C.S. Lewis on Writing

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/04/c-s-lewis-on-writing.html

by taylorbuley • 14 years ago

249 65 14 years ago

stcredzero• 14 years ago

Contrast with Heinlein on writing: "Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."

stesch• 14 years ago

Well, Heinlein was a perv. ;-)

tygorius• 14 years ago

Actually, that's one of Heinlein's characters commenting on writing. Occasionally Heinlein would have to remind people that his characters spoke for themselves, not for him.

I can't remember a case where he spoke or wrote about writing in a similar fashion to what C.S. Lewis wrote in his letter, but his 5 rules of writing[1] have been influential for many writers. Once, in an Annapolis address, he explained that the rules were simple (1. You must write. 2. You must finish what you write. ...) but only 1 in 10 would follow each step. This was how you could get from half of the adult US population wanting to be a writer to less than a thousand actually being members of the writing guild he belonged to.

[1] http://www.sfwriter.com/ow05.htm

username3• 14 years ago

v. nice practical writing advice

danso• 14 years ago

>> In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, "Please will you do my job for me."

My high school journalism teacher (and I'm sure many others) phrased this as "Show, don't tell". I wish all writing/journalism classes devoted a week to this precept.

medinism• 14 years ago

Danso - agreed. this is a gem! will make me think of how I use adjectives for ever

RyanMcGreal• 14 years ago

> I wish all writing/journalism classes devoted a week to this precept.

I'm quite sure they already do. The persistence of writing that tells rather than shows owes to the usual causes, i.e. a shortage of motivation, confidence, ability and/or time on the part of the writer.

ErrantX• 14 years ago

Heh, I came to say much the same thing. When I was taught this idea my writing ability improved no end.

Critical advice.

jonnathanson3• 14 years ago

It's funny; my fourth-grade English teacher had a sign on her wall that read "Eschew prolixity."

It's a safe bet that no fourth grader, no matter how extraordinary, has come across those two words by that point in his life. So, of course, everyone in the class was puzzled by them. The phrase might as well have been some ancient, Latin dictum -- and, for all we knew, it was.

Finally, one day, someone mustered the courage to ask her what the words meant.

"It's a rule for good writing," she said. "When you understand what it means, you're already in danger of breaking it."

cafard• 14 years ago

A variation, actually, on Mark Twain's "eschew surplusage".

But "prolixity" does not mean using long words.

davesims• 14 years ago

Or the self-contradictory, "Eschew obfuscation."

khafra• 14 years ago

"show, don't tell" = "get people to commit the fundamental attribution error".

-- @stevenkaas

joshuahedlund• 14 years ago

Some people, however, just tell you "Show, don't tell." The above paragraph shows it.

girardy• 14 years ago

Good point. I'd also add something from George Orwell's Politics and the English Language: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm , where he has a bunch of rules like the ones in this thread: "(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."

Rules aren't really rules—they're principles. Part of knowing how to write is knowing when and how to bend or break those principles.

radarsat1• 14 years ago

I recently read a bunch of old Lovecraft stories (to catch up, as it were.. I never read them when I was younger), and it was quite humorous to constantly read about how objects in the environment were "horrifying" or "terrible." Often he'd literally be talking about a hallway or a pattern on the wall, and just describe it as if it were the most hideous, horrible thing in the universe. I eventually started getting the impression that the main character was just kind of depressed or something, which made me laugh and groan rather than be scared.

Still very much fun to read these old classics, and the intention of the writer comes through despite these 1920's pulp idioms, so it was intensely enjoyable, but I would say that this style of writing definitely shows its age.

(I also recently read John Carter and the Princess of Mars, which was written around the same era, and it's equally silly but for different reasons.)

nandemo• 14 years ago

I'll quote Brazilian writer Alexandre Soares Silva (the translation is mine so please don't blame him if the quote doesn't match the original Lovecraft's):

> Critics always laugh at H. P. Lovecraft, the American horror writer -- they laught at his style. They laugh at stuff such as "the stars shone sinisterly". They ask how can a sinisterly-shining-star shine any differently from other stars. In short, they claim that the adverb is spurious. But it isn't so: that adverb makes feel that the stars are shining sinisterly. I can imagine a star shining sinisterly -- can't you?

