How to do Research for Non-Fiction Prose

Word count is irrelevant. Your phrasing is not modern.

Imagine the kid behind the counter at the coffee place saying, "Knowing nothing of your order, I cannot provide your beverage." Is he going to say that? Is he really? Would you find that totally normal? Would you find it just as normal as, "I don't know what you ordered, so I don't have your drink."

In an informal situation like a forum post, it makes sense to use an informal tone. Tone should reflect the situation.

Would you say to that kid at the coffee place, "Knowing nothing of your multitudinous beverages, my uncertainty, my confusion, my failure to comprehend, band together to require that I beg of you an additional moment for the process of contemplating a selection." Would you? Or would you say, "Just a second; I need to read the menu."

Because it adds unnecessary complexity. Complexity is not an inherently good thing. It should pay for itself.

Syllable count is irrelevant.

How often have you heard someone say, "So I was narrating a story to my wife..." as opposed to, "So I was telling my wife a story..." ? Would you REALLY argue that the first is just as common as the second? Really?

 

I'm not really concerned about phrasing sentences so that they sound like a kid speaking or so that they sound like ordinary conversation. You seem to want me to write in the tone of everyday talk, which is not my goal. This kind of thing does not, in my opinion, have anything to do with clarity. Your concern is not about clarity, but about style, the very thing you said I should not focus on.

On the one hand, you say that I should forget about the cadence of the King James Bible, and focus on clarity. On the other hand, you want me to emulate the cadence of everyday speech, perhaps because you think it is the only cadence I have command of. The issue, therefore, does not seem to be about clarity, but about which cadence is more appropriate.

You are trying to limit my focus, not to using words that most clearly express my meaning, but to using words that sound natural according to your own preference.

So the issue is not really clarity. Either my phrasing is bad because it is unclear or because it is old-fashioned. If the case is the former, old-fashioned language is not the issue. If the case is the latter, clarity is not the issue. If the case is both, why should we care about the latter, when you say that the issue is the former?

 

Of course the issue is clarity. If your phrasing is foreign to your readers (due to being old-fashioned or over-complex or any number of other causes) you have an issue with clarity. If your readers have to re-read to figure out what you meant, you have a huge issue with clarity.

The fact that someone can, on a second or third reading, be moderately certain of what you meant to say, doesn't mean that you're clear, it just means that you're less unclear.

And if your writing seems to express a contempt for the normal use of the native language that you and your readers share, why should they read you? If it seems to express a contempt for the goal of actually communicating with your reader, why should they read you?

Writing is communication. Why should someone care to communicate with a writer that holds them, their language, their time, and their effort, in contempt?

 

Well I don't see how the phrase "knowing nothing of nearly all things" is old-fashioned, or why another phrase meaning the same thing would be considered more modern. None of the words in that phrase are archaic, nor are they characteristic of an earlier time period. The same is true of its syntax.

Furthermore, I don't see why that phrase would be hard to understand. But I do admit it could be compacted to, "knowing almost nothing".

As for the normal use of language, there are various ways to combine words. How can anyone know which way is normal and which way is not? What is the litmus test for the normal use of language?

 

Conversation. For which you obviously have utter contempt.

And reading. Which you refuse to do.

But a contempt for conversation and a refusal to read will both help you to make sure that you never write. And ensuring that you do not write does seem to be your primary and overriding goal.

What I don't understand is why you put so very much effort into refusing to write. Why not just refuse and be done with it? No one is trying to force you to write.

 

Returning to add: Zion, do you read anything? Anything at all?

You seem to believe that all "real" writers are surely writing in the King James style, and that anything that could be easily understood when spoken aloud is something that they would flee from with the same horror and revulsion that you apparently experience.

But...that's not true.

There are countless books out there, many of them critically acclaimed, that a normal person can read without struggling and going back and forth and back and forth and trying to figure out what the flying bleep the author might possibly perhaps have meant. A large percentage of the sentences in those books could be spoken aloud without the hearer saying, "Huh?"

Countless books.

Have you read any of them? Have you read a newspaper? A magazine? When was the last time you read anything at all written by anyone who is paid to write?

Are you going out of your way to avoid reading, avoid it all costs? Because I can't think of any other reason for your apparent belief that only tortured, archaic phrasing is acceptable in writing.

 

I don't have contempt for conversation when I am conversing with someone. Why does all writing have to sound like conversation? Metrical poetry does not sound like conversation. So why should poetic prose? (I'm not saying I have successfully written poetic prose in this thread. I have not. But certainly if I had written poetic prose successfully, it would not sound like conversation.)

I was just reading the Declaration of Independence the other day, and also Thomas Pane's Common Sense. They do not sound like conversation.

 

Are you going to be starting your own nation? Or writing philosophy that will be read by people in the 18th century?

Read a book published in the past fifty years.

 

You are equating conversational style with clarity. I never expressed disdain for clarity or conversational prose. What I expressed was a desire to write in a poetic cadence.

 

And you are not yet ready to write in a poetic cadence. You are nowhere near ready. There are countless skills that you must master first.

