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Bizarre, v. 4, issue 1, Janurary 1941
Page 6
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Page 6 Bizarre To Write -- Be Wrong! By John W. Campbell, Jr. For Would-Be Writers When someone can give me an adequate definition of the flavor of Roquefort cheese, maybe I'll be able to define "style." Keeping well in mind the famous statement that "No generality is reliable-- including this one," I'll make the generality that all that can be done with a definition of style is to define what it isn't, and suggest what contributes to it. Point A: Style does not necessarily consist in vocabulary choice. That's most clearly pointed out in attempts to indicate, in a story, that Eric won Maerchen is a German, while Jean Francais is a Frenchman. Your Grade B amateur has Eric talk with misspelled words tending to "goot" and similar stock methods. Jean will be individualized largely by saying "zis" and "zees" for "this" and "these." The result attained in that speeches attributed to Eric and Jean are hard to read, and sound phony. That's not the characteristic of a foreigner struggling with English. It isn't their pronunciation that stamps them so strongly. It's their style. A highly educated foreign-born man speaking English doesn't fumble for his words; his English vocabulary is very apt to be larger than the average American's, and his use of words more precise. Say his native tongue is French-- but he speaks more precise English than 95% of the Americans one meets, because his naturally keen mind takes pleasure in proper expression, in an appreciation of the small, but important differences between such words as, for instance, "powerful" and "forceful" (most Americans will tell you they mean the same thing. They don't). Yet it is not over-precision that marks his speech as different, that makes his "style" foreign. The whole trick seems to lie in a very slightly different phrase choice. English is a hard language, because it is marvelously precise. Can you define accurately for another person, say a Frenchman or a German, the difference in meaning between "was known," "had been known," and "has been known"? Each has a separate connotation-- and English is one of the few languages that possesses so sharp a differentiation. Therefore, foreign-born men have no native-language translation for such phrases, and make mistakes in their use which are, alone, enough to mark them as foreign. Even our present-tense verb-forms are amazingly complex. "Is done," "is being done." those fine shadings that the man not born to English falls down. It is in similar choices that "style" in writing is made or broken. That is why, fundamentally, it cannot be taught, or at least cannot be taught as desired. If your parents and childhood friends recognized and used those fine distinctions during your childhood, you'll have them now. You'll have the first step on the way to writing style. To acquire it now, if you haven't it already, requires two things: a keenness of mind capable of appreciation of those distinctions at a subconscious level, and a willingness to spend years learning them so thoroughly that no conscious thought is required to select the exact phrase needed. Incidentally, to revert to showing a foreign accent in story work, Ron Hubbard is an expert at that super-subtle art. It requires the ability first, to know the precisely correct phrase, and, second, to be able to pick precisely the wrong phrase, on the basis of that knowledge and
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Page 6 Bizarre To Write -- Be Wrong! By John W. Campbell, Jr. For Would-Be Writers When someone can give me an adequate definition of the flavor of Roquefort cheese, maybe I'll be able to define "style." Keeping well in mind the famous statement that "No generality is reliable-- including this one," I'll make the generality that all that can be done with a definition of style is to define what it isn't, and suggest what contributes to it. Point A: Style does not necessarily consist in vocabulary choice. That's most clearly pointed out in attempts to indicate, in a story, that Eric won Maerchen is a German, while Jean Francais is a Frenchman. Your Grade B amateur has Eric talk with misspelled words tending to "goot" and similar stock methods. Jean will be individualized largely by saying "zis" and "zees" for "this" and "these." The result attained in that speeches attributed to Eric and Jean are hard to read, and sound phony. That's not the characteristic of a foreigner struggling with English. It isn't their pronunciation that stamps them so strongly. It's their style. A highly educated foreign-born man speaking English doesn't fumble for his words; his English vocabulary is very apt to be larger than the average American's, and his use of words more precise. Say his native tongue is French-- but he speaks more precise English than 95% of the Americans one meets, because his naturally keen mind takes pleasure in proper expression, in an appreciation of the small, but important differences between such words as, for instance, "powerful" and "forceful" (most Americans will tell you they mean the same thing. They don't). Yet it is not over-precision that marks his speech as different, that makes his "style" foreign. The whole trick seems to lie in a very slightly different phrase choice. English is a hard language, because it is marvelously precise. Can you define accurately for another person, say a Frenchman or a German, the difference in meaning between "was known," "had been known," and "has been known"? Each has a separate connotation-- and English is one of the few languages that possesses so sharp a differentiation. Therefore, foreign-born men have no native-language translation for such phrases, and make mistakes in their use which are, alone, enough to mark them as foreign. Even our present-tense verb-forms are amazingly complex. "Is done," "is being done." those fine shadings that the man not born to English falls down. It is in similar choices that "style" in writing is made or broken. That is why, fundamentally, it cannot be taught, or at least cannot be taught as desired. If your parents and childhood friends recognized and used those fine distinctions during your childhood, you'll have them now. You'll have the first step on the way to writing style. To acquire it now, if you haven't it already, requires two things: a keenness of mind capable of appreciation of those distinctions at a subconscious level, and a willingness to spend years learning them so thoroughly that no conscious thought is required to select the exact phrase needed. Incidentally, to revert to showing a foreign accent in story work, Ron Hubbard is an expert at that super-subtle art. It requires the ability first, to know the precisely correct phrase, and, second, to be able to pick precisely the wrong phrase, on the basis of that knowledge and
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