> The prejudice against adjectives and adverbs will be regarded as a 20th century fad.

SkyMarshal• 14 years ago

> I wish all writing/journalism classes devoted a week to this precept.

Better yet, the entire year. It's the single most valuable concept they teach in high school writing.

sharmajai• 14 years ago

In the essence of the message, I like the more elaborate version, more than "Show, don't tell" which I find just a clever play on words.

6ren• 14 years ago

I've heard "Don't use adjectives" but not qualified in that way, which makes more sense.

"Show, don't tell" without any adjectives can only be pure narration of events and metaphor. Maybe that is good. But it can take more words to say the same thing, and it's difficult. A good exercise though.

GiraffeNecktie• 14 years ago

This is one of my favorite sites and always the first thing I read when I see there's something new in my RSS feeds. Kurt Vonnegut's letter on book burning published last week was also great http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html

shin_lao• 14 years ago

One of the best books you can find on the topic has been written by Stephen King and is called "On Writing".

The first part is a small auto-biography as he states that "to understand writing you must understand what happens in the life of a writer".

The second part is full of clever and useful advices, including ones close to the one in this article.

Even if you don't like the author, you should really read this book if you're serious about writing.

http://www.amazon.com/On-Writing-Stephen-King/dp/0743455967

runevault• 14 years ago

I actually read the book, and found most of the advice (besides the no duh basics like you have to keep writing no matter what) pretty unsurprising, but then I only read it last year after having read a LOT of other books on the topic as well as completed a couple novels and a lot of failed attempts. Perhaps it's good for people newer to the craft but once you get past a certain point I actually would NOT recommend going back and reading it.

Though to be fair at this point the only books on the craft I buy talk about specific topics (Dialogue, description, subtext, etc).

dchest• 14 years ago

The first part is still entertaining, though.

ctdonath2• 14 years ago

Great book for the aspiring writer. Most of it is filler material, but the ~16 pages of real writing advice is worth at least the cover price.

One recommendation that stuck with me is to avoid words ending in "ly". I now make that effort, and the results are an improvement.

dvdhsu• 14 years ago

> One recommendation that stuck with me is to avoid words ending in "ly". I now make that effort, and the results are an improvement.

For those who are wondering at the rationale behind this: many adverbs end in -ly. "The brown fox quickly ran", "she urgently asked", "he mercilessly ate his salad", etc.

Adverbs should be avoided, because, as danso notes, you must "show, not tell". When the brown fox "quickly" runs, you're telling the reader what happened. Similarly, when she "urgently" asks, you're not showing the reader what's going on.

Instead, you can describe what's happening with better verbs: "the brown fox sprinted after his dinner", "she pleaded for the answer key", "he attacked the tomato in his salad".

That's just one way to do it, of course. You can also describe the action in detail: "After skewering his tomato, Jessie brought it up to his mouth, where it tumbled into his esophagus".

hcrisp• 14 years ago

Another book to read if you like this kind of thing is "Revising Business Prose" by Richard Lanham. In it he shows how to resuscitate business-speak into readable text. Many of his examples could have been taken verbatim from my place of work. I have heard colleagues use "orientate" and "updation" intead of "orient" and "update". Sadly, that is really how some people speak!

nikcub2• 14 years ago

Point 1 is not the worst point

Point 2 could be additionally descriptive

Point 3 -peaked- (piqued!) my interest

Point 4 was awesome

Point 5 should be universally implemented

endersshadow• 14 years ago

Since we're talking about good writing here, I feel it's only just that I point out that point three piqued your interest, not peaked it. Unless your interest was at its apex at point three, but since you liked points four and five so much, I doubt that's the case.

At any rate, his previous point about there being no "right" or "wrong" language is something that is absolutely true. I think that's the most important point in the letter, which is outside his list of five points.

DaveInTucson• 14 years ago

Since this is already a post about language and writing:

> Point 3 peaked my interest

The homonym you want here is pique[1]

[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pique definition 3

bmelton• 14 years ago

I supposed you're being downvoted for being so terse, but I generally agree with your comment, so it got my upvote. Yes, I am aware of how tacky it is to discuss voting, or making meta-comments in general.

