Rambling On with History Explored: Is writing an art or a craft or a bit of both?

By DAVID MYTON

Dear Subscribers - This is my weekly Rambling On history post - not the usual referenced, research-essay style. Instead, I’m just going to ramble on: what I’ve been thinking about and/or reading in recent days. Please feel free to chip in with (preferably polite, informative) comments.

This week I’ve been thinking about Writing. Is it an art or a craft?

Pretty obviously, it’s both. Not so obvious is that it’s possible to have the craft without the art, but not the art without the craft.

I began thinking about this after I found my old copy of the Westminster Press House Style guide (“recommended for the use of journalists, contributors and printers”) printed in 1969 and given to me when I began my first proper job in journalism in 1973 as a junior reporter with The Yorkshire Evening Press. Part of the now defunct Westminster Press publishing group, this was a multi-edition, six-days-a-week newspaper in York, Northern England, with 64,000 daily sales in a city of about 110,000 people.

In my time I have been a news reporter, sports reporter, feature writer, opinion writer, a sub editor, a chief sub editor, a section editor, a newspaper editor, and Editor in Chief of a media group. I’ve also lectured in journalism at a private college, and worked on the “other side”: in public relations.

When I had dreamed of a career in journalism, I had imagined myself as an Orwell or Steinbeck character perhaps covering some tragic Civil War somewhere - I had no idea.

Not as easy as it sounds

I thought writing would be easy (I was good at it at school) - but this wasn't make-it-up creative stuff. It was about getting the facts and recording them accurately, clearly and concisely.

That’s not as easy as it sounds. Writing has to be studied, learned and applied. Writers write.

On my first day in the job I was supplied with the “house style” book - an “attempt to give guidance on the way our newspapers ought to be written”.

“The word attempt is used because the subject is inexhaustible and an end must be made somewhere, or the people who consult or ought to consult the book would find it unmanageable.”

Perhaps the most surprising feature of the subject, it says, “is the frequency with which even highly educated writers offend in matters of style … one of our most difficult tasks may be to induce the educated man who thinks he has nothing to learn, to consult these pages and correct his errors [plenty of women worked in journalism back then so maybe the style guy should have updated himself …]”.

Anyway, Part 1 deals with ‘Use of English’, the primary aim of which is “to present the news in a clear, correct and lively style”. For example, government jargon may refer to additional office accommodation and the provision of parking facilities - which should be shortened to “more offices” and “car park”.

“Most bad or clumsy writing comes from not thinking clearly. Journalists should cultivate an exact sense of the meaning of words and an ear for the rhythm of sentences and paragraphs.”

To achieve this, sentences should be plain and straightforward, written in the active rather than the passive tense.

Man bites dog, he batted well

“Man bites dog is better than dog is bitten by man,” it says. “Many nouns are better as verbs: he batted well rather than his batting was good.”

Intros, it commands, should be no more than 35 words:

“Do not try to cram too many facts into the intro using long subordinate clauses. These should be made into separate sentences. One idea to a sentence is a sound rule. A qualifying word or phrase should be placed near the word it qualifies.”

The language of newspapers should be as much like ordinary speech as possible without being colloquial or slangy, it says, adding that “writers should prefer simple words, and use them in their correct meanings”.

Overworked, misused words

Examples it gives of overworked and misused words - with suggested alternatives - include:

a large proportion of = many

adjacent to = next to or near

anticipate = not to be used in the sense of expect. You expect a legacy, but you anticipate it by ordering goods on credit before you have received it.

at the present time = now

chronic = continuing or lasting, not severe or painful

conditions = eg, bad weather conditions = bad weather

currently = now

disinterested = impartial, not standing to gain anything. “Do not use when you mean uninterested, taking no interest in the matter”

masterful = domineering; masterly = skillful

preparatory to/previous to/prior to = before

Apostrophes and collective nouns

There follows a host of rules on abbreviations, apostrophes, capitals, collective nouns, hyphens, quote marks, academic qualifications, armed forces ranks (Army, Navy, Air Force), churches and religious titles, honours and decorations, the judiciary, and royalty. And so it goes.

Every newspaper I worked for had similar style guides; at The Sydney Morning Herald there was even a style editor (the brilliant Alan Peterson) who would lecture you on your error (and what you should have written) if you blundered in one way or another. He was always busy.

Such guides apply to functional writing such as journalism-reportage. They also assume that you already possess the skills (or are able to develop them) to write well under pressure.

I suppose creative authors of fiction and fantasy acquire basic writing skills through further education and/or imitation of a role model they admire. Their imaginations, however, remain their greatest asset and they will learn what they need to relevant to their genres.

No matter how great their imaginations, however, they might struggle to break through if they do not have the functional skills to get their ideas down on paper. Such skills rarely emerge out of nothing - to acquire them generally takes three things (as the old joke goes): practice, practice, practice.

As the author Moira Allen writes: “Like any craft, writing requires patience, dedication, and a willingness to improve through practice and feedback. The more you write, the better you will become at expressing your thoughts and ideas in a clear and concise way.”

Tolkien, craftsman and artist

For me, the exemplar of the creative artist-craftsperson is JRR Tolkien, his supreme achievement being The Lord Of The Rings and its setting Middle Earth. He was a mythologist and philologist, an academic expert (at professorial level) on spoken and written ancient languages. Moreover, he was a brilliant story-teller - one of the all-time best.

His prime motive for writing this novel was “the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them”. (LOTR p9)

It took him many years to write and, indeed, “when the ‘end’ had at last been reached the whole story had to be revised, and indeed largely rewritten backwards. And it had to be typed, and re-typed, by me …” (p10)

LOTR is replete with vivid imaginings of all kinds of peoples and other life-forms. It is also a kind of travelogue across a world of his own invention. For all that, it is written in relatively simple language (if you ignore elvish, orcish etc).

The foundation of his success is the bedrock of writerly craftsmanship, learned over many years of practical experience. Everything else in the book rests on this.