We Should Live - Ben Bateman

Those who don’t write well usually fail to understand that prose is art. Or at least, that’s my theory. If you were educated like I was, in an American public school, then you were probably taught to think of writing—and language generally—as a technical field, like math or science.

It starts with grammar: A given sentence is either right or wrong, based on whether it conforms with rigid rules. Students learn how to generate setences that fit the rules. Master those rules, and you get a good grade. And you think you’re done.

It’s not fair to fault the teachers. I don’t know how else one would teach writing to sullen schoolchildren. But perhaps you mastered those rules, and now you want more from your prose. If so, then the first step is to move beyond the framework that you learned as a child. Transcend the binary distinction between a “good” sentence that follows all the rules and a “bad” sentence that doesn’t. In writing, the goal is not to follow rules; it is to create art.

Consider art in its broadest sense: painting, dance, music, sculpture, poetry, theater, etc. The full range. The many forms of art vary so widely that it’s hard to generalize about them. Some have rigid, traditional rules, like ballet or certain types of poetry. Other forms are much looser. What ties them all together is the purpose: Art is designed to affect people. It can inspire hope or despair, serenity or fear, reverence or horror. It can transmit information. It can convey abstract ideas that alter how the audience perceives the past or present.

But regardless of the intended effect, the first question to ask about any work of art is whether it achieves that effect. I personally don’t like horror movies, but I can still respect and admire the people who make good ones. The audience may or may not enjoy the feelings and thoughts that the artist conveys, but if the work of art conveys what the artist intended, then it is at least a partial success.

All this is also true of prose. Your goal is not to satisfy the rules of some childhood English teacher. Your goal is to produce a specific response in your reader. Every sentence that you write should be designed to produce that response.

The rules help, of course. They steer novices away from basic mistakes. Misspelled words or unintentional grammar mistakes will immediately sour your prose with most readers. But once you know those rules, then you’re in a position to see beyond them: You’ll see that some sentences can violate those rules and still have a dramatic impact on readers. More importantly, you’ll see that many sentences can follow those rules and still convey virtually nothing. Or worse, they may convey something very different from what the author intended.

So learning to write well, in the broadest sense, is the study of how different configurations of words affect people. Painters study the emotions that particular colors convey, and the ideas that particular symbols convey. Actors study how to use posture, gait, and gesture to convey emotion. Dancers and musicians have their own vocabularies to convey nuances of motion or sound.

And good writers study words, sentences, and paragraphs. They study the nuances of syntanx and punctuation, etymology and rhythm. They learn the difference between the not-quite-right sentence, and the just-right sentence.

It takes a lot of work to really learn it, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll be satisfied with the result. If you study writing for a few years, then people will read your prose more willingly, and your ideas will make more of an impression on them. But it’s a subtle effect. Few readers will consciously notice it, let alone praise you for it. Producing good prose takes extra time and work, too, no matter how much you study it. In fact, studying how to write well can permanently lower your overall writing speed, because it burdens your mind with so many complex considerations.

So if you plan to study the art of prose to impress people, you should look elsewhere. As with any art form, the time and effort required to learn about and then produce elegant prose greatly outweighs its practical benefits’unless you take pleasure in it for its own sake.

But if you feel that pleasure, if you feel a quiet satisfaction on producing a well-turned phrase, or if you feel a rush of excitement at creating a powerful metaphor, then join me in exploring the demanding discipline that is the art of prose.