buy into this whole "competent people are too busy for X". There's always time to socialize and mentor others. And even the best writers get writer's block for weeks.
I believe the main purpose for these groups is emotional support to becoming a professional. Which can often be in contrast to wanting to improve. So they can be very hostile to constructive criticism.
r/screenwriting is probably an exception. I think people who know about screenwriting are already very capable writers. More talk about how to solve specific work problems, or request career advice past 10 years. Less on trying to get your foot into the industry.
It's still no HN, closer to r/androiddev. In HN you have people talking about quitting FAANG. I believe in a top tier screenwriting group, you'll have more discussions on how to survive Hollywood, things like salaries at Disney, and such.
See the other comments wrt dang. There may be a few well-curated/moderated subreddits but the noise to signal ratio generally seems to be considerably higher on Reddit generally, though there are undoubtedly diamonds there as well.
I second that. I’m a member, full of insightful comments. I’ve joked in the past that it’s a social network for librarians. Check out the sub sites fan fare and ask for example.
Most writing spaces are full of incompetent people who are terrible at what they do, give bad advice, blame everyone else for their problems, and have wildly incorrect opinions on topics that they aren't qualified for.
In other words, most writing spaces are just like HN. Take your pick.
