Is Medium Cannibalising Itself?

A writing formula vs formulaic writing

“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.”

This piece has no takeaway at the end.

Yes, really. There’s no advice-dispensing dénouement.

Before I carry on, though, and my words disappear into a “Read more” invitation to either stay or take your leave, I’d like to give thanks and credit to WH Auden for the opening lines.

Back to my main point. There’s no takeaway in this post. I don’t run a Covid-affected restaurant forced to flog meals on the go instead of the usual come-in-sit-down-and-have-an-experience fare.

What this article does contain is some nuggets of wisdom on the art of writing. Especially writing against the grain.

I’ve noticed a growing trend amongst some publications on Medium. They issue edicts on what writers are expected to turn in. The spiel is usually the same: authentic stories, firsthand experience, lessons learnt and the Holy Grail of modern creative nonfiction, takeaways for readers.

Whilst the motives might be noble, the consequences are anything but. In a best case scenario, this approach overlooks, ignores and excludes content-rich writers who fall short of the publications guidelines (this is not due in many cases to deficiency of vision or craft, but rather, difference in style). The worst case scenario gives us samey-samey, similar-sounding writing (prone to plagiarism, ironically).

Tone: an underrated beauty

One of the more useful tools available to us, writers, is tone. And with it, how far we can take it. Extremes are reached, explored and mined. Two of my favourite writers/journalists/columnists are a good example of this. Marina Hyde and Gary Younge both write for The Guardian (actually, the latter stepped down over a year ago in order to take up a position as sociology professor at the University of Manchester, but he still writes the odd article for the paper).

At some point Marina used to pen three columns per week: one for the sports section, one on lifestyle and one on current affairs. I used to read her three weekly pieces regularly and marvelled at how different they sounded and yet how close in tone they all were to each other. There was no mistake that it was Marina who had written those columns. Her humour-heavy, incisive writing was always easy to recognise.

Gary, meanwhile, made his name crafting some of the more beautifully written pieces in the English language. His valedictory letter upon leaving his post as The Guardian correspondent in the States, is one I would have loved to print off and pin up on the wall in my room. Once again, the key to his success is not just his experience and knowledge but also the tone of his non-fiction.

This is the danger we are up against when we only focus on the “takeaway” at the end of our post. We’re in such a hurry to get there that we forget the journey.

Formula or formulaic?

There’s value in having a formula for writing. But that shouldn’t be confused with formulaic writing. The former helps us get a footing in the world of “painting with words” (as I sometimes call my métier), the latter is more concerned with numbers (word count, how many paragraphs there are, are they too long or too short and how long until the takeaways). A writing formula gives us a structure and as an English language teacher (EFL and ESOL), I always welcome effective methods. But even methods have to be personalised. I teach by a book but the book doesn’t teach my class. I do. Same with writing. I can apply tips from here and there, but ultimately, it is me typing away on my computer keyboard. Me and my tone.

Just like any other quirk of our personality we tap into in order to flesh out and enrich our narrative, tone should reflect who you are, not who you are influenced by. It should also be subject to changes, like the transitions we undergo in real life. Again, moderation is key. Just don’t go all Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Final thoughts? Nah, I’ll have those just before I pop me clogs

I recently started re-reading On the Road, Jack Kerouac’s superb blend of fiction and autobiography, almost thirty years after I first came across it. Certain parts of it haven’t aged well (Dean Moriarty’s attitude to women, and especially to very young women, for instance), but the overall sense of freedom is still there. This freedom is not just expressed in the many adventures Sal Paradise and his friends seek out as they travel up and down the States, but also in the novel’s tone. It manages to be both innocent and cruel. There’s no better example of the former than the passage below. Sal asks Dean Moriarty what he means by “it” when discussing a gig they both went to the night before. Dean’s response is a riff on what art (and writing is an art) can unlock in us. Who needs takeaways, dear reader, when you can have a three-course meal and a sit-down experience? Please, tuck in.

“Ah well” — Dean laughed — “now you’re asking me impon-de-rables — ahem! Here’s a guy and everybody’s there, right? Up to him to put down what’s on everybody’s mind. He starts the first chorus, then lines up his ideas, people, yeah, yeah, but get it, and then he rises to his fate and has to blow equal to it. All of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the chorus he gets it, and then he rises to his fate and has to blow equal to it. All of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the chorus he gets it — everybody looks up and knows; they listen; he picks it up and carries. Time stops. He’s filling empty space with the substance of our lives, confessions of his bellybottom strain, remembrance of ideas, rehashes of old blowing. He has to blow across bridges and come back and do it with such infinite feeling soul-exploratory for the tune of the moment that everybody knows it’s not the tune that counts but IT”