Writing: To Impress or to be Understood? – Guest Post by Brian O’Hare

A teacher of English literature was lecturing a class of adolescents on one of the syllabus’s prescribed modern novels. She selected a short passage which included the following two sentences:

books, flickr

“Vanessa’s passage was impeded by the building’s front door. The door was blue.”

She read the sentences aloud and said to the class, “What did the author mean when he said the door was blue?”

Heads went down and none of the students would meet her eye.

So the teacher went on, “What we have here is a clear metaphor for the angst, the anxiety, I might even say the Weltschmerz, that can afflict modern youth as they seek answers to life’s most basic questions. There is a specific significance in the use of the word ‘impeded’ here, especially as it is linked to the unmistakable nuance of depression so strikingly impressed upon the inner consciousness by the deliberate choice of the colour blue.”

Sam Bleakley book signing, wikipedia

It so happened that, a couple of weeks later, the writer of this book was doing a book signing at the local bookshop. One of the students, a studious young male, went along to have the famous author sign his copy of the book.

As the author was writing his signature, the boy said, “Do you remember that bit in the book where Vanessa was impeded by a front door and you said, ‘The door was blue.’”

The writer thought for a moment and said, “Oh, yes! I do.”

“What did you mean when you said the door was blue?”

The writer eyed the boy up and down, mystified by his question. “I meant the door was blue. What else could I have meant?”

blue door, wikimedia commons

Sometimes I wonder if literature teachers, in their enthusiasm for interpreting the hidden meanings to be found in writing, create a mystique around the nature of writing that can confuse young would-be writers and distract them from the essential need for clarity in writing. I had a literature teacher once whose outlandish explanations of what authors meant easily rivaled that of the teacher in this anecdote. It got to the stage where I could scarcely understand anything I was reading because I was so convinced that I was missing all sorts of significant underlying messages. And, of course, I always assumed that there was no point in me ever trying to be a writer because I would never be able to write anything that contained hidden depths, that contained meaning other than the obvious.

However, when I was a lecturer in higher education I became involved in writing academic reports of various kinds for the Department of Education in Northern Ireland. In so doing, I began to understand the need for clarity and sought, above all things, to ensure that my readers could follow the complex meaning in the issues I was writing about. Where other writers were sowing only confusion, the inspectors seemed to perceive a quality of lucidity in my writing, a plainness, a lack of ambiguity, that persuaded them to decide that any reports written in Northern Ireland on my particular specialism (while I was still professionally employed) should be written only by me. When I asked why they chose me, I was initially upset, almost insulted, by the answer. “Your stuff,” they told me, “is dead easy to read.”

I am a writer, pixabay

I was to hear this some comment many times, even after I retired, about my writing style, whether it was in the academic works, in the memoirs, or even the fiction books I wrote. Dead easy to read? Did that mean that my writing was superficial? That it lacked depth? I felt genuinely aggrieved every time I heard this. I always put a deal of effort into anything I write and to hear it described as “dead easy to read” seemed to me to detract for the depth of argument, the subtleties of meaning, that I knew were there. Eventually, I moaned about this to the Chief Staffing Officer of the Northern Ireland Inspectorate, a friend with whom I felt comfortable enough to bring the issue up.

He laughed at my concerns. “Anyone,” he said, “can discuss complex issues in complex terms, particularly using the jargon of the topic. It looks and sounds great but more often than not is confusing and confused. Sometimes it degenerates into gobbledygook. Your skill lies in the fact that you can deal with complex issues in a jargon-free way that allows your reader to follow your arguments and still be with you when you arrive at your conclusions.”

writing, pixabay

I took these remarks to heart and determined that above all things, clarity would be the hallmark of anything I would write in the future, and if people wanted to call it “easy” or “simple,” I would accept that as a compliment.

I have now discovered that writing styles can fall into four categories:

• Complex ideas described using complex language (to impress, to blind, and ultimately to confuse)
• Superficial ideas using complex language (to give them a veneer of intellectual worth that they do not have)
• Superficial ideas using simple or naïve language (the writing of the immature)
• Complex ideas expressed in clear, uncluttered language. (Dead easy to read.)

Of these four categories, three are clearly questionable and not ideals to be sought. One is a style to be cultivated. Which one would you choose?

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