Are there advantages in writing by hand over typing out a story?

In my experience, writing by hand is better for brainstorming and first drafts, and typing is better for editing later drafts.

I usually work out new ideas on paper - I tend to have a lot of questions for myself right at the beginning. On paper, it's easy to quick scribble a question or note next to the relevant text. (If I type them up, I tend to leave them in by accident.) Or, if all you have is a small piece of something - a line of dialogue you'd like to use, for instance - you can just write it down then and decide if it's something you can use later.

You've already mentioned fewer distractions - it's easier to ignore the call of the Internet if I pick up a notebook and go outside. I find notebooks to be more portable (they're good at surviving being squashed, dropped, etc.).

Once I feel like I have enough to work with, I type it up. What's written in the notebook is going to need plenty of editing: this sentence moved to a different paragraph, this paragraph moved to a different location, this one into a completely different chapter. It's much easier to do this in a word processor than on paper. (You also have access to spelling and grammar checking tools.)

If you want someone to read over your work, I'd definitely recommend against giving them a handwritten copy. (I have terrible handwriting, too.)

It's really up to you to decide what process works best. If you find that handwriting isn't helping you in any way, you should probably just stick to typing.

posted over 5 years ago

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Evil Sparrow‭

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I remember what a huge deal it was when I graduated from elementary school (6th grade, age 12) and got my first typewriter as a gift. It was even an electric one! I already knew how to type because, when I was in 3rd grade, there had been an experimental program to see if teaching kids young how to touch type was worthwhile (I've retained all those skills for decades).

So I grew up in an era where anything important was typewritten but all the basics were done by hand. All my school assignments were neatly (ha!) printed. This is where we get the idea of drafts, because each draft was a freshly written (or typed) copy to hand in.

It wasn't until college applications that I was required to type essays (though I wrote articles and stories in high school and typed them for submission to publications...thinking back, I might have needed to type term papers, but I think it was optional). Even in grad school, our first year exams were handwritten (4 of us in the class of 15+ chose to do it on a computer, one that was of course stripped of files and internet).

Fast forward to today and I've got an Apple laptop attached to a large monitor and real keyboard/mouse, on a desk with a comfy chair. Where do I write?

Honestly, I almost always write at my computer.

I used to write tons of poetry but haven't much in the last couple of decades. When I do, it's usually with a pen and paper. I enjoy sitting outside to do it. Or when I'm out and have time to kill (usually I read books but not always). Sometimes I'll outline an idea on paper. A couple years ago I used the time of sitting in lawn chairs at the fairgrounds waiting for it to get dark enough for fireworks to hash out my story outline with my spouse on some scratch paper. For anything longer though, I always use the computer.

Pros of paper:

• You can do it anywhere.
• You don't have to haul any equipment with you (at most, a journal and your favorite pen).
• Nothing has to charge up.
• It's quiet and easy to put down or away.
• You're not distracted by other aspects of your device.
• It's socially acceptable to do during downtime with other people (like picking up a book).
• You can draw diagrams, doodle, or sketch out artwork.
• It can be very satisfying to circle bits you like, cross out what you don't, and use arrows to move it all around.

Pros of typing (typewriter or computer):

• Older hands that haven't used a pen much lately cramp up when writing and typing overall is a lot easier with arthritis.
• You can read what you wrote.
• Other people can read what you wrote.
• If it's on paper, you get the same joy of marking up your page, with the benefit that it's easy to tell the original from the markup.
• Though it's easy for paper to get damaged or lost, it can last centuries. No computer disk will.

Pros of a computer:

• You don't have to retype drafts; revisions are a piece of cake.
• Once saved, you can't lose your work (assuming basic care and backups).
• All your previous chapters are there for you to refer to.
• All your notes are well organized and there for you to refer to.
• If you are stuck on something you need to research, you can do it quickly (if you have internet access or you have reference books saved) even if you're not home or in a library.
• Computers are pretty portable these days and you have a wide choice of where to write.

So, yes, how you were raised and what you did as a young adult does make a difference. But it's not everything. I hated manual typewriters even as a child and electric ones were not much better. I embraced computers from the beginning, even when they couldn't do much (anyone remember dot matrix printers instead of monitors?). The way my brain processes my writing flow, computers are a much better fit for me. They probably are for most people. I also have horrible handwriting but am a pretty fast and accurate typist.

posted over 5 years ago

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Cyn‭

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Please note that I used to hand write everything and only type up what I felt was worthwhile later, largely due to a rather slow typing speed. Now I tend to do one or the other, typing some projects and hand writing others depending on end use (material purely for my own reference usually being hand written and material that may later be shared being typed).

With that in mind in my experience typing makes rearranging things too easy and I end up spending far too long fiddling with the work already done when I'm supposed to be working on new material. This is also often necessary as the pace of typing makes format a foreign concept. I also find typing too easy to put down when the ideas slow down.

Hand writing is more immersive, I tend to stick with it for longer and get longer sessions even if I may have fewer words to show for it. Because of the slower pace I tend to get better results, requiring less editing, because I'm forced to spare some attention for formatting in the first pass. Because it's harder to make major alterations I don't so when I pick up an existing piece I get a lot more new work done, I may make a note to rearrange it later but I can't do the work there and then.

Neither format allows me to keep up with speed of thought, even speech-to-text can't do that, and I lose some stuff regardless.

posted over 5 years ago

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Ash‭

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The pros and cons of this choice are already covered in other answers from an objective perspective but I think it's important to consider the subjective assessment as well.

Ultimately, the best solution is the one you find most comfortable.

When I was young computers were a rarity; those who learned to type did so on mechanical typewriters, which is very different to touch typing. Being interested in computers meant I spent more time around them than most, but I never learned to type on them when programming. I found that for most of the things you wanted to do back then the 'hunt & peck' two fingered typing approach was just fine.

Back then when I wrote, hand writing was far more comfortable because it was faster for me, and therefore I didn't lose my train of thought so often. Remember here, that the average person can think at around 300 to 400 words per minute (WPM) but can only speak at around 120 to 150 WPM, and often type at between 40 and 100 WPM depending on skill. Hand writing is the slowest at no more than 20 WPM for the average person.

So for me it came down to speed. I could write faster than I could type, so I wrote. That meant it was easier for me to keep up with the story in my head through writing than it was to type.

But then I went to work, and ended up in a role where I was writing reports, briefs, guides, and many other forms of documentation. So, I taught myself to type. That was 30 years ago, and I don't even think about typing now. I'd say that I'd be close to 80 WPM in touch typing so that means for most of the writing I do, I do it on a computer because now that's the fastest way to get words down and it means that it's even less likely again that I'll lose my train of thought.

So over time, I changed preference but I did so because of the speed at which I get things down. Ultimately, to me that's the deciding factor. We can all think faster than we can transcribe, whether by typing, writing or speaking. It's up to our personal experiences which of these we can do faster than the other but to me, that's going to be the deciding factor as the closer we are to our thinking speed, the more likely we'll keep our train of thought.

For the record, I still write with a pen, and often. But I do so more for the joy of writing than for any serious recording of a story or article. When writing for work or fun, speed is a factor and the editability of the output when typing is an added bonus. There is still something tactile that I love about marking a paper with ink from a fountain or inkwell pen that you'll never get from a keyboard, but I have to say that my productivity went through the roof after I taught myself to type.

posted over 5 years ago

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Tim B II‭

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