Sunday, May 24: The A.D.D. Detective
PROFESSIONAL TIPS – George Orwell
by Leigh Lundin
In recent weeks, Criminal Brief shared tips from three authors, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Jack Kerouac, and Elmore Leonard. This week we feature tips from another noted author and essayist, Eric Arthur Blair, literature’s George Orwell.
Orwell’s novels are straightforward and readily understood by middle schoolers, although a Florida preacher ranted youth should be protected from the books’ communist messages– failing to understand the themes are anti-fascist and anti-communist. Encountering Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four about the fifth and sixth grades accounts in large part for my own deep antipathy against injustice and totalitarianism.
1984– that’s so yesterday!
Twenty-five years after 1984– sixty years after the novel was published, I’m concerned Orwell may be slipping out of the public memory. I mentioned Orwell in recent conversations to blank stares. Perhaps it’s what statisticians call an atypical sampling group, but several people seemed unaware of Orwell’s books, which elicited responses ranging from "Huh?" to "Wasn’t that the Apple Computer Superbowl ad?"
Well, yeah, but the ad’s ambiance and theme derived from Orwell’s novel. Did some part of the public write off Orwell’s books after 1984 passed without the advent of a literal Oceania dystopia– or did creeping authoritarianism cause public acquiescence? If a couple of other literary works, US PATRIOTS Acts I & II didn’t make you think of 1984, you weren’t paying attention.
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| Animal Farm |
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From his Politics and the English Language, Orwell gives us six rules:
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
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| 1984 |
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Orwell urges writers to ask themselves at least four questions, and possibly six, for each sentence:
- What am I trying to say?
- What words will express it?
- What image or idiom will make it clearer?
- Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
- Could I put it more shortly?
- Have I said anything avoidably ugly?
When it comes to your own writing, be authoritarian.
Great pieces of advice from Orwell.
In comparing 1984 to the Patriot Acts. . . puh-lease, Leigh.
Yes, it’s creepy that so many shopping malls and street corners have little black domes that watch us. Yes it’s slimy that a few corporations control most of the media. But the State Department hasn’t been tapping my phones, and if they were, they’d be pretty bored. Orwell’s “Big Brother” was there to stifle all creativity and free thinking. The Patriot Acts are there to keep people from blowing up civilians. I don’t like infringements on my freedom any more than the next guy, but it beats being hamburger.
ON THE OTHER HAND. . .
Last night I took my sons and some of their friends to see the new Terminator movie. During the film, I was annoyed that several people sitting near me were using their cell phones to “text.” (Man, I wish I had a squrt gun!)
After the film, I pointed out to the boys the irony of people being so attached to technology even while watching a film about the battle between machines and humanity.
My son’s friend Jack turned to me with a straight face and said, “We’ve already lost the war.”
Great writing tips. I agree with every one of them.
Excuse me while I go pull the shades — I think somebody’s watching me . . .
It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.
Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be. (To which I add—people who text generally use horrible shortcuts to spelling and grammar).
George Orwell quotes.
Thanks! I love Orwell’s essay on Raffles reprinted in the complete collection of E.W. Hornung’s Raffles short stories, pub. by St. Martin’s in (gulp!) 1984!
The rules are good because they require writers to be strict self-editors and tenacious re-writers.
I’m afraid that with all the text messaging and twittering, good prose may be disappearing. Or maybe technology will change the rules of grammar and good writing.
What I like about the Orwell rules is they say everything Strunk & White intended, but say it more concisely, more intelligently, and more cohesively.
Thanks again for posting these, Leigh. It’s going up next to my computer monitor.
All right, I guess it’s time for me to don my Curmudgeon Cap and shove a cork in the bottle whence all this adulation pours forth on Mr. Blair.
I don’t mind George Orwell at all, and I’m not hostile to Strunk and White (even though I consider them vastly overrated as style guides) —not the way I loathe Hemingway, for example.
But when imprinting Blair’s advice on your brain, it should be accompanied by this warning label:
Eric Blair was a journalist.
Now, there’s nothing bad about being a journalist, and there are legions of journalists and former journalists who are brilliant writers—Dick Stodghill, Michael Connelly, Jonathon King, Denise Hamilton, Naomi Hirahara, and I could go on.
