As a writer, please remember that you are not alone in the universe. Other people – the ones walking around out there, I mean, not the ones in your head – exist independently of you. That means, first and foremost, that to talk to them you have to recognise their independent agency. If you have something to say, you need to say it in a way that can be understood.

These are ways not to be understood:

• Write a lot of jargon that only insiders know. Don't explain any of it. When anybody (like an editor) asks, act surprised at their bottomless ignorance. Refuse to explain. This is really because you don't know how to, but you can pretend that you have Standards, and won't 'dumb it down'.
• Assume that readers will automatically be fascinated by the subjects that interest you the most. Dwell on the details you enjoy. Leave out the ones you find boring.
• Use trendy insider talk, or clever catchphrases that belong to a specific subgroup, or the latest 'sensitive' labeling¹. Don't explain any of this, and expect the general reader to catch on, learn, and approve. They won't. They'll figure you're trying to exclude them. They will feel appropriately excluded and go away.
• Assume that the reader will automatically share your partisan sympathies. Proceed to describe the political campaign/football match/major military conflict in those terms.
• Throw in a lot of specific information the reader may not share as reference points.

'The place looked like Walmart on Social Security cheque day.' What does that even mean? as the kids would say. Well, Walmart is a large store full of inexpensive items that is patronised by especially rural people who are not wealthy. Social Security cheques come out once a month. Elderly people often flock to do their shopping when the cheques come in, and the store gets crowded. See? You didn't know that, so the description was irritating. If you want to say things like that, you have to make the description inclusive. No, you don't have to change it. You just have to make it clearer. 'The place was a slow-motion madhouse: elderly people milling about with shopping carts, blocking entrances and aisles, buttonholing staff with questions that led, inevitably, to sly offers to display pictures of grandchildren: in short, a befuddled sea of white hair, like Walmart on Social Security cheque day.'

If you want to communicate, you've got to allow your writing to be inhibited to some degree by the ignorance of your audience. That doesn't mean you can't show them something new. In fact, you should. It means you should concentrate on building bridges between that ignorance and what you know.

Willi was confused enough by the corridors in the old art deco building, but when he finally located the lifts, he stood gazing in horrified dismay. Before him were not two, but four lifts. They weren't normal lifts, with reasonable doors and call buttons that lit up to show that someone had already pushed them, so please stop doing it again and again, you're just being passive-aggressive. Oh, no. A hundred years or so ago, some maniac had put in his (or her, no, probably his) nightmare version of vertical travel. Doors? We don't need no stinking doors. There was just a rectangular hole where the door ought to be. And running in front of those holes passed an array a string of coffin-like compartments: open, shut, open, shut, open… People who'd reached their floor stepped out quickly, eager to escape the rolling boxes. They looked almost as nervous as Willi felt.

'Clever, eh?' said a voice beside him. He turned to see a man in a Tyrolean hat. The man pointed to the lifts. 'They're called "paternoster". Because the cars go around in a loop, like rosary beads.'

Willi gulped. 'What happens at the top?'

The man's eyes twinkled. 'You need to get off before that. They turn upside down.' He chuckled at the ancient witticism.

Willi thought he was joking, but with Bavarians, one could never be sure. He decided to take the stairs.

If you're a European, you may know what a paternoster is. If you're a North American, you probably don't. So if you read this, you will either a) feel smug, or b) be informed. Either way, you should get a chuckle.

There's an art to sharing information that the reader may or may not already know. Terry Pratchett is very, very good at this. In fact, some of his best jokes come from this technique. Arthur Conan Doyle is terrible at it, which encourages the junior high school crowd who still read him to go to the library in the hopes of finding out what a hansom cab is, and whether it's good-looking, or what is significant about a 'Pondicherry postmark', etc. Don't count on your audience being willing to look stuff up, though. They'll probably just get mad at you for being obscure.

It Pays to Get It Right

Another really good thing about remembering to explain is that you can catch yourself before you make an idiot of yourself in public. You may have thought you knew what this phrase meant, or how that worked….and been totally wrong. It happens, even to geniuses. Never mind geniuses: it happens to public 'experts' with devoted followings, and great is the misery this causes if you let things go on too long.

Last month, it was revealed during a BBC radio interview that the author had misunderstood key 19th century English legal terms within the book.

BBC, in full smug mode

The author in question hung a whole thesis on a 'shocking fact' she'd unearthed in the Old Bailey (=English criminal court) records in the 19th Century. Of course, the BBC interviewer waited until they were live on air to spring on her the information that she'd totally misunderstood the legal terminology (and historical background).

The author, a US writer named Naomi Wolf, thought that a number of men had been executed for, well, being gay. In fact, the legal term meant specifically that they hadn't been executed at all. What you had to know was that, at the time, the judges were disgusted with having all of these old, useless death-penalty laws on the books. They went on strike. Instead of condemning people to death and then expecting the Crown to pardon them, they just wrote 'death recorded', meaning: poof, you are dead. But if I don't put on that black cap and solemnly intone 'may God have mercy,' etc, etc, then they can't hang you. Go away.

I read that a few years later, Parliament finally got around to cleaning up the criminal code so they didn't have to pretend-kill people for stealing handkerchiefs and whatnot. I made up the stealing handkerchiefs part. I'm not an expert in mid-19th-century British criminal codes. I'd have to do the research to find a valid example. But then, so would Ms Wolf, and I wish she had. She did her doctoral research on this stuff at Oxford, for heaven's sake.

Can you imagine the panic at the publisher's? Those books were already printed. The marketing campaign was in full swing. The book launch was imminent. The author's reputation is not doing too well. Don't do that. Be open to correction. Ask your knowledgeable friends to help you with proofreading.

And remember: if you had to look it up, maybe somebody else won't know, either. Make it fun for them to find out.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

15.07.19 Front Page

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