A fellow writer once told me that she doesn’t need to be precise in her use of language because she (unlike me) isn’t into the hard sciences (engineering). Her opinion was that because writing is an expression of her thoughts, anything goes.
I’ve encountered this idea many times. The argument is that language belongs to the arts therefore should not be rigorous. Language doesn’t deal with precision like mathematics and engineering. An essay, unlike a math problem, does not have a right answer. This means that we can essentially write what we want.
This is a foolhardy argument. Good writing requires rigorous effort. Much the same kind of effort that one would put into understanding difficult mathematics.
There Is A Right Way To Write
Good writing has much more in common with math than with abstract art. In other words, there is a right way to do it.
Firstly, grammar is precise. You cannot just string words together willy-nilly. Word order is important. Word order determines meaning. “The dog is hungry,” is different to, “Is the dog hungry?” Secondly, if your writing is muddied, then no one will understand it. Writing is communication with other people. You have to write so that others can understand you.
There is a right way to write a sentence. It requires us to be precise and concise. There might not be an exact answer, like when you solve for x, but precision should still be the goal.
Bad Writing (Mostly) Goes Unnoticed—But Not By Rigorous Writers
For most of my life, I was completely unaware of what good writing was. This changed when I started writing fiction. Writing fiction made me a serious reader. And a serious writer.
About a year into this writing journey, I reviewed a fight scene from some obscure sci-fi story that I’d read. I wanted to deconstruct the scene to see if I could write my own fight scene better. But now, I was baffled by how bad the writing was. The endless hours or reading, re-reading, writing, and re-writing had dramatically changed my view of what good writing was. What had happened that year was that I’d become rigorous about my reading and writing.
This rigour is required for good fiction. It is required for good writing in general.