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Writing from the Heart and Harnessing the Power of Simplicity

After I have written another chapter in my novel, I go back and edit and update some of the sentences according to the progress of the story. I like to reread them and work on them, even though it can be tiring to do it after each chapter.

I narrated them in my own style, depending on the length of the chapters. So even though I sometimes feel unsure about them, in the end I realise that they are how I want them to be. They don’t have to be perfect, they have to be me.

This made me ask myself again, “Am I really good at writing to make the plot understandable enough for the reader?” Because that was my problem after a while, if not at the beginning. When you see your progress, you might be more inclined to think about things like that.

 

So I did what I always do. Read what authors have to say about it. One of my all-time favourite authors, Kurt Vonnegut, has some thoughts on the subject. He mentioned it in a book called “How to Use the Power of the Printed Word”. So I would like to speak with the help of his words.

As well as his recommendations, such as finding the best topic to talk about and taking your time if necessary, he also shares his thoughts on keeping it simple. I want to focus on that. Because they help me solidify the way I think about my narrative and my plot.



He suggests keeping it simple. He says that even William Shakespeare and James Joyce kept some of their words simple when they really wanted the reader to absorb the parts of the story well. I think it is not a beginner’s or ignorant move to do that. Because some of those simple-looking sentences make you think even more than a bunch of words in a huge paragraph.

Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively 14-year-old: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

Wants you to cut out when necessary. Well, to be honest, this is one of the most difficult actions I can take in my writing. Sometimes I really sweat and can’t let go of my precious words, even though I also feel that they need to be cut out. But the important thing is that the readers should be able to understand what you are giving them. So you have to learn when to draw the line in your narrative.

…your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new way, scratch it out.

He wants you to be you. Sure, you can learn and absorb things over time, whether through your own experience or academically. But if you’re going to write simply, don’t make things more complicated than they need to be, so that they merge with your own nature. You don’t have to be fancy or elegant. The purity of the words we use can be more beautiful than we thought.

In this case he also emphasises something interesting. If your language is different from the language of your novel, it can sometimes be even more charming. Because if you think in terms of your own cultural mind, the terms, the sayings, the way of thinking and narrating can make slight differences that we can examine the nature of your tongue. I couldn’t agree more.

No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens not to be standard English, and if it shows itself when you write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.

Just say what you mean. You don’t need to sound like anyone else. You don’t have to imitate a famous person or author. Say it as your era requires. When we read those classics, sometimes we cannot understand what they mean because some of them are over fifty or maybe a hundred years old. Time and life change, and so does language. Explain things the best you can. Make yourself understandable within the basic rules of literature.

Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

As well as being clear, simplicity shows something else: it can be understood by all kinds of readers. As we learn to write throughout our writing process, we enjoy every bit of it. This experience is, of course, unique to us. But readers don’t share that journey like we do, and they don’t have to. They can’t understand what you feel all the time in your novels. So you make them feel by making things simpler than usual.

Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient teachers, ever willing to simplify and clarify — whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.
 

Within that, if you find it harder to keep things simple than you usually do, don’t push yourself. It is okay. Not everyone has to feel the way they do when they write. If you want to write more glamorously and extravagantly, that is your choice. You should do whatever you want. But if you want to make your work shorter or simpler, you might want to think about the things above. That way you can start somewhere, even if it is not so easy to implement.

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