Dear reader,

The gurus and I have a long-standing beef about their incessant and incorrect advice:

And so as I sat in my cabin and considered Issue #66 of the Write Way Newsletter I decided we have to talk about clarity.

Gurus treat it like the supreme virtue, like they’re reading an old King James Version of Holy Scripture and misread Colossians 3:14

But while charity, I mean, clarity, is a required virtue for the writer…

…it’s not the finishing touch, it’s the foundation layer.

It’s the entry-level, table-stakes of good writing.

Great writing is far more.

I understand where the CAW-CAWs and gurus are coming from, despite my mockery. We’ve all read the impenetrable sludge of bad and writing, the impenetrable word-salads beloved by bureaucrats everywhere.

It’s Orwell’s famous rewriting of Ecclesiastes:

Into the obtuse and impenetrable “modern” English of this sort:

But while the guru-approved “clear not clever” avoids the trap of being bad writing...

With bad writing the reader is required to reread it.

But with good writing, the reader desires to reread it.

Guru-approved “simplicity is the secret” and “clear not clever” writing is stuck in no-man’s land between the two. Yes, it’s not bad because at least the reader can read it once and understand. But neither is it good, because no reader would never want to read it a second time.

To bang our old drum again, guru writing is there to convey information, not create emotion.

Once the information is conveyed, we’re done and we’re moving on.

The craftsman writer seeks something more.

Something memorable.

Something that demands the reader revisit it, not because they didn’t understand, but because they enjoyed it so much they want to read it again and again.

I reread The Hobbit four times and The Lord of the Rings three times in the space of a few years as a kid. I’ve reread Narnia countless times.

I know those stories, I know them inside out and back to front. I could quote 90% of Chicken Run from memory, I’ve watched The Mask of Zorro a dozen times.

I enjoy reading James Patterson or Lee Child…

Child I might revisit a second time in a decade or two, but I’m not rushing to it.

Because both are, broadly-speaking, the gurus of the storytelling world. They write simply and clearly, but with little flair and fun. Little depth.

To use an analogy, the impenetrably bad writing that gurus rail against is like a labyrinth that the reader has to figure their way through. It’s tiring and irritating and I’m sorry if you like mazes, because this analogy will break down.

(Imagine the maze is overgrown and you forgot your lunch and you’re not even sure there is a path through.)

Contrast that with Guru writing. Guru writing cuts a path through the hedges, straight from point A to point B. You can see point B from point A and it’s easy to get there and…

You walk it once, because you want to get to the other side, but you’re not going to cross back and forth, and if someone turns up with a better offer you’ll take it.

But the kind of writing we learn in the Write Way? Great writing? Craftsman writing?

Craftsman writing links point A and point B with a rollercoaster. You can still see where you’re going, there’s no way to get lost. Heck, it might loop around and take a little longer to get there but you don’t mind because the ride is the point.

It’s not sacrificing clarity, but supplementing it. It’s a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, and bring you back tomorrow night eager for more. But an example would help, so let’s draft in the ancient author, Lord Dunsany.

Real name:

Well, you can see why he used the penname…

And yes, this is one of my favourite sentences and the Cabin Crew have all heard me talk about it before, but in different ways.

It’s from the King of Elfland's Daughter, and we arrive in the moment when our hero, Alveric, fights an elf-knight with a magic sword crafted from a meteorite.

(It’s a trope now but it wasn’t in 1924…)

Take a moment to read it slowly and let it sink in.

Writes Lord Dunsany:

That first sentence is one hundred and eleven words long and nearly caused the Hemingway app to meltdown. It contains seven commas and as many semi-colons. It’s a magnificent mouthful…

…and it’s immensely readable.

How does he do it?

How does he create a sentence I have read over and over again and enjoyed every time, without making a mess?

By sleight of hand.

It’s not truly a 111-word sentence.

Swap semi-colons and conjunctions for sentence breaks and you have grammatically acceptable if dull prose:

…Green sparks rose from the armour, and crimson as sword met sword. Thick elvish blood moved slowly, from wide slits, down the cuirass. Lirazel gazed in awe and wonder and love. The combatants edged away fighting into the forest. Branches fell on them etc…

But that wouldn’t flow half as well as the original.

It’s a rollercoaster that won’t let you off by ending the sentence, but Lord Dunsany is not asking you to hold the entire thing in your mind at one time.

Rookie writers often write long sentences with the action at the end, and expect their reader to hold the whole thing together until they get around to it. Dunsany does the opposite.

You’re not sitting there adding mental images together, waiting to find out what’s actually happening. He doesn’t bury the action at the end of the sentence, he foregrounds it. The sword smites…

…And as the sword smites, you see each image of the effects of the smiting one at a time. The green sparks. The thick blood and wounded knight. Lirazel’s loving looks. The collateral damage to the forest.

And all of it builds to another of Dunsany’s ‘tricks’ to making the sentence work: Unity of Effect. Read it again, and you’ll realise there’s only one point, one idea to that mammoth expression. He’s not violating the rule of one here. The whole sentence boils down to: “It was a hard-fought fight and Alveric won.”

Everything else is making you feel the hard fought fight.

To ride the rollercoaster.

All the mental images Lord Dunsany is giving you, one after the other, they’re all pushing that home, building the tension up and up and up until the last three words let it all out in a sigh of relief.

And with that relief, Lord Dunsany brings out his final trick.

He immediately follows the long-sentence with short and snappy sentences.

Single-word interjections (“Quick!”) and questions (“Whither?”) and trailing sentences ("For my father has three runes ...") all act to give the reader relief as the battle-sentence fades from view.

Variety is the spice of writing.

And with the example ended, I was going to start talking about word choice but that will need to wait for next week.

Until then, avoid swinging on the pendulum away from labyrinthine confusion all the way to letdown clarity.

The truth is that both have the same root: lazy cowardice.

They both want the reader to do the writer’s work for them, and they both want to blame the reader if it goes wrong.

The jargon-wielding professor wants the reader to do the work of making their labyrinthine words make sense. They’re too afraid to speak clearly, so they hide their real opinions behind the waffle.

The dumb-it-down guru wants the reader to do the work of adding the colour and emotion. They’re too afraid to take a risk, so they cut it down to the bare bones.

But more on all this and how it applies to word choice next week, with WWN67 : Use Real Words. More on that when it comes

Meanwhile, may your pipe and prose be full of fun and fire,

James Carran, Craftsman Writer

fin

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