Dance Around Like a Puppet but Don’t Get Caught-up in the Wires
Written by John Erianne on April 21, 2001 – 9:49 pm -“To write simply is as difficult as being good.” –Maugham
Isn’t it the truth? I’ve seen beginning writers (and even more experienced writers, who should know better) load their writing with all kinds of language devices because they think it sounds more poetic. In reality, it only makes the writing difficult to read and enjoy. Writing is hard, but the reader shouldn’t be able to see the work that went into it. Think I’m wrong? Then ask yourself why Hemingway sells more books dead then he did while still alive. Further, ask yourself why Proust doesn’t. It’s no great task, really, to throw in a lot of fluffy figurative language, pile one metaphor on top of another, stretch it all out like so much silly putty and plop it down on a page with such strained, affectation that the reader would swear you were giving birth to a monster. But to compress all that complexity into a simple turn of phrase that’s easily understood WITHOUT resorting to cliche? Now, that’s a major talent!
The problem is many writers are either lazy or clueless. The first draft is easy and fun, usually. Whether you are writing a poem or a long work, like a novel, you are free to fall in love with the voices in your head. You are free to go off on a tear and just lay it down. However, if you are unable or unwilling to cut the useless junk out of your piece, what you will end-up with is a mess of words your average reader will dismiss.
To me, writing simply and clearly is like putting on a puppet show. A bad puppeteer is clumsy. He mixes-up his lines and the puppet gets tangled-up in its own wires. The audience is too distracted by the puppeteer’s ineptitude to enjoy the show. Bad writing is much the same. The language may be pretty, but it’s unclear and has no reason for being there other than its apparent preciousness. The reader merely trips over the words. In a good puppet show, the audience pays attention to the performance, laughs when they are supposed to laugh and they don’t notice the puppet master or the wires the puppet is suspended from. Good writing doesn’t distract the reader with fluff.
