When I first started writing novels I thought my writing needed to be clever. I thought it needed to be mysterious or vague. For some reason, I thought it needed to be a form of literary genius—something that kept the reader guessing until putting it all together in the end. Of course, there’s a place for literary genius—think Shakespeare, or Kafka, or Dickinson—but if you’re reading this right now, I’m guessing that’s not you. And it’s certainly not me. Writing is a craft that, like any other craft, requires learning and practice. Over the years I’ve learned that writing is not about cleverness. Writing is about clarity. 

There are many ways for an author to recognize and eliminate unclear writing. Usually, this is taught through a manner of grammatical cross-checking. Writers (and copy-editors) are told to remove unnecessary words, avoid clichés, write in active voice, or restructure sentences. But, as I write about the value of clarity, I don’t wish to give authors or editors a lesson in grammar. Rather, I want to remind writers that using clear language and clear ideas, from the start, is the most effective way to tell a story. 

Over the years I have received many lessons about the importance of clarity in writing, but there are a couple that stick out. While writing my third novel, Ceding Contempt, I thought I was experienced enough to write creative, flowery sentences. After all, I was writing a novel set in the nineteenth century, and my language merely resembled the language of many of the writers at that time. But, when I received my manuscript back from my editor I learned a new term—purple prose. He was exasperated with my use of purple prose, a style of writing that is overly ornate and therefore disruptive to the narrative. Using purple highlighter, my editor identified dozens of examples of purple prose in my manuscript. I was surprised—I thought I was showing off my literary skills when I was actually alienating my readers and sabotaging my story. 

Another lesson came while working with the editors of MNopedia, an online encyclopedia of Minnesota history. While writing my nonfiction article, I tried to appear as informed as possible. This, to me, meant using big words and complex sentences. I don’t know if that means I was trying to show off, but I was trying to sound authoritative. Once again, however, I learned that clarity was more important than authority, cleverness, or anything else. The editors required that the text meet certain criteria of the Lexile Framework for Reading. The Lexile Measurement is a tool that analyzes a text and assigns it a measurement based on the clarity and readability of that text. MNopedia needed articles that were readable, not complicated. While revising my article, I learned that clarity was not only hard to come by, but humbling. I had to eliminate big words, shorten sentences, and keep my language simple. In the end, it made the article much better. 

Now that I’ve given some examples from my own writing about the importance of clarity, let’s examine a short story that illustrates this point. The story is called Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff. The author’s clarity begins in the title. He does not mince words, he tells you exactly what happens in the story. Then, the author describes the setting and characters as plainly and directly as possible. Here’s the first paragraph: 

The line was endless. Anders couldn’t get to the bank until just before it closed and now he was stuck behind two women whose loud, stupid conversation put him in a murderous temper. He was never in the best of tempers anyway, Anders—a book critic known for the weary, elegant savagery with which he dispatched almost everything he reviewed.

In the first three sentences, the author sets us down nicely in the scene. There is nothing particularly clever or creative. He just tells us about the setting and the character. Here’s what we know:

• Anders, a short-tempered book critic, is in a line at the bank. It’s late in the afternoon and he’s is irritated. 

The author continues to write in this manner as he describes what happens next. There are no clichés, wordy sentences, or unnecessary adverbs. He’s just telling us what happened. It’s not hard to imagine. 

Next comes the inciting incident—Anders the book critic get’s shot in the head. What’s interesting, and what adds to the story's effectiveness, is that the author does not dramatize this violent incident. He does not mention the sound of the gun, the reaction of the people around him, or the spatter of blood. Instead, the author slows the scene down and describes the event in its full and honest detail. Let’s read… 

The bullet smashed Anders’ skull and plowed through his brain and exited behind his right ear, scattering shards of bone into the cerebral cortex, the corpus callosum, back toward the basal ganglia, and down into the thalamus. But before all this occurred, the first appearance of the bullet in the cerebrum set off a crackling chain of ion transports and neurotransmissions. Because of their peculiar origin, these traced a peculiar pattern, flukishly calling to life a summer afternoon some forty years past, and long since lost to memory. After striking the cranium, the bullet was moving at nine hundred feet per second, a pathetically sluggish, glacial pace compared with the synaptic lightning that flashed around it. Once in the brain, that is, the bullet came under the mediation of brain time, which gave Anders plenty of leisure to contemplate the scene that, in a phrase he would have abhorred, “passed before his eyes.”

Notice the simplicity and clarity the author uses to describe a violent scene that, in many cases, is overly dramatized. Now, after clearly describing the setting, character, and incident, the author is ready to tell the story and the reader is ready to listen. From this point on Wolff, the author, tells us about Anders’ life. He tells us about his love, his regret, his grief, his pride, his fear, his pain, and the moment he discovered his passion. Wolff humanizes poor Anders. He’s no longer a surly, late middle-aged man annoyed by his position in line at the bank. It’s brilliant and effective writing and it works because of the author’s clarity. He did not rely on big words or purple prose. He did not dramatize a dramatic situation. He described the details and left out the rest. He told the story without any facades or deception. Clarity was the key to this story. Clarity is the key to your story, too.

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