Rules for writing
Top Ten lists (or Top 100 or whatever) are, except for Yahweh, foolish exercises — and completely irresistible. Especially when they concern writing, and especially to the weak-minded like me. And especially when they take as their starting point the likes of Elmore Leonard, whose decalogue he summarizes with a famous Eleventh Commandment that I couldn’t agree with more:
“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
Thus inspired, the Guardian recently asked a number of writers for their do’s and don’t's on writing — fiction in this case, but many apply to other forms of writing. Via ALDaily, Part One here, and Part Two here.
Your favorites? I do find these exercises useful in learning a few things, yes, but increasingly to remind myself of things I already knew. I found teaching journalism for a couple semesters very helpful (not sure what the students got out of it) in crystallizing or re-forming all sorts of “rules” about writing that I’d forgotten or had known only instinctively, or never knew in the first place. Perhaps that is what preaching can do for the preacher? Not a natural writer, I was fortunate to have been formed in journalism (old time, old media) with its constant editing and space constraints. One resents such strictures even as they greatly improve one’s writing. It is amazing how quickly, when freed of such oversight, I throw off the reins and resort to old vices.
David, you are a very talented writer who has the potential to be a great “fisher of Men” as long as you understand that when we abide in The Word, the net will not break.
This is so funny, because I’ve often thought of writing a Top-Ten list for preaching (at least my own preaching – I don’t claim to be an authority on the subject).
Do it, Preacher Pauwels!
No. 1: Starting with the weather is okay…
Nancy, my skills in fishing for fish are so discouraging I wouldn’t hold out great hope. But thanks… ;-)
Here a delightful site with quotations from writers about writing. http://www.quotegarden.com/writing.html
Here are a few, starting with the most famous of all from Red Smith, the sports writer::
“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” ~Elmore Leonard
” Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very;” your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”~Mark Twain
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” ~William Wordsworth
(He would say something like that. Sigh.)
“Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don’t start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.”
~William Safire, “Great Rules of Writing”
Here’s my favorite nonsense: “A metaphor is like a simile.” ~Author Unknown
There’s lots more where these come from.
Several of the contributors mentioned reading a lot, and I think that’s crucial. I don’t have a creative bone in my body (the worst grade I ever got in English Composition was for a short story outline), but any ability I have to write clearly I think I owe to reading everything I could of Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh. Greene didn’t like adverbs either.
A master writer sees possibilities in what other people overlook or dismiss. Lookit what Jane Austen did with gossip about the neighbors. Or what P.G. Wodehouse did with Bertie Wooster.
Graham Greene has been quoted as saying that Wodehouse was one of the very greatest of 20th century authors.
I like Ambrose Bierce: “Good writing is clear thinking made visible.”
JAK -
Pay no attention to that English teacher. American English teachers seem very adept at discouraging creative writing. Just look at the number of really fine American writers who either didn’t go to college or didn’t find it worthwhile to stay. e.g., Faulkner and Hemingway, Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens. The English and French teachers don’t seem to have that effect on their students.
“Ce qui se concoit bien s’enonce clairement, et les mots pour le dire vous viennent aisement.” Boileau (?)
Clear thinking makes for clear expression, and the words to say it will come to you with ease.
Newman’s chapter on Literature in “The Idea of a Univesity” contains his thoughts on the relationship between thinking and writing. It includes this sentence: “Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one: style is a thinking out into language.” And then goes on for this amusing paragraph aimed at critics who thought otherwise:
“Such men as he is consider fine writing to be an addition from without to the matter treated of,—a sort of ornament superinduced, or a luxury indulged in, by those who have time and inclination for such vanities. They speak as if one man could do the thought, and another the style. We read in Persian travels of the way in which young gentlemen go to work in the East, when they would engage in correspondence with those who inspire them with hope or fear. They cannot write one sentence themselves; so they betake themselves to the professional letter-writer. They confide to him the object they have in view. They have a point to gain from a superior, a favour to ask, an evil to deprecate; they have to approach a man in power, or to make court to some beautiful lady. The professional man manufactures words for them, as they are wanted, as a stationer sells them paper, or a schoolmaster might cut their pens. Thought and word are, in their conception, two things, and thus there is a division of labour. The man of thought comes to the man of words; and the man of words, duly instructed in the thought, dips the pen of desire into the ink of devotedness, and proceeds {278} to spread it over the page of desolation. Then the nightingale of affection is heard to warble to the rose of loveliness, while the breeze of anxiety plays around the brow of expectation. This is what the Easterns are said to consider fine writing….”
