Writing, Typing, and Storytelling

John Kenneth Galbraith was an eloquent man, who wrote for decades mostly on economics and as a social commenter. Apparently that was enough for him to receive an unsolicited offer of a professorship in rhetoric at UC Berkeley. He didn’t accept, but it did prompt him to share what he’d learned from all that writing with the readers of The Atlantic in his 1978 article, “Writing, Typing, and Economics.” As a non-writer of fiction, it generally strikes me as true in the context of writing in nonfiction, based on my experience, and some of what he observed has in fact recently flared up as a contentious point within the discipline of economics (roughly, that some economists use language in a way that obscures what their results really are by being loose in the description of the math). I think a fair portion of it is likely to generalize beyond nonfiction and rhetoric, though, and take a stab at that below the break. And why shouldn’t it? Storytelling, after all, contains in itself a kind of implicit rhetoric, with the purpose of convincing the audience to connect with it in some way. But I’d encourage reading the article for nice prose, dry wit, and some fun stories about John Steinbeck drinking in Moscow and Galbraith himself running afoul of Poe’s Law, even if the advice doesn’t sound like much of a draw. It runs about 3200 words, and is well worth the read.

"All writers know that on some golden mornings they are touched by the wand — are on intimate terms with poetry and cosmic truth. I have experienced those moments myself. Their lesson is simple: It's a total illusion. And the danger in the illusion is that you will wait for those moments. Such is the horror of having to face the typewriter that you will spend all your time waiting. I am persuaded that most writers, like most shoemakers, are about as good one day as the next (a point which Trollope made), hangovers apart. The difference is the result of euphoria, alcohol, or imagination. The meaning is that one had better go to his or her typewriter every morning and stay there regardless of the seeming result. It will be much the same. ..."
"My advice to those eager students in California would be, "Do not wait for the golden moment. It may well be worse." I would also warn against the flocking tendency of writers and its use as a cover for idleness. It helps greatly in the avoidance of work to be in the company of others who are also waiting for the golden moment. The best place to write is by yourself, because writing becomes an escape from the terrible boredom of your own personality. It's the reason that for years I've favored Switzerland, where I look at the telephone and yearn to hear it ring. ..."

Here the extrapolation to fiction is trivial, since in this case all that changes is the subject matter: write consistently, even if you aren’t experiencing any particular inspiration. Write something. Hanging out with writers isn’t writing. Be disciplined. Perhaps a corollary is to organize thoughts and ideas sufficiently that you can write without it, or you can stretch it as far as possible. And if the product of these creative outbursts is probably no better than anything else you write, don’t publish until the feeling has worn off and you have a chance to look it over with a clear head, which brings us to his next point.

"There may be inspired writers for whom the first draft is just right. But anyone who is not certifiably a Milton had better assume that the first draft is a very primitive thing. The reason is simple: Writing is difficult work. Ralph Paine, who managed Fortune in my time, used to say that anyone who said writing was easy was either a bad writer or an unregenerate liar. Thinking, as Voltaire avowed, is also a very tedious thing which men—or women—will do anything to avoid. So all first drafts are deeply flawed by the need to combine composition with thought. Each later draft is less demanding in this regard. Hence the writing can be better. There does come a time when revision is for the sake of change—when one has become so bored with the words that anything that is different looks better. But even then it may be better. ..."

In addition to the obvious, I read in an implication that it may be better, even on the first draft, to think as little as possible. Not that it shouldn’t be involved, no. But translation from shorthand to prose may be a simpler task than simultaneous ideation and writing. Outlining, forming a mental movie, making a rough script, or a story bible, whatever. Outsourcing to your past and future selves is a winning proposition; the former can do the thinking, the latter can cut off the extraneous bits and polish the remainder.

"Next, I would want to tell my students of a point strongly pressed, if my memory serves, by Shaw. He once said that as he grew older, he became less and less interested in theory, more and more interested in information. The temptation in writing is just the reverse. Nothing is so hard to come by as a new and interesting fact. Nothing is so easy on the feet as a generalization. I now pick up magazines and leaf through them looking for articles that are rich with facts; I do not care much what they are. Richly evocative and deeply percipient theory I avoid. It leaves me cold unless I am the author of it. ..."

