(This essay should be filled with examples, but most of the examples I would use are in George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language. I don’t have internet or any books while writing this. I have become frustrated with this essay, having intermittently been working on it for a few days now, and so I’m wrapping it up before I should because writing about writing sucks).
One of the great new shows of the past TV season was NBC’s Community. In it’s second half it managed to consistently find pathos by exploiting sitcom clichés and became sincere and funny even in its weakest episodes. What makes Community succeed is that the writers look at the sitcom stories tv watchers have grown so accustomed to (one of the strengths and weaknesses of sitcoms is that most are so predictable that from the introduction of any given plot line, the average viewer could spell out in detail the rest of the plot). Community uses these tropes, but plays with them by changing or contradicting them. The show breaks down clichés and attempts to show the emotion that first caused them to become clichés. The same stories, and the same words are revitalized by presenting them in a simple and unusual way.
The phrases and words people use in speaking or writing are often unconscious. In speech we tend to use ready-made phrases stored in our brains to gain time to gather our thoughts. They start out as filler, but often whole phrases and sentences become nothing but strings of prepackaged ideas. Similarly, many sitcoms (According to Jim, Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men etc…) are happy to follow established plots and jokes to entertain. Reality tv, perhaps the worst offender, is usually a string of easily repeatable words and the ‘reality’ part is contorted into an easy to follow story. Many people, however, demand more from entertainment than worn out plots, and are looking in tv shows or books or movies for honest emotion. The kind that brings them to the verge of tears or lets them smile for days, or rethink their behavior. Well thought out art tries to invoke these passions in its consumers, and great art succeeds.
These powerful sentiments are powerful because they’re unusual, while tired sentiments are tired because they‘re over-felt. There was a man who taught a course at Yale on Romeo and Juliet. He tells his students every year that he’s spent his whole life trying to recapture the feeling of reading the play for the first time again. He still loves reading the play, but what the play stirred in him can’t be felt as deeply ever again. The goal of a writer, from playwright to movie director to casual essayist is trying to inspire in people a feeling like that of the professor reading Romeo and Juliet
There are many ways which passion is aroused, but the first step is finding a new way to describe a familiar feeling. Hitchcock didn’t invent the feeling of suspense but he always managed to find new ways to make the viewer feel it. He did so with a master’s control of the camera and his shots. The playwright does it with his characters and dialogue. The essayist, especially the casual essayist, tend to do so with anecdotes and words. Often “hooks” are stories that seem, at first, unrelated to the essay, but as the essay develops, the reader understands both the purpose of the writer, and the anecdote in a new, clearer way. Sometimes that anecdote can be a story that’s been told many times, but through reading a good essay, that story evolves in the readers mind he is able to look at the story anew.
The stories and the purpose of writing is usually easy to arrive at. Vague ideas for essays arise throughout any given day, but it much harder to sit down and try to put those ideas into a coherent article. Well written essays always show that the writer cares about what he is writing by making the reader care about it too. The best writing can make people care about issues they cared about before. Making people care, however, is difficult because to do so the writer must avoid sounding pretentious, be clear and use phrases that are still able to affect the reader. Good writing is the hopeless endeavor to remove boring phrases and ideas from the mind and the page (with any inspection, this essay will cause the reader to laugh at this criticism which describes itself more than much writing). Amateur writing is made even more difficult because there are already so many wonderful essays written in English.
Writing is often painful and difficult. Rereading each paragraph almost brings pain because each time I go through them I see how much better they could be. Each sentence struggles and some flounder. I began this essay thinking it would be something else but, as usual, it became something different. I wanted to say one thing, and ended up saying, perhaps, nothing. This essay has caused me no end of agony and still is. Maybe soon I’ll come back to it and revise it. Make it better. But while writing it I’ve been forced to look at my writing, and the process of writing, and why I like to write. Because while attempting to clean out all the fluff on the page, I start to think a little clearer. While trying to figure out what to say, I always end up looking at my topic in different ways. Sometimes a brilliant thought looks idiotic when written down, and then that thought gets broken down and rebuilt and then thrown out and brought back in until, sometimes, it becomes brilliant again. Sometimes I’ll look at a daily activity and while writing it, something mundane becomes meaningful again and, for a while, the world becomes a place full of wonder. As a mediocre, novice writer, I may not have to skill to bring the reader along with me, but as a writer for myself it’s the process of writing that renews my world and keeps it an interesting place.
