Tag: writing style

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Are Writers Made or Born? by Jack Kerouac (transcribed for the first time!)

I transcribed this article from two image files at the Writer’s Digest website. I have introduced line breaks of my own to make the text more readable online.

This is a six minute read. Kerouac reserves the word “genius” (and his attendant praise) to those who originate a writing style, those “born” to write. As he puts it, anyone can write but not everybody can invent a new way of writing.

This is a well planned piece by Kerouac. Notice how he echoes or repeats the use of ‘five thousand’: “five thousand writing class students, “five thousand university trained writers,” and “five thousand ‘trained’ writers plus Joyce.” These echoes are all made at distinct, different points in his work.

Notice, too, the depth of Kerouac’s study and reading of the Great Books. You might think a Beat writer would have laughed off the classics when developing a new way of writing but Kerouac didn’t. This man _studied_. Only the Great Books provide a wellspring deep enough to inspire new thoughts. Although Tom Clancy is an excellent writer, no one will ever pen a Great American Novel by reading how Jack Ryan breaks into a locked file cabinet.

[Thomas Farley, thomasfarleyblog.com (link to this post) September 18, 2022]

The text of this article and post is available here in .pdf format (internal link)

ARE WRITERS MADE OR BORN?

BY Jack Kerouac

Writer’s Digest, January 1962.

Paragraph 1

Writers are made, for anybody who isn’t illiterate can write. But geniuses of the writing art like Melville, Whitman or Thoreau are born. Let’s examine the word “genius.”

It doesn’t mean screwiness or eccentricity or excessive talent. It is derived from the word gignere, (to beget.) And a genius is simply a person who originates something never known before. Nobody but Melville could have written Moby Dick. Not even Whitman or Shakespeare.

Nobody but Whitman could have conceived, originated and written Leaves of Grass. Whitman was born to write a Leaves of Grass and Melville was born to write a Moby Dick. “It ain’t what you do,” Sy Oliver and James Young said. “It’s the way atcha do it.”

Five thousand writing class students who study “required reading” can put their hand to the legend of Faustus but only one, Marlowe, was born to do it the way he did.

Paragraph 2

I always get a laugh to hear Broadway wise guys talk about “talent and genius.” Some perfect virtuoso also who can interpret Brahams on the violin is called a “genius,” but the genius, the originating force, really belongs to Brahams; the violin virtuoso is simply a talented interpreter – in other words, a “Talent.”

Or you’ll hear people say that so and so is a major writer because of his “large talent.” There can be no major writer without original genius. Artists of genius like Jackson Pollock, have painted things that have never been seen before.

Anybody who’s seen his immense Samapattis of color has no right to criticize his “crazy method” of splashing and throwing and dancing around.

Take the case of James Joyce. People said he wasted his talent on the stream of consciousness style when in fact, he was simply born to originate it. How would you like to spend your old age reading books about contemporary life written in the pre-Joycean style of, say, Ruskin or William Dean Howells, or Taine?

Some geniuses come with heavy feet and march solemnly forward like Dreiser. Yet no one ever wrote about that America of his as well as he. Geniuses can be scintillating and geniuses can be somber, but it’s that inescapable sorrowful depth that shines through – originality.

Paragraph 3

Joyce was insulted all his life by practically all of Ireland and the world for being a genius. Some Celtic Twilight idiots even conceded he had some talent. What else could they say, since they were all going to start imitating him? But five thousand university trained writers could put their hand to a day in June in Dublin in 1904 or one night’s dreams, and never do with it what Joyce did with it: he was simply born to do it.

On the other hand, if the five thousand “trained writers” plus Joyce, all put their hands to a READER’S DIGEST-type article about “Vacation Hints” or “Homemaker’s Tips” even then I think Joyce would stand out because of his inborn originality of language insight.

Bear well in mind what Sinclair Lewis told Thomas Wolfe: “If Thomas Hardy had been given a contract to write stories for the SATURDAY EVENING POST, do you think he would have written like Zane Gray or like Thomas Hardy? I can tell you the answer to that one.

He would have written like Thomas Hardy. He couldn’t have written like anyone else but Thomas Hardy. He would have kept on writing like Thomas Hardy. Whether he wrote for the SATURDAY EVENING POST or CAPTAIN BILLY’S WHIZBANG.”

Paragraph 4

When the question is therefore asked, “Are writers made or born?” one should first ask, “Do you mean writers with talent or writers with originality?