But.
Remember that journalistic values are not necessarily creative values. A journalist has to make his point as clearly comprehensible to as large an audience as he can. That means using simple, straightforward language as directly as possible. Blair’s advice will certainly help you do that.
There are, however, times when style has to differ according to the substance. Sometimes “prevarication” can be a better word choice than “lie”, ambiguity may the essence of expression, and the passive voice will serve the ambience more acutely than the active voice.
There are lots of great writers who were not journalists, too.
Also, I respectfully disagree with alisa’s observation that effacing one’s personality is necessary to good prose. Can you imagine Mark Twain or Raymond Chandler without personality?
Leigh, you needn’t worry that George Orwell will be forgotten. The man who gave us Newspeak and Doublethink has a secure legacy. 1984 is my twenty-something nephew’s favorite book. Entre nous (sorry—I mean, between us, per Rule 5), I’m more worried about Aldous Huxley, whose own dystopia Brave New World was much more prescient and in its own way, even scarier.
Brave New World, what a great book.
Louis, a year or so ago, I wrote about Japanese cell phone novels… written and read on cell phones. The result, according to a critic, was exactly as you say.
Jeff, I wasn’t aware of that essay! Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
I respectively submit that Orwell meant that an author such as Twain or Chandler filter their own personalities to write such that the reader is not led to and through the story but drawn into the story–thus the windowpane (theory). The reader sees clearly from the get-go, not led by the nose.
If Twain and Chandler allowed their own personalities to run rampant their prose wouldn’t have been nearly as captivating.
Whatever.
Well, running rampant isn’t the only alternative to effacing personality entirely—but I think there’s no doubt that one of the reasons why we find those particular writers attractive is because of their personalities. (Of course, it’s also true that we shouldn’t confuse Mark Twain with Huckleberry Finn or Raymond Chandler with Philip Marlowe.)
I think that Blair was imposing a journalistic imperative. If what you are trying to do is convey the bald truth, then personality has no place. But people don’t necessarily read to get the truth.
Many times, a writer’s personality is precisely what makes his work appealing. Benvenuto Cellini and Hector Berlioz both wrote autobiographies that are now considered classics. Research has revealed neither book is remotely factually reliable, though. The reason people still read them isn’t because they are true—it’s because the narrators are fun.
I would also observe that one of the things I found so appealing about alisa’s CB debut was her distinct voice and view of the world.
Amen to that.
alisa, if it’s still available on-line, could you post a link to the newspaper article about the road trip with your husband?
Well thanks y’all. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve always been a salmon. I’d crash
“write” into that windowpane.
Webcams, Twitter, Facebook, ect. Who would’ve imagined we’d embrace all that intrusive technology the way we have?! And I work with a guy who was born in 1984!
Leigh and JLW:
JUST as I was about to yell, “Hang on!” at what alison said about writers filtering their personalities out of their stories, and lo, JLW appears, cape unfurling…and says everything I wanted to say.
Almost.
In my own stories, I personally try to follow Orwell’s ‘rules’ (without knowing they were Orwell’s rules–I thought they were Elmore Leonard’s rules, actually), because I think a good story cannot be told without clarity.
If a reader hits a spot in a story where he pauses and says, “What?” (Mentally, I imagine–omg, is that a pun? ‘Mentally, I imagine?’ Never mind.) Point: If the reader stops reading because he suddenly can’t figure out what’s happening, the writer just lost his audience.
AND (sorry, there’s more) I’ve arrived at a place where I’ve begun, with caution, allowing myself to inject some of my ‘self’ (which has a smart mouth, if you’ve noticed) into my stories. It’s turned out to be terrific fun. So, absolutely, Orwell’s rules. And yet…I love reading personality–if it’s well done.
I suppose (hope) it means I’ve mastered my craft to the point where I’ve begun creating art. Da Vinci or Rembrandt–one of those guys–taught this (I went to art school), and whichever one said it, I believe him, he has cred with me.
Gary Phillips called this to the attention of members of SoCalMWA.
You might find it of interest:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/jun/08/george-orwell-1984-zamyatin-we