I think that, in my opinion at least, these instructions apply VERY well to journalism, or perhaps certain types of fiction, but not fiction on the whole.

One of my recently favorite authors is Elmore Leonard, who breaks most of these rules with great ferocity, and is a fantastic writer on the whole.

He has his own rules on writing, but the first is:

"My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."

In contrast to CS Lewis' writings, this leads to much more believable dialog, but that doesn't necessarily conform to any of Lewis' rules. Characters are seldom terse when they could instead be interesting. Characters are seldom cautious to take care that the reader can fully understand what they're saying. Characters are seldom as specific as you might like them to be.

I find this to be much more natural, and feels much less "like writing" than most other authors and for that, I appreciate him immensely.

nikcub2• 14 years ago

my intention wasn't to be terse - more a meta commentary as every one of my points contradicts the respective point in OP

karlalopez2• 14 years ago

CS Lewis was quite effective in his CRM. That's just awesome.

bgilroy263• 14 years ago

What do you mean "CRM"?

karlalopez2• 14 years ago

Customer relationship managing. "(...)it's no real surprise that C. S. Lewis received thousands of letters from youngsters during his career. What's admirable is that he attempted to reply to each and every one of those pieces of fan mail, and not just with a generic, impersonal line or two."

ctdonath2• 14 years ago

"5. Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite."

This is why I object to most usage of cursing in writing (see recent threads on the subject). Using the most extreme language for relatively mundane situations leaves you nothing to work with when extreme language is warranted. Ex.: using the phrasing "go the f^@& home" (see thread of same name) in a mundane discussion about work hours really is pretty pathetic insofar as it wastes & deflates extreme language better used where more appropriate, such as describing the feeling of having your rib cage pried open with a car jack (been there, done that, f^@& applies).

(Some of us suffer net-nannies, so pardon the veiling.)

JDShu• 14 years ago

On the one hand it makes sense, but on the other hand isn't it agreed that cursing brings a certain context or atmosphere? How would the advice here apply to, say, a Quentin Tarantino movie?

bdunbar• 14 years ago

Most - perhaps all - of the situations a Tarantino character would find himself in _are_ extreme situations.

Most of us don't find ourselves in places like that on a frequent basis.

This might be true of most action movies. If you're shooting it out with a band of Euro-trash criminals in a skyscraper, a 'yipi-ki-yay-mother-f%%ker' is appropriate.

Probably not so much picking up ice cream, milk and yogurt.

wmdmark• 14 years ago

Good stuff.

evincarofautumn• 14 years ago

#4 could be summed up as “show, don’t tell”. It’s much easier to say what you mean than to convey it in an interesting way. “Creating Short Fiction” by Damon Knight mentions this as well, and goes into great detail about the difficulties of fiction writing and how to surmount them. I thoroughly recommend it.

eavc• 14 years ago

Lewis was an amazing man. A more serious scholar and thinker than most who know about him today would probably expect, a brilliant writer, and he did things like respond to all of his fan mail and give away the lion's share (pardon the pun) of his works' profits.

wyclif• 14 years ago

He gave away most of his book royalty income for several reasons: 1. He was a Christian. 2. For most of his life he was a bachelor and didn't need much to live on. 3. Magdalen College, Oxford (and later Cambridge University) provided him accomodations as well as a scholarly income from his professorship.

blvr• 14 years ago

He's also probably the greatest (or at least the most popular) Christian author in history. I see other Christian teachers living in luxury and while I don't doubt their faith in Jesus I can't sit at their feet while they're not bearing fruit themselves.

sampsonjs• 14 years ago

How about some advice from a better writer? Like "Politics and the English Lagnuage": http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

"(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent."

Like saying "orthogonal" when you mean "unrelated".

azarias• 14 years ago

Read the 5 points again, except now imagine he is talking about writing code.

A lot of it makes sense...In fact, I say Tim Peters lifted half of the Zen of Python from Lewis :)

gregorymichael• 14 years ago

I have too many educated friends who write by maxim "Never use a short word when a polysyllabic one will do".

grepherder• 14 years ago

>> 3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean "More people died" don't say "Mortality rose."