Ok, David you egged me on. Here goes. Many others are possible.
1. Preach one homily, not three. If you offer one worthwhile idea, it might, possibly, make a difference for someone. If you offer three good ideas, all three will be forgotten within five minutes. Competing themes confuse and dilute one another. The same readings roll around again in another three years, so save your other good ideas for next time.
2. You’re up there to serve, not impress.
3. Subject everything you say to the “Is it true?” test and the “is it necessary?” test.
4. Don’t preach another person’s homily. Ever. Subscribe to no homily help services. Never, ever surf the Internet for a homily.
5. You’re writing the spoken word, not the read word. Nobody talks in long, complex sentences – or if you do, nobody else has a clue what you just said. Short and punchy is the rule.
6. Write poetry. The human ear and heart hearken to it. The right metaphor or combination of words can make all the difference between a home run and a ground out.
7. Homilizing is an exercise of the heart – the enlightened and enflamed heart. Scholarship, wit and other attributes are to be harnessed to the service of the heart. If you’re not passionate about it, don’t bother to say it.
8. Jokes and gimmicks are to be used sparingly. Set yourself a limit of one per year.
9. Nobody cares about your life. Everyone cares, deeply, about her own life, particularly her life in Christ. Talk about that.
10. “Gospel” means Good News. Every newspaper and newscast if filled with bad news. Nobody came to church to hear more of the same. Give them a reason to hope and rejoice.
“They cannot write one sentence themselves; so they betake themselves to the professional letter-writer. They confide to him the object they have in view. They have a point to gain from a superior, a favour to ask, an evil to deprecate; they have to approach a man in power, or to make court to some beautiful lady. The professional man manufactures words for them, as they are wanted, as a stationer sells them paper, or a schoolmaster might cut their pens.”
Beautiful, but it sounds like writing, doesn’t it? Does this mean Newman should have rewritten it, as Elmore Leonard advises? Does anyone talk the way Waugh wrote, to borrow another example from Fr. Komonchak? Waugh had an excellent ear for speech, but his narrative prose sounds nothing like speech, and his novels would be worse, not better, if they were reduced to dialogue. I love the way Elmore Leonard writes, but I’d rather be without his novels than live in a world where everyone wrote like Elmore Leonard. Many of the “rules” offered in the Guardian feature are more fascinating than useful. Some of them might help us better understand the work of writing, but many of them just help us better understand the work of the writers who offer them — and to a reader of their work, that is in itself worthwhile. There’s also a lot of entertaining posturing made to look like practical advice (one of Waugh’s favorite tricks, by the way). Margaret Atwood on methods for sharpening pencils on an airplane, Neil Gaiman’s injunction to “put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down,” etc. The real message behind such advice is “If you’re a writer, you don’t need my advice; if you’re not, nothing I can tell you will make you one.”
Ann: My English composition teacher was not mistaken–my outlined short story was pretty awful, and I knew it then and know it even more now.
Jim Pauwels: Your rules for homilies are great! How about an article in “Commonweal” setting them out?
Jim Pauwels, I would second JAK, though I might quibble with one or two of your rules. (Just one joke a year? What if it’s a really good one?! And I think many people like to hear personal stories, as long as they’re not about your protstate exam. Thing is, first person is hard to do well, so best to leave it to the exception.)
Matt, all of these “rules” are idiosyncratic and often contradictory, and I think as much as anything they are reminders of sins we often commit, or encouragement to find your own style. I do think writing can be taught, though not necessarily art. The latter comes from a lived life, and it’s tough to gain a necessary distance or appreciation of life to turn it into art. Much depends on what kind of writing one is talking about. I’d be happy if those who write memos or parish bulletins or much else would pay more attention.
Some of the rules have many meanings, too, most notably Leonard’s “if it sounds like writing…”
What I take him to mean is that if it sounds like someone else, if it sounds like everyone else (from the Iowa Writers Workshop, e.g.), if it doesn’t sound like you or doesn’t make the reader forget there is a “you” behind the writing, then re-write. I think Newman writes like himself, though hinsight and biography have conditioned my view. We wouldn’t expect Waugh to write like Hemingway, much less Elmore Leonard. But all three “wrote what they know,” in the stylistic sense. Or so I think.
