Classic style

Stephen King says that writing is telepathy: it’s the closest we get to transmitting our thoughts directly from one mind to another. Long-dead writers speak to us from beyond the grave – so maybe writing is a kind of necromancy, too. 

Some people seem to write with almost supernatural power. Their words put us under a spell and we sink, deeper and deeper, into the prose. But, like the Wizard of Oz, the magic isn’t real. It’s just a trick, one that’s accomplished with a few props and sleights-of-hand. And it’s a trick anyone can learn, given enough time and practice.

In their book Clear and Simple as the Truth, Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner pull back the curtain on the magic of writing. Their focus is ‘classic style’, a mode of writing that prizes clarity and simplicity. When we write in the classic style, we state things coolly, calmly, without ornamentation. It’s a style of writing that is decisive and assured; there is no room for doubt or prevarication. Classic style, as Thomas and Turner put it, offers the reader an ‘unobstructed view’ of the world. The writer has done all the required thinking – now see.

To the reader, classic style seems effortless. But this is a mirage. The writer has in fact taken great pains to remove any trace of exertion from the text. The effect is one of smoothness and confidence. Think of one of David Blaine’s close-up magic tricks: we see a playing card disappear into thin air, but what we don’t see (and don’t want to see) is the toil it takes to perfect the illusion. That’s classic style.

Thomas and Turner remind us that other styles are available. For example, there is practical style, which delivers information with maximum efficiency. And then there is reflexive style, which foregrounds the twists and turns of a writer’s thinking. Classic style, by contrast, is neither strictly mechanical nor entirely subjective. It adds nuance and refinement to writing without making the author visible or intrusive.

To write in the classic style is to write as if the truth is obvious. There is no need to persuade or cajole because classic style assumes the reader will recognize the truth once it has been presented to them. But this is just misdirection. The writer conceals the choices they have made in the process of writing so it appears there is no choice at all.

And isn’t that a kind of magic?