Because anybody can write, but not everybody invents new forms of writing. Gertrude Stein invented a new form of writing, and her imitators are just talents. Hemingway later invented his own form also.

The criterion for judging talent or genius is ephemeral, [ed. note – added the comma] speaking rationally in this world of graphs, but one gets the feeling definitely, when a writer of geniuses amazes him by strokes of force never seen before and yet hauntingly familiar (Wilson’s famous “shock of recognition”).

I got that feeling from Swan’s Way as well as from Sons and Lovers. I do not get it from Colette, but I do get it from Dickinson. I get it from Celine, but I do not get it from Camus. I get it from Hemingway, but not from Raymond Chandler, except when he’s dead serious. I get it from the (sic) Balzac or Cousin Bette, but not from Pierre Loti. And so on.

Paragraph 5

The main thing to remember is that talent imitates genius, because there’s nothing else to imitate. Since talent can’t originate it has to imitate or interpret. The poetry on page 22 of the New York Times, with all its “silent wings of urgency in a dark and seldom wood” and other lapidary trillings, is but a poor imitation of previous poets of genius like Yeats, Dickinson, Apollinaire, Donne, Suckling . . . .

Genius gives birth. Talent delivers. What Rambrandt, Brandt or Van Gogh saw in the night can never be seen again. No frog can jump in a pond like Basho’s frog. Born writers of the future are amazed already at what they’re seeing now, what we’ll all see in time for the first time, and then see imitated many times by made writers.

Paragraph 6

So in the case of a born writer, genius involves the original formation of a new style. Though the language of Kyd is Elizabethan as far as period goes, the language of Shakespeare can truly be called only Shakespearean. Oftentimes an originator of a new language forms (sic?) is called “pretentious” by jealous talents. But it ain’t whatcha write. It’s the way atcha write it.

–30–

Writer’s Digest’s image files.

External Link (s)

Interesting discussion of this essay: https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/10/17/are-writers-born-or-made-jack-kerouac/

Notes:

Wilson’s “famous shock of recognition”? More fully, Melville, “Genius all over the world stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round”.

Samapattis: The Britanica offers this on Buddhist meditation, “[F]our further spiritual exercises, the samapattis (‘attainments’): (1) consciousness of infinity of space, (2) consciousness of the infinity of cognition, (3) concern with the unreality of things (nihility), and (4) consciousness of unreality as the object of thought.”

Celtic Twilight idiots: Followers of the material Keats and his like penned regarding Irish folklore.

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Revising, Style, and Time – Revised

Revising, Style and Time

Excellent writing takes time which you may not have.

Tighter writing is better writing by making reading and understanding easier. That writing, though, takes time and alters the style of a piece. In revising other people’s writing, crisp writing costs.

Before:

There are various underlying causes as to why our state’s elder care facilities function poorly. For-profit residences are especially noted for their rigid business competition, which may lead some to take shortcuts in their service. These may involve disregarding industry guidelines, cost-cutting on equipment, hiring untrained staff, and reducing staff levels altogether. A 2018 study actually found that 280 facilities in Illinois have low staff levels.

After:

Our state’s elder care facilities function poorly for many reasons. For-profit residences face rigid business competition which leads some facilities to shortcut service. Residences may disregard industry guidelines, spend little on equipment, hire untrained staff, and reduce staff. A 2018 study found 280 Illinois facilities have low staffing.

—

Revising this writer’s work took me five to seven minutes. A twenty paragraph document like this might require an hour or more to revise. Given deadline pressure, that might not be possible. What to do? Produce one or two standout paragraphs and let the rest go? That results in two different writing styles: wordy and non-wordy.

Compromise.

Make minor and less impressive changes throughout the document. As always, concentrate first on a strong opening. Your minor changes will be better than the original. Stop chasing perfection by endlessly editing. Deadlines can’t be met that way and if you are revising or writing for others then deadlines must always be met.

For most writers it is challenging enough to produce content, never mind writing it with style or brevity. Just producing a somewhat polished article or story may be all a deadline allows, leaving finishing to editors. (I’ll write on editing soon.)

At some point, though, we must all improve. Those less impressive changes I mentioned should over time become more impressive. We must all get better, be that at writing, revising, editing, or all three. We can’t be the writers we were years ago. Something must be learned and applied over time.

As Montaigne or someone like him once said, “If I had more time I would write you a shorter letter.” Exactly.

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We The Few . . .

We The Few . . .