Am I the only one that doesn't agree with this, at least in general? I mean, the idea behind the advice is of course sound, just a basic form of keep it simple stupid. But in this case, why? This isn't engineering, it's about communication of thoughts. And thoughts can be abstract. I find I can think more efficiently and also more rationally when using abstractions, especially ones I'm familiar with. Just like chunking in memory, there is data I have ready when you speak of mortality, instead of trying to explain to me in plain words that people die.

That said, it might just be me (or people like me). I have to constantly make a conscious effort of writing and speaking less abstractly, just to not annoy people. It might have to do with the fact that English is not my native tongue, and as I don't use it in my daily life, I lack the touch for concreteness to make sense to me that easily.

AerieC• 14 years ago

Thoughts can be abstract, but when you're trying to paint a picture with words, abstractions can make your "picture" weaker. "Mortality rose" is a confusing statement. What does it mean? Did more people die, or did humanity's inherent mortality somehow increase? If you meant "more people died", then say it. You're not talking about the abstract concept of mortality, you're talking about people dying. In the time it took your reader to figure out what you meant, you may have already lost him or her.

Often it's a case of writers trying to be overly clever with their wordplay. For example, you wouldn't want to say something like, "her posterior condition was greatly exaggerated," when what you meant was, "she has a big ass". Sure, the first sentence is "clever", but it's not very clear. The second sentence is right to the point; there's no mistaking the meaning, and it paints a better picture in one's mind.

It's similar to active voice vs. passive voice. "Dan hit the ball," is clear and to the point. "The ball was hit by Dan," paints a weaker picture, even if it says the same thing. Why is "ball" the subject of the sentence. Are we supposed to care about this ball? Aren't we talking about Dan here?

Clarity in writing is important. Readers don't like to be confused. Anything that breaks the "flow" should be avoided, unless that is your goal (e.g. to stop the reader and make them think).

adriand• 14 years ago

My four-year-old says "I amn't". I correct him with "I'm not" but I've long felt his usage made logical sense. But I never realized it was at some place and time an accepted usage! Amazing how the brain acquires language and independently applies its rules.

ams6110• 14 years ago

Nobody's mentioned The Elements of Style, a great little handbook on how to write clearly.

andolanra2• 14 years ago

Because it's not all that great. It's the C Programming Language of linguistic style guides—well-respected and historically relevant, but not necessarily the best resource.

For example, The Elements of Style tells you to avoid the passive voice, on the grounds that sentences like "The sandwich was eaten by me," are much more awkward than "I ate the sandwich." It gives three sentences in support of this: "There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground," "It was not long before she was very sorry that she had said what she had," and "The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired." None of these sentences actually contain a passive: the first is an existential sentence, the second is a simple copula, and the third uses the copula with an adjective, not a participle.[1]

All of which is to say—Strunk and White did not know what a passive was. The actual advice they meant to give is something along the lines of, "Don't be vague about agency," but that is a different proscription. There are places where you should avoid the passive, and there are also places where you should employ the passive, because it is clearer than the alternative. For example, if your documentation says, "Our software product is used to [blah]", you should not change it to, "People use our software product to [blah]," because those people do not matter. By avoiding the passive, you have made your writing less clear by introducing unnecessary information.

Strunk and White have a lot of advice which is merely harmless, but it is not a spectacular writing guide, except for the simplest, least elaborate kinds of writing. Truly great writing is not writing which follows those rules, but writing that knows when to follow such rules. For example, Orwell and Churchill, both quite excellent writers, use the passive significantly more than journalists of the time[2].

[1]: The passive transforms sentences of the form "{noun1} {verb} {noun2}" into "{noun2} {be} {verb}ed [by {noun1}]"; it is (or should be) clear that these sentences cannot be transformed from the latter pattern into the former.

[2] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003414.h...

bgilroy263• 14 years ago

Isn't the usual advice to keep software as the subject of the sentence but rewrite the verb? Like: "Our software manages your source code revisions" rather than "Our software is used to manage source code revisions?".

(I totally agree that the "no passive voice" rule is oversubscribed btw.)

grn• 14 years ago

His 4th point reminded me of Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both made a great impression on me. When discussing them with my wife she observed that they didn't give you what you ought to think and feel. They just showed you and your feelings and thoughts were your own and not of the writer.

C.S. Lewis on Writing

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