I recently re-read my favorite writing book, Ralph Keyes' The Courage to Write. In the chapter on "Finessing Fear," he commented on writers who hide behind impressive and/or confusing language. He wrote, "The most popular fear buster of all is to write, but not well. Instead of their best, writers who take this approach give us jargon, adjectives, adverbs, passive verbs, qualifying words, and run-on sentences. Why do so many do this? Don't they know better? Of course they do. But producing verbal confusion provides relief from anxiety ... Inflated language, obscure references, and needlessly complex sentences surround their authors with a dense cloud of verbal fog. Sometimes the fog is so thick that one can't see through it to the writer. That's the whole idea. Those who generate fog are Wizards of Oz hoping desperately that nobody pulls the curtain to reveal a trembling little writer behind it."
I once heard a well-known author and self-titled Bible authority address a group of 400 pastors and attempt to impress them with his multi-syllabic language. He failed. Perhaps it may have worked with another crowd, but these were my people--Calvary Chapel pastors. These guys are jeans-wearing, Jesus-loving, hippie-bred men who have the intellectual ability to track with lofty language, but no interest in double-talk or jargon. My sense was that at the conclusion of the speech, only one person in the room was impressed, and that was the one collecting his notes and stepping down from the podium.
When the foggy talker is standing in front of you, you have to endure (or pull a fire alarm, or fake a heart-attack, or find another escape route). But when the words are written rather than spoken, rejection is easy--you simply close the book.
As writers with a mission--whether that's to minister to the body or reach the unbelieving--we have an obligation to speak plainly. If God had said, "Go out there and knock their socks off with your ability to talk right over their heads," then I'd say, by all means--grab your thesaurus and get busy. I'd say, eliminate all the single-syllable words and every sentence with less than ten words. But that isn't the mission we've been given. We're to go out and make disciples. We're to find the lost, show them His face, woo them with His love, and point them toward heaven. We won't be able to do that effectively if we cloud our writing.
You've heard all the rules: show, don't tell; cut the adverbs; vary your tempo; no passive writing; etc. Here's my own rule, one you can add to your repertoire: write true words. Survey your work without mercy. Wherever you find you've guarded your heart or reputation behind safe words, cut and replace. Where you find you've sacrificed clarity or brevity for the sake of bloated, show-offy words, delete. And then, minister. Determine you will instead use words that challenge the reader, reveal your heart and hurts and errors, and cut to the chase. These words will cost you. But they're the only words worth writing.
Part two to come . . .
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