Being Easily Understood: Writing Essays
Martin Scorsese, Hollywood’s great director, in accepting the Golden Globe Award said that he made his films in a way that they would be “easily understood.” This extemporaneous remark caught my attention because in my own writing, that is what I strive for-to be easily understood.
What I think Scorsese implied is that given the many techniques now available to directors, the theme or story may be lost. I agree. Some films I’ve seen are so convoluted that one needs a map to decode the story. And if the story-line may be lost in films -being a medium of images- one can just imagine how easy it is for writers to lose the thread in text narratives.
So, here are three proven tools that really work for me.
Using humble unpretentious words
First, to be easily understood, I labor to use simple, humble, unpretentious words. Simple words make for clear, crisp phrases, clauses, and sentences. Of course some elevated topics need to be conveyed with lofty language, but lofty language doesn’t mean difficult language.
In general, though, even the most challenging topics may be written with plain words. In fiction, master writers go out of their way to inject patches of monosyllabic narration.
Using correlative conjunctions
Because they add clarity, crispness, and fluidity to the narrative, these pairs are quite transparent to the reader; they perform their function in a direct way. Thus we can say that correlative conjunctions don’t call attention to themselves:
both . . . and
either . . . or
just as . . . so
neither . . . nor
not only . . . but also
whether . . . or
Correlative conjunctions are like vessels that carry and move goods, which are the ideas the writer is wishing to convey. By using these pithy words, writers funnel ideas, and in a way, manipulate the readers into absorbing the ideas that make up the theme.
Sentence Openers with correlative conjunctions
In his novelette Breakfast at Tiffany’s, master writer Truman Capote chooses the ‘both … and’ pair as a sentence opener:
“Both Holly and I used to go there six, seven times a day, not for a drink, not always, but to make telephone calls: during the war a private telephone was hard to come by.”
When they (paired conjunctions) are chosen as sentence openers, they stir up the readers’ attention, making them wonder why they have been uprooted from the middle to the front. “Why has the furniture been rearranged?” readers would ask.
Laura Esquivel in her novel Like Water for Chocolate:
“Either her blouse had a wrinkle, or there wasn’t enough hot water, or her braid came out uneven-in short, it seemed Mama Elena’s genius was for finding fault (Esquivel 95).”
In his aesthetics treatise Art as Experience, note how John Dewey, the American philosopher, opens his sentences:
Not only does the direct sense element -and emotion is a mode of sense- tend to absorb all ideational matter, but apart from special discipline enforced by physical apparatus, it subdues and digests all that is merely intellectual (30).
Neither a world wholly obdurate and sullen in the face of man nor one so congenial to his wishes that it gratifies all desired is a world in which art can arise (339).
Neither the savage nor the civilized man is what he is by native constitution but by the culture in which he participates (345).
Either the maker had no experience that was emotionally toned, or although having at the outset a felt emotion, it was not sustained, and a succession of unrelated emotions dictated the work (69).
And in the following example from the Vicar of Wakefield, the narrator by means of the pair -neither … nor- injects a flash forward to advance the story:
“Neither the fatigues and dangers he was going to encounter, nor the friends and mistress, for Miss Wilmot actually loved him, he was leaving behind, [in] any way damped his spirits (Goldsmith 134).”
And Laura Esquivel once again:
Neither she nor Rosaura knew how to make them; when Tita died, her family’s past would die with her (Esquivel 179).
Not only could she crack sack after sack of nuts in a short time, [but] she seemed to take great pleasure in doing it (231).
Master writers exploit the mind’s expectation for closure. When in common speech we hear the expression, “Like waiting for the other shoe to tall,” we quickly grasp and agree that there’s an imminent expectation that perhaps bodes ill. It may not be necessarily so, but we can’t help to expect something nefarious.
With pithy words and correlative conjunctions, professional writers create crisp phrases, clauses, and sentences which morph into “easily understood” paragraphs.
About the Author
Retired. Former investment banker, Columbia University-educated, Vietnam Vet (67-68).
For the writing techniques I use, see Mary Duffy’s e-book: Sentence Openers.
To read my book reviews of the Classics visit my blog: Writing To Live
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