Fire and Knowledge

Scot McKnight reminds us what good writing is composed of:

It dawned on me that good writers write in such a way that one can read them aloud and know what they mean. Bad writers have to be studied and re-read and pondered. Good writers write in such a way that you can listen to them aloud and follow them….

Good writers have an ear for what works, what sounds right, what brings both meaning and pleasure at the same time. And good writers have a personal style, and they have some wit (we don’t need boring, scientific books about important topics very often), and they make you smile but not laugh aloud. (That’s the difference between humor and comedy; the former make you smile, the latter make you laugh.)

He holds up Joseph Epstein as a model writer, whom I have not read. I will remedy that. The model writers in my own life–so far–have been C.S. Lewis, Wendell Berry, Henry Thoreau, Neil Postman, and Charles Dickens. My model bad writer is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whom I have sworn never to mention in any positive way.

Epstein led me to think that too much reading of scholarship hurts writing — and for some that is blasphemous, but for me it was a ray of golden light. If I spend all my time reading journal articles and academic monographs and commentaries, the cadence and tone and style of that writing will be what I will produce when I sit down to write.

This is exactly right. Those who read nothing but stale academic writing will write stale academic writing and will only be read by stale academic writers. Mr. McKnight also recommends an anthology of personal essays, which I plan to purchase as well. All that to say, it’s worth reading what Mr. McKnight says.

(See also: “A Guide to Writing Well“)