I found an interesting web page with its content below, as various people phrase a common thought in various ways. Here’s the thought:

“I’ve done so much, with so little, for so long, that now I can do anything with nothing”

How would I put this? How about:

“We the few, who have done so much for so long with so little, now attempt the impossible — with nothing.”

I’d change “I” to “we” to broaden appeal and to appeal to power. One person is important, more people more important.  The em dash is really called forhere. You don’t want a rolling sentence to roll over a point of emphasis.

I’m still thinking about how to incorporate the “ungrateful” element in many of the sentences below. That word traces back to a complete thought by Konstantin Jireček. He said:

“We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.”

Hmm. Maybe:

“We, the poorly led and thankless, who have done so much for so long with so little, now attempt the impossible — with nothing.”

Better? How would you rewrite this? Please leave your sentence in the comment box.

TEXT OF LINKED PAGE BELOW

From: http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Miscellaneous_Collections/148676_ive-done-so-much-with-so-little-for-so-long-that-now-i-can-do-anything-with-nothing.html

Variations of this thought: I’ve done so much, with so little, for so long, that now I can do anything with nothing.

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The Singsong of Old Man Kangaroo

The Singsong of Old Man Kangaroo

by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

I think of Kipling (internal link — one of several) as a master of putting down difficult dialects on a page, similarly skilled as Mark Twain. The confidence and style he showed with his children stories, though, is equally impressive.

In this story he repeats certain sentences and phrases over and over. They do not detract from the work, rather, they become more and more important to the story as the tale goes on. “He had to,” is a phrase insistent, but when you read it five or six times you realize, “He _had_ to.” Marvelous stuff.

This is a nice group reading.

NOT always was the Kangaroo as now we do behold him, but a Different Animal with four short legs. He was grey and he was woolly, and his pride was inordinate: he danced on an outcrop in the middle of Australia, and he went to the Little God Nqa.

He went to Nqa at six before breakfast, saying, ‘Make me different from all other animals by five this afternoon.’

Up jumped Nqa from his seat on the sandflat and shouted, ‘Go away!’

He was grey and he was woolly, and his pride was inordinate: he danced on a rock-ledge in the middle of Australia, and he went to the Middle God Nquing.

He went to Nquing at eight after breakfast, saying, ‘ Make me different from all other animals; make me, also, wonderfully popular by five this afternoon.’

Up jumped Nquing from his burrow in the spinifex and shouted, ‘Go away!’

He was grey and he was woolly, and his pride was inordinate: he danced on a sandbank in the middle of Australia, and he went to the Big God Nqong.

He went to Nqong at ten before dinner-time, saying, ‘Make me different from all other animals; make me popular and wonderfully run after by five this afternoon.’

Up jumped Nqong from his bath in the salt-pan and shouted, ‘Yes, I will!’

Nqong called Dingo—Yellow-Dog Dingo—always hungry, dusty in the sunshine, and showed him Kangaroo. Nqong said, ‘Dingo! Wake up, Dingo! Do you see that gentleman dancing on an ashpit? He wants to be popular and very truly run after. Dingo, make him SO!’

Up jumped Dingo—Yellow-Dog Dingo—and said, ‘What, that cat-rabbit?’

Off ran Dingo—Yellow-Dog Dingo—always hungry, grinning like a coal-scuttle,—ran after Kangaroo.

Off went the proud Kangaroo on his four little legs like a bunny.

This, O Beloved of mine, ends the first part of the tale!

He ran through the desert; he ran through the mountains; he ran through the salt-pans; he ran through the reed-beds; he ran through the blue gums; he ran through the spinifex; he ran till his front legs ached.

He had to!

Still ran Dingo—Yellow-Dog Dingo—always hungry, grinning like a rat-trap, never getting nearer, never getting farther,—ran after Kangaroo.

He had to!

Still ran Kangaroo—Old Man Kangaroo. He ran through the ti-trees; he ran through the mulga; he ran through the long grass; he ran through the short grass; he ran through the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer; he ran till his hind legs ached.

He had to!

Still ran Dingo—Yellow-Dog Dingo—hungrier and hungrier, grinning like a horse-collar, never getting nearer, never getting farther; and they came to the Wollgong River.

Now, there wasn’t any bridge, and there wasn’t any ferry-boat, and Kangaroo didn’t know how to get over; so he stood on his legs and hopped.

He had to!

He hopped through the Flinders; he hopped through the Cinders; he hopped through the deserts in the middle of Australia. He hopped like a Kangaroo.

