Older nonfiction has a problem newer such books might not need to worry about: explaining facts.
I first thought about this last summer. A number of times, I was reading only for the flow to suddenly halt because the author went into a detailed explanation of what happened, when it happened, and who was prominently involved. After a bit of explanation, the piece would resume – so to speak – and the author’s ideas, opinions, or insights would once again take center stage. These books, I noticed, were all written ages ago. One example is Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, and another was The Ethics of Ambiguity, first released in 1947 (1). Books published more recently do not seem intent on including long factual explanations.
I wonder if this is a pattern or just a coincidence. My guess is the former. Granted, a book does need to assume the reader has a certain level of knowledge or else every book would be five thousand pages long. But as Tim Harford points out in Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy, any child with Wi-Fi access has more information at his or her fingertips than any librarian ever did prior to 1990 (2). Everyone who has grown up with The Internet is used to looking things up right away - it is no wonder that modern writers assume their readers will not suffer for a lack of long, factual explanations.
I guess the important question is... then what?
At the extremes, the consequences are obvious. It could be that as writing continues to free itself from the burden of informing, it will move even faster into previously unexplored territories. Nonfiction might, in a strange way, become more creative. This seems like something worth looking forward to.
But isn't it just as likely that writers will base pieces or even entire books on misinformation? If writing has less need to inform, then writers will have less need to be informed. This will surely lower the bar over time for what constitutes well-informed writing. Someday, the kind of sloppy writing that editors might have once flagged for having a shaky grasp of the facts will be allowed to occupy space on YOUR bookshelf (or kindle) without so much as a second revision (3). I suppose this invites its own version of creativity, albeit the kind I’m not particularly excited about.
Maybe the right question is to ask how much a writer should assume in an age when readers have more information available than ever before. My advice - whatever your gut tells you, assume less. Although it seems like assuming a reader will just know is a decent thought, I don't think it is a good habit for a writer.
The problem with a writer who assumes others will just know is that these writers eventually become writers who don't explain things. A writer who doesn't bother to explain might resonate with readers who already agree - for these readers, an omitted explanation is time saved. For those who don't already agree, the writing will come down to plausibility. To put it another way, a piece of writing that doesn't really explain its own point is assessed on a standard of plausibility. This isn't a great predicament for a writer to get into because writing - like many competitive fields - is one where it's much easier for the unskilled to fake plausibility than it is to fake being skilled.
This must be why, despite living in a time when we have more information available than ever before, we are still struggling to agree on some of the basic facts about the world around us. The only surprising thing about 'alternative facts' becoming a phenomenon in 2017 was that it didn't happen sooner. In hindsight, it seems inevitable that as we all became used to having the facts at our fingertips, the very idea of good writing became more about plausibility than explanation. Why waste time explaining what's already on The Internet when it's possible to craft a plausible explanation out of it all?
It's not like the slide into plausibility is a completely new idea related solely to writing. I don't know about you, reader, but I've talked to a salesman or two in my life. I know from those experiences that a poor salesman who has all the facts straight about a superior product shouldn't get dragged into a plausibility contest with a slick salesman with no knowledge and a shoddy product. If a car has a perfect safety record, for example, a basic pie chart (with no slices) is the only information needed. But if everyone at the dealership is convinced that factors like outward confidence of the salesman matter more than being able to explain the product's superiority, then those who understand what's really going on are going to lose to those who understand what it means to be plausible.
The most surprising thing I've noticed in the context of this problem
is how writers who simply assume everyone knows certain facts start
writing in ways similar to those they often criticize for making things
up. They'll say, for example, that the sky is blue and ridicule those who say the sky is purple. Instead of presenting sources or detailing explanations, they just
take for granted that everyone knows what the heck they are talking
about. Facts are facts... right? The sky is blue... right? I think sometimes these writers lose the plot and present their well-known facts in the exact same way others present 'alternative
facts' - like bullies, with intellect and with the primary muscle groups.
Unfortunately, when the facts are presented in the same way, when one
source says the sky is blue and the other says the sky is purple, the
expectation each side sets is the same - the color of the sky is already
well-understood. If these sources know the audience won't look up at
the sky for themselves, then it doesn't matter which side is 'right', it just matters which side is more plausible. Most importantly, no matter what the outcome, we've all lost at a much more important game.
In the past, I would conclude that this is what happens when a writer becomes too good to explain things. The sky is sometimes purple, like at sunset, but a writer who is just too good to explain this won't bother to make room for this caveat, they'll just criticize anyone who doesn't agree that the sky is blue. A writer who takes this approach better be very sure the audience will accept the claim because if the audience doesn't, a counter-argument that comes off as more plausible is going to win.
I’m not here to predict the future. Longtime readers know I’m not even all that good at predicting when my own posts will go up. But it is obvious to me that the role of the writer will change as the general reader’s level of knowledge changes. Although I do not claim to have any special knowledge into how this might happen, I suspect it will be counter-intuitive: the writer will need to become better at explaining the facts. I think some of what we’ve dealt with over the past few years represent the growing pains of this transition - writing seems to be reaching new mountaintops yet doing so in ways that leaves readers behind to figure out their own way up the slope.
Will the future of writing look a lot like TOA? I don’t think so, or maybe I just hope not, but I’m certain writing will bear little resemblance to what it was in years past. All I know for sure is that the worst thing to become in this day and age is someone who cannot explain simple things. I can dress it all up in different ways to catch your attention, reader - too good to explain things, too aloof to answer easy questions, too cool for school, whatever you want - but it all comes back to a far simpler point: right now, the trend is shifting away from explanation. It seems that people prefer to describe rather than explain.
I think this preference is based on a positive thing - more information - but the process must be handled carefully. It doesn't matter how well-informed you are or how much work you've put in to justify having an opinion - if you don't have the skills needed to explain, you are going to lose against someone who has the skills needed to be plausible. That would be a real shame, I think, because every time the plausible wins out over an explanation, we all lose.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
0. Hi, I’m Tim, and I’m a PhD candidate at Internet University…
This transformation surely applies to medicine. Just consider how much better informed the average patient is compared to a peer from a decade ago. And all those new specialties! But somehow, I get the feeling that we are all collectively less healthy than we were at some point in the past. More on this thought in a future post, I think.
1. Humblebrag?
This isn't a humblebrag. I read better books than you and we all know it!
Speaking of these books - a book doesn’t automatically become bad if it explains events. But I think from the types of books I read, the style of writing I enjoy most gives the reader credit for either knowing what’s going on or having the ability to access the needed information through his or her own outside efforts. This allows the author to focus on whatever happens to be his or her thoughts on the topic.
This point of view is also almost a direct contradiction of the post. Sigh. Who knows what I think anymore?
2. Humble... brag?
At the time of writing, I actually did not, so no, not all of us have Wi-Fi. But still!
3. When you say someday, does that include yesterday?
I'm sure the cynical reader will be delighted to point out how there is plenty of crap already on bookshelves. Good point, I say - the idea here isn't that there will be more crap, it's that what we called crap yesterday will be hailed as 'good literature' tomorrow.
