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| POWER IN WRITING |
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A reader has two pieces of writing before her, one by you and one by your friend. Yours is better writing by most standards. It has a clearer and more graceful style, a more logical and coherent organization. It also has more original and better thinking. In addition, your topic interests the reader more than your friend's topic. The reader picks up both pieces to look them over, starts reading yours and notes that she likes it, but starts to look over your friend's piece just to see what it is like. Once she starts reading your friend's piece, however, she keeps on going and never returns to yours. She has been captured and cannot put it down. She is affected deeply by it even though it is not so well written as yours and not what she had wanted to read about. If this hasn't happened to you you've probably seen it happen. Some writing has great power over readers even though it is not as "good" by most conventional measures. In this section I seek to know what this deeper power consists of and how to get it. The most plausible answer is that for words to have power they must fit the reader. You must give readers either the style or the content they want, preferably both. But I'm not satisfied with the answer that says power comes from making your words fit the reader. Is it really power if you just give them what they want? If you write a novel, don't you really want to reach more readers than those who already resonate to your style or who already see things the way you do? Are you willing to talk of the evils of nuclear power only at anti-nuclear rallies to people who already agree with you? Power means the power to make a difference, to make a dent. When people call a piece of writing excellent, sometimes what they really mean is that it made no dent at all: it merely confirmed them in their prior thoughts and feelings. I assume in this section that of course you will often try to fit your words to your readers. (In Section IV, Audience, I suggest some ways to do so.) Nevertheless when you want power in your words -- especially when you want the power of the Ancient Mariner to transfix readers and make them hear what they don't want to hear or give them an experience they didn't set out to haveyou must be seeking something other than how to fit words to readers. The analogy of the Ancient Mariner is appropriate because I think true power in words is a mystery. In the chapters that follow I explore different hypotheses to get closer to this mystery. I suggest that power comes from the words somehow fitting the writer (not necessarily the reader). That good fit between the writer and her words makes for resonance: the words bore through to readers no matter what their disposition. I suggest that power comes from the words somehow fitting what they are about. The words so well embody what they express that when readers encounter the words they feel they are encountering the objects or ideas themselves, not words: readers get experiences, nothing is lost in translation. "Writing and Magic," I explore the notion that perhaps the writer's job is really to put a hex on words or on readers. This section is more speculative than the others in the book. I am exploring what can only be called risky hypotheses. But though I am letting myself wax theoretical, I am also deriving a good deal of concrete practical advice from these hypotheses. I believe that if you actually try out the advice you will find the hypotheses themselves -- more compelling. |
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