You need to master normal writing. You need to master the language that is used by the people that you hope will, someday, read your poetic prose.

You have not yet mastered that.

You need to master it.

We have discussed this. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

You were on the verge, I think, of actually writing something. You were desperately throwing up one more final obstacle, and then one more final obstacle. But I think that you might actually have written. The threat was there.

And so now you have reverted to the very beginning of the argument. You were at the door, the open door, your hand out, able to open it. And you fled back down the road, backward, many miles away, and now you are making, essentially, your very first argument, all over again.

Zion, figure out why you so desperately want to NOT write.

And meanwhile, read a book written in the past fifty years.

 

I don't want to wait until after I have written one-hundred thousands words before working on cadence. Besides, I have written successfully in a poetic cadence before, and no one told me that what I wrote then was unclear.

Why can't I work on both skills now?

 

Because you have to master the basic tools before you can add the difficult flourishes. You don't start baking with a croquembouche. You don't play Beethoven the first time you touch piano keys. You don't drive Daytona the first time you sit in the driver's seat of a car. You don't sing Figaro before you can sing scales.

If learning and practicing the basics is beneath you, then you will never go beyond the basics.

 

I'm not writing one-hundred thousand words with no regard for rhythm.

 

Your refusal to practice basic skills is really not my problem.

 

Sorry if what I said was rude.

I think that one-hundred thousands words is too many. If I write that many words with no regard for rhythm, I might get used to writing with no sense of rhythm. So although I might master clarity and brevity, I might lose whatever rhythm I have.

 

No. It doesn't work that way.

This is, again, just an excuse to avoid writing.

You could start with ten thousand words. But you don't. Because then your argument breaks down, and you might actually write.

You argue and argue, and you refuse to write.

I'm not the one who's going to make you write. I don't have the authority to send you to bed without supper for refusing to write.

The only person who can make you write is you. And you refuse to do it. You need to figure out why.

 

1/ narrate
give a spoken or written account of.

• deliver a commentary to accompany (a film, broadcast, piece of music, etc.).

tell
communicate information to someone in spoken or written words.

The difference is that I TELL a story; I NARRATE a documentary.

I've pointed this out to you before, yet you continue to maintain that the two are interchangeable.

2/ It matters because the one is in much more common usage than the other. If I took a hundred books written within the last century and analysed how many times TELL is used versus NARRATE, I'm pretty sure that it would be something like 10 to 1. And the reason for that preponderance is that it is what most people actually mean, not because they're not sufficiently educated to have a better word in their vocabulary.

Actually, nobody is trying to make you do this; it's merely a suggestion that it will take you that kind of long to become sufficiently familiar with writing to be able to achieve the style you're after.

Just start out on the million-word road; somewhere along the way you'll recognize that you can do this! The training wheels can come off! Mommy, I can fly!

 

Zion, what are your goals?

If your goals are "I want to write what I want to write, the way I want to write it" then carry on. Write it, and stop asking for other people's opinions. How could we possibly help you with that?

If your goals are either "I want to write what I want to write, the way people want to read it" or "I want to write what people want to read, the way I want to write it" then LISTEN TO PEOPLE. They're part of your goal. They're telling you that you haven't yet met your goal, and they're suggesting ways to help you get there. You can't argue them into thinking you've written what they want to read or the way they want it to be written. They know what they want, and you're not currently giving it to them.

 

But if I don't know how to write clearly I will not write clearly whether I am aiming for cadence or not. So how will I know if all the words I write are clear? If I can see clarity in non-cadenced prose I should be able to see it in cadenced prose.

And even if I focus only on clarity and brevity, I might still write in an unnatural way.

 

No.

Consider: "If I can make a good-tasting meal with chicken and onions I should be able to make a good-tasting meal with chicken, onions, pork, beef, tilapia, saffron, black currants, and turbinado sugar."

No. The more balls you are juggling, the more likely you are to drop them all. The best way to learn to write clearly is to focus on learning to write clearly.

 

But how will I know if I am writing clearly?

 

If you abandon the cadence focus, that will pretty much automatically add clarity. And the you can put it in the Review Room for opinions.

Write something. Stop demanding perfection and write. something.

And read a book published within the last fifty years.

 

That may help me to be clear, but it won't guarantee it. Unless I follow principles of economy (being concise), precision (using the words that convey the exact meaning I intend), action (using verbs for actions, and nouns for characters), etc, I will only be clear when I do so accidentally.

You said before that focusing on cadence as well as everything else will make it harder for me to be clear. But my question was not really about how difficult it would be to write clearly with cadence before I have mastered clarity. My question was: If I can recognize clarity in non-cadenced prose, should I not also be able to recognize it in cadenced prose? And if I cannot recognize it in cadenced prose, how can I recognized it in non-cadenced prose. The question was not about how to achieve clarity, but how to recognize it in something already written. The thing is, if I recognize that something is unclear, then I can correct it, but if not, then I cannot, whether in cadenced prose or non-cadenced prose.

If I write something, even if I don't edit for cadence, I will still have to edit for clarity.

I have the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, which were written a little over fifty years ago. Should I read them?