RE: Write like you talk
Earlier today I was reading some new posts by Visa. There’s not much to say about that, except that he uses pretty normal words and writes very well.
This might seem like an odd comment, but it stems from my reading of another post, A Brief Case on Bearblog. The author of that post is clearly a talented and experienced writer who, it must be said, writes very (very) well. However, the words they use are so fancy, and the way they’re woven is so perfect that reading them feels ?strange?1.
This thought reminded me of an excellent essay by Paul Graham, Write Like You Talk. In it, he argues that if you want people to connect with you, you must write in a way that feels familiar to them. Essentially, the essay rests on the assumption that we all speak similarly but think differently.
I’m the first to acknowledge that language can be beautifully woven and that there’s a definite art to it. However, I agree with Paul Graham’s observation that, when writing to connect, we should use common language, words, and structures. Doing otherwise will only make it harder for your readers to connect with you, as well as for you to connect with your readers. You end up crafting something that’s not really you, creating a barrier between yourself and your audience.
Don’t get me wrong. High-language is definitely appropriate in situations where it’s needed, such as when describing something difficult to express. But unless it flows effortlessly from your soul, crafting something just to sound fancy can make it sound artificial.
I think that, as a society, we’ve come to overvalue colorful stuff, which in turn pushes creators to feel inadequate when their work isn’t vibrant. As readers (and consumers in general), we tend to gravitate toward the colorful, perhaps perceiving it as higher quality or simply more appetizing.
Write like you talk has a deeper meaning than it might initially seem. It not only suggests that we should use common language in an easy-to-understand way, but also that our writing should flow naturally—it should be us on the page, not a mask of ourselves.
I’m reminded of the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. Here’s a specific section I’m thinking about:
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
So, don’t let what you write become just a face you use when meeting other faces. Don't make it yet another mask.
I realized after publishing this that it sounds like I don't enjoy their posts, but that's not the case at all. I love reading Emma's posts! What I meant to say here is that they write differently from me and it sometimes feels like we're speaking different dialects.↩