First he hopped one yard; then he hopped three yards; then he hopped five yards; his legs growing stronger; his legs growing longer. He hadn’t any time for rest or refreshment, and he wanted them very much.

Still ran Dingo—Yellow-Dog Dingo—very much bewildered, very much hungry, and wondering what in the world or out of it made Old Man Kangaroo hop.

For he hopped like a cricket; like a pea in a saucepan; or a new rubber ball on a nursery floor.

He had to!

He tucked up his front legs; he hopped on his hind legs; he stuck out his tail for a balance-weight behind him; and he hopped through the Darling Downs.

He had to!

Still ran Dingo—Tired-Dog Dingo—hungrier and hungrier, very much bewildered, and wondering when in the world or out of it would Old Man Kangaroo stop.

Then came Nqong from his bath in the salt-pans, and said, ‘It’s five o’clock.’

Down sat Dingo—Poor Dog Dingo—always hungry, dusky in the sunshine; hung out his tongue and howled.

Down sat Kangaroo—Old Man Kangaroo—stuck out his tail like a milking-stool behind him, and said, ‘Thank goodness that’s finished!’

Then said Nqong, who is always a gentleman, ‘Why aren’t you grateful to Yellow-Dog Dingo? Why don’t you thank him for all he has done for you?’

Then said Kangaroo—Tired Old Kangaroo—He’s chased me out of the homes of my childhood; he’s chased me out of my regular meal-times; he’s altered my shape so I’ll never get it back; and he’s played Old Scratch with my legs.’

Then said Nqong, ‘Perhaps I’m mistaken, but didn’t you ask me to make you different from all other animals, as well as to make you very truly sought after? And now it is five o’clock.’

‘Yes,’ said Kangaroo. ‘I wish that I hadn’t. I thought you would do it by charms and incantations, but this is a practical joke.’

‘Joke!’ said Nqong from his bath in the blue gums. ‘Say that again and I’ll whistle up Dingo and run your hind legs off.’

‘No,’ said the Kangaroo. ‘I must apologise. Legs are legs, and you needn’t alter ‘em so far as I am concerned. I only meant to explain to Your Lordliness that I’ve had nothing to eat since morning, and I’m very empty indeed.’

‘Yes,’ said Dingo—Yellow-Dog Dingo,—’I am just in the same situation. I’ve made him different from all other animals; but what may I have for my tea?’

Then said Nqong from his bath in the salt-pan, ‘Come and ask me about it tomorrow, because I’m going to wash.’

So they were left in the middle of Australia, Old Man Kangaroo and Yellow-Dog Dingo, and each said, ‘That’s your fault.’ 

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Revising, Style and Time

Tighter writing is better writing by making reading and comprehending easier. That writing, though, takes time and alters the style of a piece. In revising other people’s writing, crisp writing costs.

Before:

There are various underlying causes as to why our state’s elder care facilities function poorly. For-profit residences are especially noted for their rigid business competition, which may lead some to take shortcuts in their service. These may involve disregarding industry guidelines, cost-cutting on equipment, hiring untrained staff, and reducing staff levels altogether. A 2018 study actually found that 280 facilities in Illinois have low staff levels.

After:

Our state’s elder care facilities function poorly for many reasons. For-profit residences face rigid business competition, leading some to shortcut service. Residences may disregard industry guidelines, spend little on equipment, hire untrained staff, and reduce staff. A 2018 study found 280 Illinois facilities have low staffing.

The second paragraph is better but it could be improved with more time. As Montaigne or someone like him once said, “If I had more time I would write you a shorter letter.” Exactly.

This revision took five minutes to seven minutes to complete. A twenty paragraph work might require an hour or more. Given deadline pressure, revising the entire document might not be possible. To save time, excellent revisions could be applied to only a few paragraphs. That, however, would introduce two different writing styles into the piece, wordy and non-wordy.

A compromise must be reached. To get this revising assignment out the door, minor changes are made throughout the writing, not the best possible choices, but better than the original. My challenge with my own writing, particularly with my book, is to stop chasing perfection by endlessly editing. Deadlines can’t be met that way. I must instead adopt a workman-like style and let that be good enough. That makes perfect sense. And it bothers me.

Update: Thinking it over, for many writers it is challenging enough to produce content, never mind writing it with style or brevity. Just producing a story or a 750 word article may be all that a deadline allows, leaving finishing to editors. At some point, though, we must all improve. We must all work at getting better at what we do, be that writing, revising, editing, or all three. We can’t be the writers we were years ago. Something must have been learned and applied in that time.

