The Style

While perusing the Web yesterday I stumbled upon an essay by the famed writer Kurt Vonnegut. It's titled "How to Write With Style" and in my opinion it is right on. (The following is an overview of the essay but please click on the title to check out the full essay.) It is very useful as a checklist for writers in helping to make sure that your voice is coming through what you write. Right off the bat, Vonnegut goes after Journalists and "technical writers" saying they reveal nothing about themselves in their writing. He's absolutely correct. This isn't a dig at them I think it is more of a remark of pity for them.

"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."

Journalism is meant to be an objective art, designed to inform without swaying the opinion of the reader. This is great for straight "Dog Bites Man" stories but what about the stories I like to write? What about the stories people actually want to read, not only the first 3 paragraphs of, but, gasp, the whole thing? Vonnegut says what makes readers want to spend their time with a writer is that writer's voice, or writing style.

"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."

Vonnegut's advice is to basically, and I mean very basically, begin writing with the ideas in your head. How you feel about certain things, your emotions, your broken heart etc. One of the first things I was taught by Jason Smith, my high school English teacher, is that reading requires the reader to surrender their mind to the author, or as Coleridge put it, a "willing suspension of disbelief." When reading a story, one is to leave behind any prejudices or opinions behind and let the author take them where he/she will. Vonnegut says the key thing to voice, is to be assertive. Tell the reader what is and is not important and back that up with emotion.

"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."

Curious about how to find these ideas and make your reader care about them? Vonnegut provides a list of which I have provided below with an excerpt from his explanations of each item:

1. Find a subject you 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."

2. Do not ramble, though
"I won't ramble on about that."

3. Keep it simple "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
"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
"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?"

6. Say what you mean
"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.

7. Pity the readers
"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...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."

Technically the list is eight items long, however the last simply tells you to consult The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. I realized after reading this essay the first time that I actually own this book. It came with a truckload of books I bought for a literature class one time and I had never cracked its cover. Mistake. Of the book Vonnegut has this to say:

"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."

And that, I think, is half the battle in writing anything at all.

Cheers.