Is writing a 'science' or 'art'

[The_Lover]

My writing purpose was not for the 'average bloke' but my love. I cared not for the random readers emotions, there are different focuses for writing than the general public. Do you believe mark twain was not 'posessed' when he wrote his short poems? Writing is not a science but a loving art. Would you sculpt a stone or wood the exact same each time? No you would look at the grain and remove the dirt or excess like a lover would. Art is how you treat a lover, not something to scream to the public.

 

[Kalliel]

Entirely depends on what you want it to be.

 

[Tempokai]

Seems like you didn't like my answer in your previous post. Language, and therefore writing, is BOTH art and science. You can't separate them into a false dichotomy. You're trying to communicate something to the other person through the symbols which you call Language. Language in a material, be it paper, stone, or pixels is called writing. If you want to convey your grocery list, you can do that. If you want to convey sadness, you can do that. Conveying emotion on the material is art. Therefore, question emerges, how we can deliver that emotion efficiently? How can we do that better? By studying it, it becomes science of written words. Linguistics.

Also Mark Twain is spinning in his grave with you trying to put a "possessed" label on him. He just wrote with intent, for his READERS.

 

[The_Lover]

Entirely depends on what you want it to be.

That's what I wanted to express, thank you. I have no negative views on more linguistics in writing, but I feel more artistic in my own.

Seems like you didn't like my answer in your previous post. Language, and therefore writing, is BOTH art and science. You can't separate them into a false dichotomy. You're trying to communicate something to the other person through the symbols which you call Language. Language in a material, be it paper, stone, or pixels is called writing. If you want to convey your grocery list, you can do that. If you want to convey sadness, you can do that. Conveying emotion on the material is art. Therefore, question emerges, how we can deliver that emotion efficiently? How can we do that better? By studying it, it becomes science of written words. Linguistics.

Also Mark Twain is spinning in his grave with you trying to put a "possessed" label on him. He just wrote with intent, for his READERS.

Fine I'll give up on mark twain, he was just an example id thought of. But efficiency in showing emotion in writing? Do you know people? They feel differently, sure there are generalities in the ways people feel, but are you really gonna say that all people like the same linguistics? There are a million dialects and billions of people. I wrote a story for one person with an artistic view, not scientific.

 

[minacia]

I would say that it's an art, but like many forms of art, there are rules.

For example, if you were making music, there is a mathematical relationship between the frequencies of notes that many people would call pleasant. There is certainly a science to those ratios, and and if you deviate too far from it, people would just say that you're making noise.

However, it's still an art.

 

[ShrimpShady]

What exactly do you mean by "art" and "science"?

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Unless you're doing purely technical writing, it should, nay MUST, be both.

 

[The_Lover]

What exactly do you mean by "art" and "science"?
View attachment 36858

I mean science as In pure rules. Art as in something more fluid but with a couple simple rules.

 

[Deleted member 84247]

Artistic science.

 

[RoyalTime]

Writing is writing

 

[Indicterra]

Writing can be whatever you want to be, that is the whole point..... always been the whole point

 

[The_Lover]

Writing is writing
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Yessir, I'm just trying to figure out how others may view my story lol. It's all a good thing, just wondering if others view

 

[Daydreamers]

Writing is just writing, a tool. it's what you do with it that defines it

 

[The_Lover]

Writing is just writing, a tool. it's what you do with it that defines it

That's my belief, I prefer the artistic side but I still appreciate the scientific side some. You need scientific works for horticultural science, but I prefer more character driven historical documents.

 

[LilRora]

Broadly, I would say writing can be virtually anything, science and art included. I think the content and the form should be distinguished here. The content can be literally anything, but the form, which can be various things from poetry through prose and mundane descriptions, is the thing we notice and generally discuss. Poetry is art, descriptions are science since their purpose is solely conveying information in an efficient manner (which can be scientifically improved), while prose - where the vast majority of stories falls - is somewhere in between the two.

 

[minacia]

I don't really feel that popular writing fits in the category of 'science'.

Armchair science, maybe, but definitely not hypothesis-driven science.

I don't see authors or writers organizing research to study how they should write. At best, it is composed of trial-and-error from individuals and anecdotal collections of experiences from people who said they did X and was successful. Maybe I have a relatively strict definition for science, but drawing conclusions from authority figures or anecdotes =/= science.

 

[RepresentingDesire]

But efficiency in showing emotion in writing? Do you know people? They feel differently, sure there are generalities in the ways people feel, but are you really gonna say that all people like the same linguistics? There are a million dialects and billions of people.

To me it sounds like you think too small the amount of books and too important the dialects, there are genres, tags and tropes that certain kind of people, all of these can be split up in ways of execution like an action thrilled slasher and slow and atmospheric slasher, every way of execution has to be done in a certain way to function which is called good execution or what was meant with efficiency which is not how many believe the smallest amount in shortest time but the needed amount without waste of time. If you disagree with the point about execution, just think about a slow romance movie which has nothing related to the romance until the last 15 minutes where the romance becomes instantaneously a marriage proposal, would you call that a good slow romance?

I don't see authors or writers organizing research to study how they should write.

The author of dune did something similar and you can sometimes see other progression s being incorporated into writing.

 

[minacia]

To me it sounds like you think too small the amount of books and too important the dialects, there are genres, tags and tropes that certain kind of people, all of these can be split up in ways of execution like an action thrilled slasher and slow and atmospheric slasher, every way of execution has to be done in a certain way to function which is called good execution or what was meant with efficiency which is not how many believe the smallest amount in shortest time but the needed amount without waste of time. If you disagree with the point about execution, just think about a slow romance movie which has nothing related to the romance until the last 15 minutes where the romance becomes instantaneously a marriage proposal, would you call that a good slow romance?

The author of dune did something similar and you can sometimes see other progression s being incorporated into writing.

I don't really consider N=1 studies to be science. At least in our field, we call it a case report.

 

[The_Lover]

I don't really feel that popular writing fits in the category of 'science'.

Armchair science, maybe, but definitely not hypothesis-driven science.

I don't see authors or writers organizing research to study how they should write. At best, it is composed of trial-and-error from individuals and anecdotal collections of experiences from people who said they did X and was successful. Maybe I have a relatively strict definition for science, but drawing conclusions from authority figures or anecdotes =/= science.

I understand that, I see science as more experiments and seeing which works best, or the 'generally agreed upon ' rules of the universe. Like there are English 'laws' like scientific laws but they can be bent.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

At best, it is composed of trial-and-error from individuals and anecdotal collections of experiences from people who said they did X and was successful. Maybe I have a relatively strict definition for science, but drawing conclusions from authority figures or anecdotes =/= science.

But that kind of trial and error, exploring the "rules of writing" (especially of genre writing), essentially IS science, even if not formal, methodical scientific study.