Kurt Vonnegut breaks down why good writing means prioritizing simplicity and plain language
The famed 'Slaughterhouse-Five' author shares why conversational writing is the mark of a master.
Few writers can match the skill of novelist Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), who penned classics like Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions over the course of a five-decade career. He attributed much of his mastery to plain language and conversational voice.
He said as much in his 1985 essay, "How to Write with Style." Vonnegut also noted that good prose comes from a personal touch, and that a good writer would do their best to steer away from the sterilized, impersonal way of newspaper writing that, no matter the skill of the wordsmith, reveals nothing of the writer.
The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show or make you think about? Did you ever admire an empty-headed writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.
Great writing, he maintains, instead comes from a mind that knows what it's interested in, and isn't afraid to make that known, biases be damned.
And finding a subject you care about is what will make others care, too: "It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style."
And as for a quality of strong prose, simplicity wins out in his view. Similarly, Ernest Hemingway said it can take many years of practice to achieve the level of simplicity of a master.
Vonnegut summoned the likes of former legends to illustrate the point:
Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. ‘To be or not to be?’ asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long.
Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story ‘Eveline’ is just this one: ‘She was tired.’ At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.
Avoiding complexity in writing does not only make for a good writer, according to Vonnegut, but it is a sacred act. He highlighted the first sentence of the Bible in his reasoning: "The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and earth.'"
And part of simple writing is using the words you usually use in conversation. A veteran author writes the way they talk, Vonnegut said. When someone you know is reading your work, they should be able to hear your voice. That should take precedent over mimicking the style of some over-educated, ivory-tower-bound pedant.
I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.
