{"id":7343,"date":"2018-07-09T07:46:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T11:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7343"},"modified":"2018-08-09T07:33:22","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T11:33:22","slug":"making-myself-clear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7343","title":{"rendered":"Making Myself Clear"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bell\"

photo: analogicus on Pixabay<\/p><\/div>\n

Loving this long lithub<\/em> article by Francine Prose<\/a> about the need to write clearly. There\u2019s nothing like absenting yourself from a manuscript draft for a couple of months to reveal all the unintentionally vague, poorly expressed thoughts. Short stories can turn up murky, but a novel\u2014with its larger number of theme, characters, plot strands, and ultimately, purposes\u2014can be downright impenetrable. And getting the words right, making the text clear, as Prose says, \u201cis harder than it looks.\u201d<\/p>\n

In some novels, every word seems exactly right, in exactly the right place, like bells change-ringing. It\u2019s something to strive for. In rereading my own work, I come across sentences that are like an impenetrable hedge around a thought (if there is one). I have to stop myself and ask, \u201cwhat are you saying<\/em> here?\u201d If there is some kernel in there, it is so masked by syntax and verbiage that even I, who should know what is intended, can barely find it.<\/p>\n

Prose excerpts letters from Chekhov to the young Maxim Gorky in which he suggests (advice frequently resurrected now 120 years later) that Gorky dispense with excessive modifiers. \u201cThe brain can\u2019t grasp all of this at once,\u201d Chekhov says, \u201cand the art of fiction ought to be immediately, instantaneously graspable.\u201d Simplification was one key to finding my way out of brambly sentences too. And if a whack through the brush and can\u2019t find the kernel, well, that\u2019s why I have a delete key.<\/p>\n

The noted editor Harold Evans provides “ten shortcuts to making yourself clear” in his entertaining and helpful book<\/a> on “why writing well matters.” His book in its entirety is about giving writers the tools to unravel knotty prose.<\/p>\n

Prose advises writers to ask themselves, \u201cWould I say this?\u201d She clarifies that she doesn\u2019t mean they should write exactly the way they would speak (listen to conversations on the train and you\u2019ll see why), but that \u201cthey avoid, in their writing, anything they would not say out loud to another human being.\u201d In her brand new book, What to Read and Why<\/a>, she discusses some of her favorite writers and what makes their work enduring, along with an essay specifically “On Clarity.”<\/p>\n

Time and a balky memory give me distance from the words I\u2019ve so carefully and at times inartfully put on paper. Assessing whether a sentence or passage is clear requires reading it as if the writer were a stranger to it, Prose believes. As writers, we\u2019re on a quest. She says, \u201cClarity is not only a literary quality but a spiritual one, involving, as it does, compassion for the reader.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simplicity is not the only cure for confusion. Prose cites long and grammatically complex sentences of Virginia Woolf\u2019s that, though they require an attentive reader, are nevertheless clear. Inviting and assuring the reader\u2019s attention means making the subject and the characters interesting, providing sufficient motivation for readers to fix their attention on them. A subject for another time!
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Loving this long lithub article by Francine Prose about the need to write clearly. There\u2019s nothing like absenting yourself from a manuscript draft for a couple of months to reveal all the unintentionally vague, poorly expressed thoughts. Short stories can … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,174,29],"tags":[31,1353,1354,28],"class_list":["post-7343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing","tag-author","tag-francine-prose","tag-harold-evans","tag-writers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Ur","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7343"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7396,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7343\/revisions\/7396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}