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Communicating Poorly With Approval

“My opposition to interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.” James Thurber

Arguing for substance and style in English, Thurber advocates consideration over less pondered thoughts. Reflection, that careful turning over of ideas before committing them to speech or writing, is what marks our march toward effective communication. Unfortunately, some are now out of step with that march, and their cavalier prancing is being endorsed by people who should know better.

“[M]illennials have created a new rulebook for a variant of written English unique to social media. A rulebook which states that deliberately misspelled words and misused grammar can convey tone, nuance, humour, and even annoyance.” Rachel Thompson

Writing in a Mashable article (external link) entitled “Millennials have created a form of written English that’s as expressive as spoken English, ” Thompson goes on to quote a University of Manchester Linguistics lecturer as saying that “something exciting” is happening with the way that millennials are writing and that in “breaking the constraints” of written English they can be as expressive as you can be in spoken language.”

Millennials are not solely to blame. Such messaging started with the tiny and often crippled keypads of mobile devices; shortcuts had to be found. Punching out the word “cant” is easier when no apostrophe symbol is at hand, or it has to be accessed with additional keystrokes. That a broken way of communicating evolved is no surprise. But it should not be considered as an equivalent or improved way of expression.

Mobile communications may be thought of as a pidgin language, something co-existing with proper English as a necessity of our modern age. Let no one believe, however, that its offhand delivery or graceless style in any way benefits the language at large. This isn’t an argument against spontaneity, it has a vital place in out lives. But spontaneous electronic hash is no substitute for considered English and should not be thought of as such. Time for certain writers and English authorities to get back in step.

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Musings on Readability and Consistency

Shorter sentences tend to be more readable than long ones. Since I usually write long sentences in my first drafts (a part of brainstorming, writing whatever comes to mind), my revisions find me breaking those long sentences into shorter ones. The problem is that short sentences tend to be choppy. Not as smooth as extended copy. The trick then is finding a way to make short sentences flow as well as uninterrupted sentences. It’s not easy.

I got to thinking about this while editing and revising the work of another writer. Light editing doesn’t usually change how well a writer’s sentences flow into one another. But I’ve had to make so many revisions for one writer that their posts now sound fragmented and choppy. This is a serious problem. The only way to smooth out their writing would be for them to do a complete rewrite with my changes in mind. There’s no time or budget for that.

The consoling thought, at least for web work, is that ultimately most of us are not writing for readers but for robots. Much of this content generation is for higher search results rankings, the subject of search engine optimization or SEO. I often wonder, as I pen the blog posts I am paid to write, if anyone reads them at all. Or if all those words, no matter the writing style, simply go to improving a client’s website in the rankings. Today, readability may play less importance than coming up on the first page of Google’s search results.

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Hunter S. Thompson and 9/11

Originally written for ESPN (external link). Penned when few facts were known, many of his predictions came eerily true. A distinctive writing style all his own . . .

Fear & Loathing in America
By Hunter S. Thompson
Page 2 columnist

It was just after dawn in Woody Creek, Colo., when the first plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City on Tuesday morning, and as usual I was writing about sports. But not for long. Football suddenly seemed irrelevant, compared to the scenes of destruction and utter devastation coming out of New York on TV.

Even ESPN was broadcasting war news. It was the worst disaster in the history of the United States, including Pearl Harbor, the San Francisco earthquake and probably the Battle of Antietam in 1862, when 23,000 were slaughtered in one day.

The Battle of the World Trade Center lasted about 99 minutes and cost 20,000 lives in two hours (according to unofficial estimates as of midnight Tuesday). The final numbers, including those from the supposedly impregnable Pentagon, across the Potomac River from Washington, likely will be higher. Anything that kills 300 trained firefighters in two hours is a world-class disaster.

And it was not even Bombs that caused this massive damage. No nuclear missiles were launched from any foreign soil, no enemy bombers flew over New York and Washington to rain death on innocent Americans. No. It was four commercial jetliners.

They were the first flights of the day from American and United Airlines, piloted by skilled and loyal U.S. citizens, and there was nothing suspicious about them when they took off from Newark, N.J., and Dulles in D.C. and Logan in Boston on routine cross-country flights to the West Coast with fully-loaded fuel tanks — which would soon explode on impact and utterly destroy the world-famous Twin Towers of downtown Manhattan’s World Trade Center. Boom! Boom! Just like that.