David,
I don’t disagree with you that writing can be taught, as long as it’s understood that learning to write well really is about learning to think well, and not just about learning to present your thoughts. (Of course, not all good thought lends itself easily to expression, and it’s another mistake to think we can always translate difficult ideas into easy language without loss.) I wasn’t endorsing what I take to be the coded message of much literary advice (“Some people can write, some can’t; those who can’t shouldn’t.”), but I do think it’s part of the fun that no one needs advice from Margaret Atwood about writing instruments, and that she knows this.
“If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.” Your reading of this rule sounds like, well, a reading. If the rule only means, “be authentic,” then it’s as useless as it is unexceptionable. Yes of course be authentic, but how? And what exactly is authenticity? This idea isn’t as simple as it sounds. You say that Newman, for example, writes like himself. If this just means he writes in his own authentic “voice,” then the question is What do we really know about his voice apart from his writing? And if, as Newman argues in that passage Fr. K quoted, the expression is coextensive with the idea, then the voice metaphor may not be very helpful: you and I have different voices, but we can use them to sing the same notes or speak the same lines. There’s no way to make a parallel distinction in writing. If, on the other hand, writing like oneself means giving true expression to one’s essential self, and therefore not sounding like anyone else, I think we have to remember that Waugh and Newman and Leonard all had to create the selves they sound like. Writing constitutes the self rather than just revealing it, and it does this partly by combining (consciously and unconsciously) various influences. Elmore Leonard doesn’t sound just like Raymond Chandler, but it’s hard to imagine Leonard would sound the way he does if he had never read Chandler.
In his dedication of The King in the Window, Adam Gopnik thanks his son for giving “the author the finest piece of editorial advice he has ever been given: ‘Just bring the cool bits closer together.’”
I don’t usually quote wikipedia, but,
“The Harry Potter series have been the recipients of a host of awards since the initial publication of Philosopher’s Stone including four Whitaker Platinum Book Awards (all of which were awarded in 2001),[78] three Nestlé Smarties Book Prizes (1997–1999),[79] two Scottish Arts Council Book Awards (1999 and 2001),[80] the inaugural Whitbread children’s book of the year award (1999),[81] the WHSmith book of the year (2006),[82] among others. In 2000, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was nominated for Best Novel in the Hugo Awards while in 2001, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire won said award.[83] Honours include a commendation for the Carnegie Medal (1997),[84] a short listing for the Guardian Children’s Award (1998), and numerous listings on the notable books, editors’ Choices, and best books lists of the American Library Association, The New York Times, Chicago Public Library, and Publishers Weekly.[85]”
Is children’s literature an exception to the no-adverb, and only-say-said rules?
“Ah,” said Fudge, who looked thoroughly disconcerted. “Dumbledore. Yes. You, er, got our – er – message that the time and – er – place of the hearing had been changed, then?”
“I must have missed it,” said Dumbledore cheerfully. “However, due to a lucky mistake I arrived at the Ministry three hours early, so no harm done.”
“Yes – well – I suppose we’ll need another chair – I – Weasley, could you–?”
“Not to worry, not to worry,” said Dumbledore pleasantly; he took out his wand, gave it a little flick, and a squishy chintz armchair appeared out of nowhere next to Harry. Dumbledore sat down, put the tips of his long fingers together and surveyed Fudge over them with an expression of polite interest.
–Just stirring the pot a little. The question of sparse prose vs. lush prose is an open question for me and I’d be interested in talking about it if anyone is game.
Hi, Kathy,
(I love Wikipedia!)
Angela Brazil, whose boarding school stories influenced all subsequent boarding school stories, including, surely, Harry Potter, sold MILLIONS of books.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Brazil
Here are Angela Brazil’s choices from the first five pages of The New Girl at St. Chad’s:
replied
said
broke in
said
returned briskly
declared
remarked
said
put in
said
suggested
returned
murmured
persisted
said
protested indignantly
cried
asked
continued
gasped
said
declared
screamed
enquired coolly
returned
said
demanded
asked
grunted
http://www.amazon.com/New-Girl-St-Chads-School/dp/0554106213/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267568321&sr=1-1#noop
(Happy feast of St. Chad to one and all!)
IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
“But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”
Mr. Bennet made no answer.
“Do not you want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently.
“You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”
This was invitation enough.
1.) Don’t write unless you have something to say.
2.) Write simply. Like that.
3.) Ask yourself about what you write: Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it charitable?
4.) If someone else tells you it’s not clear, then it’s not clear. Rewrite it.
5.) Edit it.
6.) Edit it again. And again. And again.
7.) Let it sit overnight, for a week, for a month, for a year, and return to it. See if it makes sense. Edit it again. Oh, and do your fact-checking, too.
8.) Don’t be such a perfectionist, for Pete’s sake. Who are you, Proust?
9.) Don’t worry if people don’t like what you’ve written. Get over it. They will.
10.) Most importantly, pray about everything you write.
I’m not a preacher, but I teach, so I have my own ideas about what to communicate and how. Many good ideas are expressed above, but I see one important thing missing from the explicit lists: honesty.
The older I get, the bolder I become in saying things not because I “should” but because they are well-aligned with my perspective. I end up skipping material that some others think is important. But the material that I do present to my classes is stuff I care about, and that is a tremendous help in my teaching.
Increasingly, I have no qualms about pointing out weaknesses in my arguments or in the results that I present. I can say (to take an example from this morning): “as it turns out, we didn’t really need that tool here. A simpler approach would have been sufficient, but I felt like presenting that because it’s cool” — and the students seem to share my subjective appreciation of the material presented.
It’s interesting to see what other writers say about writing, but using their advice as prescriptions only makes you end up writing like them. Find your own voice and let other people decide if they want to listen to it. If you’re Elmore Leonard, write like Elmore Leonard. If you’re Jane Austen, write like Jane Austen. If you’re Jim Pawels, preach like Jim Pauwels.
I don’t find JK Rowling a particularly good stylist (she overuses the word “strode” to the point of exhaustion). But plot and character are so good, that that Harry Potter transcends style deficiencies.
I like E. Nesbitt (those little Bastables …) as a children’s writer and a stylist. She takes the kiddies seriously and doesn’t write down to them.
I would also offer up Shirley Jackson as a pretty good stylist. People compare “Life Among the Savages” to Erma Bombeck, but there’s a lot more edge in Shirley’s stories about raising four kids in a ramshackle country house, funny as it is.
God, I sound like I’m pontificating … ugh.
David, You wrote:
“One resents such strictures even as they greatly improve one’s writing. It is amazing how quickly, when freed of such oversight, I throw off the reins and resort to old vices.”
Isn’t this a terrific analogy for the Law, and even the experience of an objective revelation? We chafe at it even as it makes us better over time.
A wonderful book on writing is James Wood’s How Fiction Works. His enthusiasm really comes through in his examples. One of my favorite essayists these days is Marilyn Robinson. Wonderful writer.
Many of the writers’ lists of suggestions show a Strunk and White preference for brevity. Strunk and White made the argument for finding one’s own voice by quoting passages by Hemingway and Faulkner, both writing about languor. Naturally the Faulkner passage is much longer.
(I think that the editiorial preference for brevity is not entirely unrelated to the question of liturgical translation, by the way.)
Imho, this is the best fiction writing ever, by Faulkner:
But Isaac was not one of these:–a widower these twenty years, who in all his life had owned but one object more than he could wear and carry in his pockets and his hands at one time, and this was the narrow iron cot and the stained lean mattress which he used camping in the woods for deer and bear or for fishing or simply because he loved the woods; who owned no property and never desired to since the earth was no man’s but all men’s, as light and air and weather were; who lived still in the cheap frame bungalow in Jefferson which his wife’s father gave them on their marriage and which his wife had willed to him at her death and which he had pretended to accept, acquiesce to, to humor her, ease her going but which was not his, will or not, chancery dying wishes mortmain possession or whatever, himself merely holding it for his wife’s sister and her children who had lived in it with him since his wife’s death, holding himself welcome to live in one room of it as he had during his wife’s time or she during her time or the sister-in-law and her children during the rest of his and after
Faulkner’s is surely one of the Great Voices of American Lit.
The fact that he sounds like a rambling habitual drunk who takes long side tracks but never loses the thread of his stories, though they occasionally lurch into into bathos or horror, makes his writing no less charming or true.
(No, not being sarcastic; I love Faulkner, but thank God for punctuation.)