This could easily be taken in a direction that would lead nowhere good—towards a conception that all the nuts and bolts of the story should be on display, all the relevant facts laid out for the reader in great detail. Perhaps Michael Crichton would be an example. But I think an alternative is available. Tell a story. Whether it’s built on an engaging plot, captivating characters, exploring a world, or something else, do something. Have something concrete for readers to grab hold to, and then develop that to build to some kind of resolution. And, of course, don’t bury the ghostpigs. http://catvalente.livejournal.com/590003.html

"In the case of economics there are no important propositions that cannot be stated in plain language. Qualifications and refinements are numerous and of great technical complexity. These are important for separating the good students from the dolts. But in economics the refinements rarely, if ever, modify the essential and practical point. The writer who seeks to be intelligible needs to be right; he must be challenged if his argument leads to an erroneous conclusion and especially if it leads to the wrong action. But he can safely dismiss the charge that he has made the subject too easy. The truth is not difficult. Complexity and obscurity have professional value—they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticized less for his clarity than for his treachery.
"Additionally, and especially in the social sciences, much unclear writing is based on unclear or incomplete thought. It is possible with safety to be technically obscure about something you haven't thought out. It is impossible to be wholly clear on something you do not understand. Clarity thus exposes flaws in the thought. The person who undertakes to make difficult matters clear is infringing on the sovereign right of numerous economists, sociologists, and political scientists to make bad writing the disguise for sloppy, imprecise, or incomplete thought. One can understand the resulting anger."

I believe that the worst cases of this, in fiction, would amount to plot holes, logical impossibilities, and improper characterization being papered over by either unclear writing or simply hiding them outside of the perspective of the reader. Something to avoid, certainly, but unlike in the case of technical writing, there are good reasons for ambiguity in storytelling, provided the underlying events could hold together under the gaze of an omniscient narrator with enough time on its hands to truthfully relay the relevant details. Perspective, after all, often is limited, and not all narrators can be trusted. Characters may be ignorant or misinformed, or draw incorrect conclusions from what they do know. Confusion happens. But for all that, most of the time, people do what they do for a reason—and, for that matter, often so too do inanimate objects; for example the Takoma Narrows Bridge collapsed due to high winds and construction that was optimized for, in retrospect, the wrong things—and knowing what these are, even if they are not directly related in the course of the story, can help to avoid breaking of immersion due to unsupported plot points or character actions.
All that said, he’s right that there are also uses to opacity, even in fiction. One relevant case is in conserving freedom of action by not pinning down details that aren’t really necessary. Here, the example that most readily comes to mind is from Project Horizons, where a character was said to be equipped with 105mm (or 155mm) cannons, which would have been far too large for any pony to carry. Many readers slipped right over it; some were pulled out, realizing the absurdity of the detail. But it could have been avoided by not using a number, where the relevant information was simply “they’re big.” The converse regularly shows up in FiM: how do the Elements of Harmony work? What about pegasus flight? How was eternal night supposed to work in a way consistent with the actual problems faced by Luna, which caused her to become Nightmare Moon? These tend not to matter for the story actually being told, and leaving their answers blank saves time, prevents distraction, and prevents contradictions from creeping in. I suppose the key here is that when ambiguity is employed there needs to be an available answer that does fit with the rest of the facts the reader has, and when something truly relevant to the plot or characters is being obscured, it’s probably a good idea to have a clear concept of what actually was happening.

So that’s what I’ve managed to extrapolate from some of the highlights, along with such points as “don’t drink a ton just because you can afford to buy whisky by the case, but caffeine is an indispensable ally when you’re on a deadline” and “imagine someone hovering over you with a pen, always ready to say ‘this can go,’ because keeping things concise usually means cutting the worst material anyway .” That and his point on humor in rhetoric, that it should be avoided in many contexts because it tends to obscure the message and paint the speaker as unserious, suggest the broader point that what is best for a scene might not be for the best when considered in the context of a whole story. Because it’s funny/cool will often be the wrong path if that’s not what the rest is intended to accomplish.
As a largely extrapolative exercise, I’m sure there were many other, even contradictory, ways to apply his lessons to fiction storytelling, probably as many as there are people who try to do so. But all the same, it's fun to think about, and it rarely hurts to try to draw these connections, as if nothing else I find it often aids on retention.

h/t Conversable Economist, whose choices of highlights I maintained, via Economist’s View