Nehaveigur

This is from Simon Sarris’ blog, The Map is Mostly Water:

It is an interesting feature of stories and fiction that they resist summary. You cannot read a summary of Anna Karenina and somehow stockpile its pleasures and charms. Narrative resists compression.

I think avoiding summary is even more important when writing, possibly it’s the first step to good writing. You are a primary source. Lots of people couch their opinions with citations, or “studies show”, or they create writing that is an attempt to shorten some portion of thought or history. But this mostly makes for less interesting writing. I think one should write as much as they can with their own empiricism, their own senses, giving the reader their own characterization of life or events.

Related: What should we, and what shouldn’t we delegate to AI?