“The question of sparse prose vs. lush prose is an open question for me and I’d be interested in talking about it if anyone is game.”
I’m of the same mind. My primary reason for reading is pleasure, and I get a lot of pleasure from reading Dickens, who did not excise many words.
In my high school composition classes in the ’70′s, Hemingway was lionized. It’s one way to do it but not the only way. Maybe sparsity is a peculiarly American value. I know a lot of 20th century American writers had newspaper backgrounds and needed to write to space limitations. A lot of corporate/business writers today face similar constraints – tell the product’s story and also make the web copy fit on a single screen, or in a 15 second spot.
I would never fetishize Hemingwayesque spare prose in part because I hate being spare myself and because I love lush. Besides, the annual bad Hemingway imitation award should be enough to persuade anyone of the drawbacks to any style becoming dogma. I think that is the thing, that when writing becomes a “school” or a self-concious style it is deadened because it is unoriginal, inauthentic.
Lush and good are not incompatible. Di Lampedusa’s “The Leopard” is one of my all-time favorites; pick out any passage. Of course, he found no publisher, his wife sent the manuscript off after his death, and it became an international sensation.
Rule No. 11: Write, die, then publish.
Jim P.–
I also enjoyed your homily “Top Ten,” though I agree with David G. that once-a-year humor is too stringent a rule. Of course humor shouldn’t be overdone, but humor can create a powerful bond between the audience and the speaker, even in a homily setting, and can strengthen the message the homilist is conveying.
One thing I’d add to your list. I think a homilist should always use inclusive rather than exclusive language–”we sinners” rather than “you sinners,” for example. I can’t help being rubbed the wrong way when a homilist, either consciously or unconsciously, omits himself from the ranks of the fallen. :)
Writers (and critics) who promote spare prose tend to be early 20th Century writers with journalistic backgrounds. I like to think Hunter Thompson and gonzo corrected that preoccupation with spare a bit and reestablished the legitimacy of lush. Here’s from “Hell’s Angels.”
“California, Labor Day weekend … early, with ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levis roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads in Frisco, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey peninsula, north of Big Sur … The Menace is loose again, the Hell’s Angels, the hundred-carat headline running fast and loud on the early morning freeway, low in the saddle, nobody smiles, jamming crazy through traffic and nintey miles an hour down the center strip, missing by inches … like Genghis Kahan on an iron horse, a monster steed with a fiery anus, flat out through the eye of a beer can and up your daughter’s leg with no quarter asked and none given; show the squares some class, give em a whiff of those kicks they’ll never know …”
Sorta sounds like Walter Winchell’s evil twin on crack. I almost need Ritalin just reading it.
Aside from basic grammar, I don’t think rules (or guidelines) for writing well can make a bad writer into a good one — they just turn a bad writer into a writer badly applying rules. You have to be pretty good with words already to know which advice to accept and which to ignore. Good writers can hear something like “never use adverbs” and understand that it means “don’t overuse adverbs” — and that it may not be good advice for them personally. Bad writers will kill themselves trying to follow that advice and turn out sentences so tortured they might as well announce, “See how I avoid adverbs!”
I’ve heard this advice for homilists: “Never begin with ‘In today’s gospel…’” That’s a cute line, and I get what it’s trying to say: “In today’s gospel” is the least creative way to begin a homily; it should go without saying that you’re going to talk about today’s Gospel. But that advice will only improve the technique of a homilist who’s already decent — you have to have a grip on substance before you can afford to focus on improving your style. I’ve heard plenty of bad homilies that would have been vastly improved if only the homilist had begun with “in today’s Gospel” (and then gone on to talk about that day’s Gospel). Some preachers just aren’t meant to dazzle, and it’s better for everyone if they don’t try.
“You have to have a grip on substance before you can afford to focus on improving your style.”
As someone who teaches writing (though in truth, you can’t teach writing, only try to be a useful and sensitive critic), I’ll say amen and good day to that.
I agree with William Collier about a homilist using the first person plural rather than the second person plural: we and us, rather than you and you. Of course, I’ve been trying in vain to get people (including many people on this blog) to realize that the primary meaning of “Church” is first person plural rather than third person….
I think control of your material is crucial. I find that when I’m not sure what I’m saying my style gets very convoluted, but when I’m sure of it, it’s easy to write clearly. Re-editing is very important too; I’m always surprised at how many superfluous words and phrases can be omitted.