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. Osama bin Laden may be a primitive “figurehead” — or even dead, for all we know — but whoever put those All-American jet planes loaded with All-American fuel into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon did it with chilling precision and accuracy. The second one was a dead-on bullseye. Straight into the middle of the skyscraper.

Nothing — even George Bush’s $350 billion “Star Wars” missile defense system — could have prevented Tuesday’s attack, and it cost next to nothing to pull off. Fewer than 20 unarmed Suicide soldiers from some apparently primitive country somewhere on the other side of the world took out the World Trade Center and half the Pentagon with three quick and costless strikes on one day. The efficiency of it was terrifying.

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.
This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed — for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won’t hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force.

Good luck. He is in for a profoundly difficult job — armed as he is with no credible Military Intelligence, no witnesses and only the ghost of Bin Laden to blame for the tragedy.

OK. It is 24 hours later now, and we are not getting much information about the Five Ws of this thing. The numbers out of the Pentagon are baffling, as if Military Censorship has already been imposed on the media. It is ominous. The only news on TV comes from weeping victims and ignorant speculators.

The lid is on. Loose Lips Sink Ships. Don’t say anything that might give aid to The Enemy.

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s books include Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, The Proud Highway, Better Than Sex and The Rum Diary. His new book, Fear and Loathing in America, has just been released. A regular contributor to various national and international publications, Thompson now lives in a fortified compound near Aspen, Colo. His column, “Hey, Rube,” appears each Monday on Page 2.

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What Is This Writing Style Called?

Do you know what this writing style is called? E-mail me if you know. You must read several hundred words before you find out what the author is writing about. Rather than quickly defining a subject, this style does scene setting to the point you give up on reading. It seems most prevalent in sports writing but it is everywhere today.

Who, What, Where, When, and Why, plus H for How, are the essential questions to answer for the reader. This should be done quickly. Plenty of time to set a scene after the fundamentals are addressed. I consider this unnamed style lazy and disrespectful journalism, especially when writers like these are obviously capable of writing well and could easily be forthright. So, what’s it called? And do you have any examples?

Update: This style is definitely part of creative nonfiction (internal link).

My summation is the first line, the following paragraph the opening to the article.

The similarity of season’s end for two baseball teams:

IN THE CAVITY OF THE CATHEDRAL, HISTORY SOUNDS LIKE a freight train rumbling through a concrete tunnel. Roger Clemens recognized the rumble. Clemens, his retirement plans not yet amended, had spent the last seven innings of Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series in the home clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, nervously wondering if his career and the New York Yankees’ season were about to be extinguished by the Boston Red Sox. It was 12:16 a.m. on Oct. 17 when he heard the answer from above. . . .

Discovering a trove of rare baseball cards:

A little more than a century ago, a 10-year-old boy named Ollie lived in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a small boom town of about 15,000 at the edge of the Western frontier that was enjoying a growth spurt from its new stockyards and meat-packing plants. Ollie, an avid baseball fan, saved all the Buffalo nickels he could get his hands on. On most days after school, he spent them at his local drug store or five-and-dime on five-cent boxes of Cracker Jack. . . .

writingstyle

 

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How do I Develop My Own Writing Style?

Your writing style develops naturally out of your experiences and preferences. I’m not sure you can use more adjectives, metaphors, or quotations than you would normally would without sounding pretentious or affected. Tom Robbins’ writing went off in spectacular tangents but that doesn’t mean your use will result in the same fireworks. And what are you writing about anyway?

You will obviously have more liberty to personalize with fiction. And if you have a large word count. Style must change with your audience: your editor and your readers. My newspaper article style is for a home-town weekly with a five hundred word limit. That’s not a large sandbox to play in. My magazine article style is more relaxed but still focused. Vigorous writing, no matter how many times we fail to do it, is always the goal. And the one writer who always wrote that way was George Orwell.

George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language (external link) remains, I think, the most important essay on thinking and writing well. A product of wartime Britain, it is not the easiest essay to read. Several years ago I put together an annotated version with my references to the many now obscure people and places that Orwell referenced. It’s at the link above and at other places.

Will you be able to write like Orwell if you follow his rules? Of course not. He was gifted and had a supreme dedication to his craft. His first novel, Down and Out in Paris and London, remains an accomplishment most of us could never achieve even with forty years of trying. Still, I think you will develop a workmanlike style if you practice what he preaches. And a workmanlike style, something that does not offend but informs, is a good style indeed.

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