[Cwgrad-announcements] Some words of wisdom--

Sat May 5 20:50:23 PDT 2007

Sorry if this is familiar to you. With Vonnegut's recent passing, I  
thought it might be worth re-reading his very good advice to writers.

How to Write With Style

by

Kurt Vonnegut

Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal  
almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them  
freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink- 
stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to  
readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional,  
elements of style.

These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with  
whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or  
informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful  
--- ? And on and on.

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving  
it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you're  
writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers  
will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you  
down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead --- or, worse, they will stop  
reading you.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you  
do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don't you yourself  
like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or  
make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for  
his or her mastery of the language? No.

So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.

1. Find a subject you care about

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others  
should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with  
language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in  
your style.

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way --- although I would  
not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about  
something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your  
house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

2. Do not ramble, though

I won't ramble on about that.

3. Keep it simple

As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of  
language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which  
were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. "To be  
or not to be?" asks Shakespeare's Hamlet. The longest word is three  
letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a  
sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra,  
but my favorite sentence in his short story "Eveline" is this one:  
"She was tired." At that point in the story, no other words could  
break the heart of a reader as those three words do.

Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even  
sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing  
skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: "In the beginning God created  
the heaven and the earth."

4. Have guts to cut

It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for  
Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of  
the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no  
matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new  
and useful way, scratch it out.

5. Sound like yourself

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the  
speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad's third language,  
and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt  
colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is  
the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there  
is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where  
common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and  
employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow  
up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many  
Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an  
English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.

All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of  
butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you  
should treasure it all your life. If it happens to not be standard  
English, and if it shows itself when your write standard English, the  
result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye  
that is green and one that is blue.

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to  
trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from  
Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The  
one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed  
on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or  
more ago.

6. Say what you mean

I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I  
understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I  
was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness  
or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant  
them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always  
selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one  
another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers  
did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that  
I would become understandable --- and therefore understood. And there  
went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint  
or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the  
rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean,  
and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be  
understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style  
writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.

Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen  
before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do,  
and they need all the help they can get from us.

7. Pity the readers

They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make  
sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult  
that most people don't really master it even after having studied it  
all through grade school and high school --- twelve long years.

So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic  
options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our  
readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires  
us to be sympathetic and patient readers, ever willing to simplify  
and clarify --- whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd,  
singing like nightingales.

That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed  
under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we  
please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of  
our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly  
unlimited.

8. For really detailed advice

For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, in a more  
technical sense, I recommend to your attention The Elements of Style,  
by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. E.B. White is, of course, one  
of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far  
produced.

You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr.  
White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting  
things to say.

In Sum: