How to Write Better Essays - Chapter 23

Finding Your Own Voice

In this chapter you will learn:

 how to find your own voice;

 how to organize your work to allow yourself to write as freely as possible;

 how to avoid just recycling jargon and complex abstractions;

 how to use your own voice to write more clearly, with a rhythm closer to normal speech.

Finding your own voice appears to be an act of deep introspection. In one sense, of course, it is. It involves reclaiming your mental space and the unique way in which you express your ideas from all those who pull you one way and another with their advice. It will bring a lightness of touch to your expression, a naturalness to your writing, nearer to the spoken word, that will help you to present your ideas and develop your arguments clearly, simply and economically. As all writers will tell you, once you have found it, never let it go.

Once you have found your own voice, never let it go.

The simplest way of reclaiming this territory is to get into the routine of regularly writing to yourself in your journal. As you know that you are the only person who will read it, you can develop your ideas with fewer restraints and explore the writer that has always been there in the shadows. Here you are likely to discover a mind that is perceptive, witty and intelligent. And then, after a few weeks of doing this, your own voice will begin to find its way into your essays. This works because we know our audience; we can envisage our reader, whom we can trust as a friendly critic.

Academic writing

By contrast, in academic writing our ideas are aimed at some unknown, anonymous reader, which encourages us to adopt a more universal, less personal form of communication. We are encouraged to believe that there is a style, a method of thinking and writing, which we must imitate. So we abandon our own voice and allow our own thoughts and ideas to recede into the background, while we settle for just recycling the ideas of authorities, using their terms and their forms of expression, even though they may mean very little to us.

Inevitably this results in poor thinking and, therefore, poor writing. As we depart from the spoken word, our writing becomes clumsy and difficult to follow. In effect, we express ideas that are not ours in a language we do not command. And not even the most accomplished writer can write well when she is expressing ideas that have no meaning for her. She will struggle to give shape to the ideas; her fluency of expression will break down; her sentences will no longer mean what she meant them to mean; she will become illiterate.

 We recycle the ideas of authorities and their forms of expression.  This leads to poor thinking and writing.

What can you do?

The simplest solution, of course, is to have the confidence to use your own voice. But how do we develop this confidence? By concentrating on the following five things your confidence will grow and you will begin to hear your own voice coming through in everything you write.

What can you do?

Make contact with everyday reality

Use the first person

Wherever possible avoid passive writing

1 Know your audience

The first thing to do is to have a clear idea of who you are talking to. As you do in your journal or in letters to friends, visualize your readers as a group of friendly critics –intelligent non-specialists, who might need just a little more translation of the technical aspects of your work. By translating them into more complete explanations you avoid the easy reliance on jargon and other literal shortcuts.

2 Make contact with everyday reality

Each time you find yourself just recycling complex abstractions and jargon, remind yourself to break it down into simpler, more concrete language that makes contact with our everyday experience. Whenever we fail to create this sort of bridge to our normal lives, it is difficult, often impossible, to understand what we’re saying. It turns our writing into a foreign language that must be translated before sense can be made of it. It is as if we are writing for an exclusive set of code-breakers.

The key to this is to allow your own voice to surface as you did in your journal and in letters to friends. With the same audience in mind, use concrete everyday language to make what you say accessible to someone who knows nothing about it. When you cut language to the bone in this way, you discover what you really meant to say. Only at that point can you begin to build it back up with your own voice. And before you try to convince yourself that the ideas you are dealing with are too complex for this, tell yourself

that there is not a single complex idea that is so complex that it cannot be expressed in simple, concrete language that we can all understand.

There is not a single complex idea that is so complex that it cannot be expressed in simple concrete language.

It is revealing that in the acknowledgements to A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking concedes that the subject of his book is often made unreadable, not because of the difficulty of the subject, but because of poor writing. Referring to a book he, himself, had written on the same subject in 1973 he says, I would not advise readers of this book (A Brief History of Time) to consult that work for further information: it is highly technical, and quite unreadable. I hope that since then I have learned how to write in a manner that is easier to understand.1

Indeed, writing that is full of abstractions with few concrete referents holds very little actual meaning. Or more precisely, it could, in fact, mean anything. The information content of an argument is directly proportional to the range of possibilities it excludes: the more it excludes the more information content it has.

If an argument does not forbid something from happening, it cannot be tested. Consequently, it could mean anything: it holds no meaning.

Like any scientific theory, an argument must forbid something from happening to allow it to be tested. If it cannot be tested, it could mean anything: it holds no meaning. Using concrete language excludes possibilities, it forbids certain things from happening, so that we can assess how probable it is that the argument is true. If it is composed just of abstractions, we cannot test it in this way, so we have to conclude that it is meaningless: it could mean anything.

Example Adorno

The following is taken from an essay on art theory. Adorno’s quote ‘art perceived strictly aesthetically is art aesthetically misperceived’, asks us through negation, to reject the past of the Kantian point of universality, and through the particular dialectical workings of Adorno, understand our present immanent with, the historical i.e. Kant’s subjectivity and his pure aesthetic judgement, Adorno’s reflexive objectivity and his ‘fluid’ conception of an autonomous artwork and the unknown of our social present.

You don’t need to know anything about art theory and the philosophers to whom this refers to know that the meaning of the paragraph all depends on what is meant by abstractions like ‘negation’, ‘our present immanent’, ‘autonomous artwork’ and ‘the unknown of our social present’. There are no concrete referents, so nothing is forbidden: they could mean anything.

Nevertheless, abstract concepts are important: they have the power to elevate an argument, lifting it beyond our particular concerns to levels of significance that help us advance our knowledge and solve fundamental problems. But they must be grounded in the concrete reality of our lives; otherwise, the author is free to say what he likes.

Whenever you use them, ask yourself, ‘What difference do they make to our lives: how are we to come to understand the way they work in our experience?’

3 Write freely

In this book we have divided essay writing into five distinct stages. This spares us the nightmare we spoke of earlier – that of trying to do the two most difficult things in writing both at the same time:

1. summoning up our ideas and arranging them in a logical sequence and, at the same time,

2. searching for the right words that will convey the arguments accurately, at just the right strength, while developing them in the right direction.

In the same way, you will find there are advantages to be gained from splitting the actual writing into the two last stages: writing and revision. This helps you to bring your own voice to the surface and inject fluency into your writing that may not otherwise be there. To do this you must keep your inner editor at bay. We all have one; some are more persistent than others. They try to intervene whenever they can, but particularly when you start your work, or when you complete a significant section and sit back to bask in the glow of your achievement. At moments like these you will be tempted to read it all through to allow your editor to give his or her approval. Editors are persistent and, if you allow them to come in too early, they will overpower the artist.

To avoid this unwelcome intrusion, allow yourself to write freely without too much concern for style. You need to tell yourself that it doesn’t matter if you don’t get the wording exactly right on the first attempt. The emphasis should be on writing in your own voice and allowing your thoughts to flow freely, while you follow your plan and develop your ideas.

Write freely without too much concern for mistakes to allow your own voice to surface.

Talk in print

The key to success here is to remind yourself that the best writing reads as though it is talk in print. The smoother the rhythm and the closer it is to our normal speech, the easier it is to read. You’ll get your ideas across more effectively and you’ll hold the attention of your readers. Of course, it will still be more formal than the way you normally speak: you must avoid slang and colloquialisms. But that’s not to say you can’t use a familiar phrase we all use in daily conversation. If it conveys your meaning more accurately and concisely than a more formal phrase, use it.

The problem with such phrases normally is that they reflect a ‘habit’ of thought, rather than real thought. So ask yourself, ‘Does this phrase convey my idea accurately?’ and ‘Is there a better phrase?’ If it does and there isn’t a better phrase, use it. As we have already said, keep in mind your audience: trusted friends who may not know your subject as well as you do. After writing freely in this way, when you move into the revision stage, you can clean up your work.

 Clearly separate writing from revision.

 Keep your editor at bay.

 Concentrate on writing fluently – don’t stop to correct things.

 The best writing reads as though it is talk in print.

25

Practice Exercise | Talk in print

Read through the following passage and, where it departs from the rhythms of normal speech and becomes more difficult to understand, change it. Then check your changes with the answer below. You may not find that we have both made exactly the same changes, but you will most likely identify the same sections which you believe should be changed. Read through the passage again after you have changed it and see how it is more fluent and easier to understand.

Passage

Unlimited choice does not always maximize utility. We fear regret and disappointment after we’ve made our choice so much that we function more contentedly with limited choice which minimizes the risk. Researchers have found that consumers continue to read advertisements for a new car after they’ve bought it, but will avoid information about other brands, fearing post-purchase misgivings. Indeed the fear of regret leads us into quite irrational behaviour. In another study it was found that shoppers who were offered free samples of six different jams were more likely to buy one than shoppers who were offered free samples of twenty-four. It seems we are afflicted by decision paralysis if we are given too much choice.

Answer

Unlimited choice is not always the best thing. We fear regret and disappointment after we’ve made our choice so much that we are happier with limited choice which minimizes the risk. Researchers have found that consumers continue to read advertisements for a new car after they’ve bought it, but will avoid information about other brands, out of fear that they will regret their decision. Indeed the fear of regret leads us into quite irrational behaviour. In another study it was found that shoppers who were offered free samples of six different jams were more likely to buy one than shoppers who were offered free samples of twenty-four. It seems we cannot come to a decision if we are given too much choice.

4 Use the first person

Unfortunately, students are often told that in academic writing they cannot place themselves at the centre of their writing; that they must avoid all forms of the first person

pronoun ‘I’. Instead, you are told you must disguise your identity by talking about ‘the author’s opinion’, ‘in the opinion of the present writer’, ‘the author assumed that’ or similar hedging devices, like ‘It was thought that’ and ‘It was decided that’. As a result, your writing becomes anonymous. And with no identity, your own voice is silenced.

Not only does this rob you of your own voice, it makes very little sense. Despite all your attempts to disguise your identity by referring to a third party, it is rare that anybody is actually deceived. We are all aware that when you refer to ‘the author’ you are referring to yourself. After all, your name is on the top of the essay. To suggest otherwise is to claim that someone else wrote the essay, as if you are shirking the responsibility for what you are saying.

Your writing becomes anonymous. With no identity, your own voice is silenced.

Unfortunately, if the advice you receive from your department is to avoid the first person pronoun, you may have no other choice. Instead, work on the other four things that I have explained in this chapter to make sure that your own voice comes through in your writing.

5 Wherever possible avoid passive writing

Similarly, many students are also advised that in academic writing they must adopt a passive writing style. Like avoiding the first person, this too can rob your writing of its clarity and introduce unnecessary ambiguity. It is also more impersonal and indirect, which makes it more difficult for you to use your own voice in your writing.

As we will see in Chapter 32, the distinction between the passive and active forms is as follows:

Passive form the receiver of the action or the action itself is the subject of the sentence;

Active form the doer of the action is the subject of the sentence.

In the active form there is less ambiguity: your writing is more concise, clearer and more direct. By using a pronoun or noun at the beginning of the sentence to identify the person involved and an active verb to describe what she did, you can visualize the actual event in specific detail. In contrast, the passive form not only lacks precision, but is almost always less direct, positive and concise.

Examples

Active writing

1. Instead of saying, ‘The test was carried out on the subjects of the experiment by the psychologist’ you would say ‘The psychologist tested the subjects of the experiment.’

2. And in both the active form and with the first person instead of saying, ‘The survey was undertaken and the results published by the author of this report’ you would say simply ‘I conducted the survey and published the results.’

Your own voice and academic writing

To place yourself and your own voice at the heart of your writing resist the temptation to take the easy route by just recycling the language and style of specialists. All too easily this reduces academic writing to a turgid mass of poorly written prose that drowns us in the mire of ambiguous terms and convoluted sentences. Write with your own voice –let it prevail, even while you comply with the conventions that are imposed upon you. Only then will you begin to develop your ideas clearly and build the structure of your arguments confidently.

SUMMARY

1. Find your own voice by regularly writing freely in your journal.

2. Instead of just recycling jargon, use concrete language to make contact with our everyday experience.

3. Separate writing from revision and write as freely as you can.

4. Try to write as close to the spoken word as you can without using meaningless slang and colloquialisms.

IN THE NEXT CHAPTER

This chapter has been all about how we can find our own voice so that we can begin to write in our own unique way with a lightness of touch that is closer to the spoken word, making it easier to read and understand. But that is just one part of the problem. We also need to liberate our thinking too while we write. As we will discover in the next chapter, for this we need to learn how to hang a question over what we write, so that we use the full range of our conceptual and creative abilities.

Note

1. Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (London: Bantam Press, 1988), p. vii.