I wonder where you think Newman would fit on the “lush-scale.” He always said that Cicero was a great influence on his writing. I notice a distinct difference in style between his Anglican sermons and those he preached as a Catholic. The former are as spare as a New England congregational church; while the latter have the lushness and richness of a Catholic church.
What an interesting observation about Newman! When people fall in love, as Newman did with Roman Catholicism, they sometimes become more loquacious, tapping into floodgates of new thoughts and feelings inspired by the beloved. Perhaps that was it?
Thanks to everyone who commented on my preaching rules. Fr. Joe, your article suggestion is a great compliment, and I thank you for it, but I suppose Commonweal likes its writers to be experts, and there are many experts in preaching/homiletics. I’m a guy in the trenches with an opinion. :-)
David G., I know of one preacher in these parts who likes a good joke so much he uses the same one several times a year to begin his homilies. I once attended a homily workshop where the presenter said, “the first rule of telling a joke in a homily is that it must be funny. The 2nd is that it must be directly connected to the day’s readings.” Those rules would eliminate at least 80% of the jokes I have heard from the pulpit.
Jean, inasmuch as that is the first and last time my name will ever appear in the same paragraph with Jane Austen and Elmore Leonard – thank you. :-)
Bill C., I think humor can be extremely effective in homilizing, and I use it from time to time, although I’m not always good at it. Humor, to me, is a different and higher form of art than beginning a homily with “Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Jesus were playing golf …”. Humor, in my estimation, is very difficult to do well, but it’s worth cultivating for the preacher. Personally, I assume that most of the people in our parish are tired and stressed, like me, and the least we can do is give them something that they don’t have to work too hard to digest, at least not all the way through.
Also, totally agree with your point about using “we” rather than “you”.
Wait, Jim, before you go! How does the golf joke end?!
As to the stand up preacher, unless he’s Heny Youngman, he needs new material.
(PS: From the annals of Best Assignments Ever: Covering Henny’s funeral.)
Fr. K,
I thought the dispute was between third person plural universal and third person plural visible.
I find the journalism-sparseness connection interesting. I don’t know much about reporting, and am wondering if sparseness is preferred because it’s more to the point, or because of space constraints, or both? Does lushness detract from news? Or could this be another case of cartesian minimalism?
No, that goes too far. But what does lushness indicate? Is the imagination given more scope? Or what is given more scope?
I guess it depends on how you define “lush.” Lots of sensory details? That’s the stock in trade of feature writers. Lush as in loquacious, or offering a lot of personal opinion, judgment? Less likely to find journos writing like that, even in features. Unless you’re HST, as above.
I went to grad school some years after having worked as a newspaper reporter, and when I took my one required course in modern lit, I discovered that Hemingway was funny in a way I had not perceived before.
Twain used that journalistic sense of humor a by careful arrangement of facts. His rules for attending a funeral might be a good example:
http://michaelfountain.blogspot.com/2008/03/mark-twains-rules-for-funeral-etiquette.html
To me, the counterpoint to spareness is the way certain authors spread themselves. Tolkien’s characters are likely to break into song every other page, or season the narrative with ancient tales, philosophy and (of course) excursions into the meanings of words.
Lushness leaves more room for allusions, telling many stories at once, or bringing the old stories to bear on the story at hand, because after all the storyteller is both memory and presence.
Journalism is about telling a single story well.
LOTR rocks!
(Just guesses)
It’s worth pointing out that the Gospel writers were amazingly compact. The first chapter of Mark covers a lot of ground in very few words.
I’ve weighed in on LOTR, so I won’t subject anyone to more fulminations.
I’ve seen Kathy’s definition of “lushness” in better feature stories, which usually looks at an event–sometimes a long-past event that’s still “rippling,” from a variety of angles. Especially since New Journalism (not really new anymore) was about incorporating literary techniques to nonfiction stories.
Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” might be an example of “journalistic lushness.” Though I don’t really like that term. Maybe cuz I was raised a Yankee Protestant in a cold climate, and the whole notion of lush just isn’t part of the landscape.
I guess you could say hard news is about reporting a single event well, if “well” means that you provide the facts that can be corroborated through reliable sources, and blah blah.
But I digress and drag the thread past its freshness date.