C.S Lewis Said ‘Don’t Use Adjectives’?

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

MY EDITING SERVICE: www.kierenwestwood.com/editing

[@honkaistarrailmezaddy]

I think it's really interesting this video popped on my feed. I am working on my first manuscript and spent a lot of time focused on making my writing sound "professional" and like I got a writing degree or something (I don't), but I've slowly realized that it's just way better overall if I write in my normal head voice. Not only do the words come out faster, but it's more enjoyable to read now. Before my writing felt gross and disingenuous which discouraged me even more. Now I'm on a roll, and writing has replaced all my leisure activities, hehe.

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

I'm glad it came at a good time! I think that's a really freeing realisation to have. Authenticity is much more engaging I think, and learning to settle into your true voice is a massive advantage. Thanks for stopping in! 🙂

[@lizziebkennedy7505]

The most lyrical writers I’ve known, have writing degrees or taught into MFA programs. So many myths, including one of elitism and ‘snobbishness’. What did CS Lewis do for a day job?

[@SteveJubs]

At what point in his career did C.S. Lewis give that first bit of advice? I just finished rereading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and saw all sorts of vague language, including several instances of terrible and wonderful (and not just in dialogue, to be clear, but in the narration itself), and found it to be a big part of the book’s charm. It brought me back to something like Andersen’s fairy tales-back when stories were kind of … supposed to engage the listener’s imagination in that way. Yes it’s true that when reading the word “wonderful,” we’ll all have a different idea of what actually makes something wonderful, but that seem to be exactly the point in fairy tales. It can sometimes make for more of a collaborative experience between audience and author, rather than the author having 100% control over the experience. Especially for a story written for children, to ask them to engage their imagination (and their own opinions on what makes something wonderful or terrible) a little-to do some of the work themselves-strikes me as especially lovely. It gives them a bit of agency while they read/listen, and also it all just feels very in line with the oral tradition as a whole. Obviously not appropriate for every genre, and very out of fashion at the moment, but I personally loved seeing it in that story. From The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: “But in spite of the scribbles on it the face of the great stone beast still looked so terrible, and sad, and noble, staring up in the moonlight that Edmund didn't really get any fun out of jeering at it.” “And really it was a wonderful tea. There was a nice brown egg, lightly boiled, for each of them, and then sardines on toast, and then buttered toast, and then toast with honey, and then a sugar-topped cake. And when Lucy was tired of eating the Faun began to talk. He had wonderful tales to tell of life in the forest.”

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

Good question, he gave that advice in a letter to an aspiring writer in 1956, so it was just a few years before he died and presumably after or at the very end of the Narnia series. You've made some really great points here I think. It's really hard to pick faults with those quotes too. As with all writing advice, there's always different ways to see things and different perspectives to be shown. Thanks for showing me one!

[@christinehamilton35]

Agree. As a workplace trainer, I have had a wide range of literacy levels in students. The trainers using big words to make themselves look important only turned the students away. Turning readers away is not a good sales strategy.

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

I'll never understand people who teach like that! They're making their own job much harder, surely?

[@lliw4934]

What a great video, thanks man

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

Thanks so much! Appreciate that a lot :)

[@NicoleWilbur]

I love these videos !! I really like his take on vague vs specific words...I took a webinar recently on line writing and so much of it was concentrated on that precision and specificity!! Another amazing video!!

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

Thanks Nicole :) That's exactly it isn't it, it's about the right word, not necessarily the fanciest or the simplest, but the right one.

[@JoeyPaulOnline]

I always love when you do videos like this because you hear some of the greats quoted around the Internet and its sometimes taken out of context or no context given and it can be a little disheartening to hear them!

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

Definitely, it's good to hold all those authors in high-esteem, they earned their place. However, context never hurts because things are different now.

[@birdyjireh6391]

Did I just stumble upon a gold mine? Your content is so good and your video quality is amazing, man!

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

Thank you! Welcome ☺️

[@B.matrix]

I love reading books by authors who love words, even obscure ones, but I hate having to stop reading to look up a word to understand what is being said. I prefer when an author gives me enough context to understand it or chooses words that sound like what they mean. My favorite authors will make a word up and it is still understandable.

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

That's a great point I think, context is key. Thank you :)

[@ruthtepin2130]

I like the statements about big or unusual words. As much as I love to learn new words if I have to stop reading to look a word up it destroys the feelings that have been generated up tp that point in time. I agree with the B.matrix below.

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

That's how I feel too really, I'd like to stay in the story as much as I can. I suppose there's pros and cons, but that would be my preference more often than not I think.

[@oleksandrbyelyenko435]

I have always wanted to write a book. From the very childhood. As a teenage I've written few fanfics and started a novel that I dropped... Though I started to write poems. Countless poems and after several years some of them appeared to be good. And now I want to return to the prose and your channel is so helpful

[@gnolan4281]

When discussing motivations it seems like every permutation of writer is out there. I don't wanna to be a person who's written a book. I get no kick from that kind of champagne but will write newspaper & social media comments because I love the digital equivalent of putting pen to paper. You touch on intriguing aspects. I'll use a bunch of arcane words but, like Tarantino's casting choices it's because they've aged well and still have a lot to offer. Then the follow up with blunt, short, punchy words to try to strike a balance. You emphasize exactly that here and when combined with your previous LA noir authors coverage one gets a glimpse into your approach to putting up literary scaffolding. Kool.

[@MatthewRBenavides]

This is the first video of yours that I have seen! I enjoyed it and found it to be very informative and helpful. Great job on the audio levels and visual edits as well. Awesome vid! Just subbed!

[@G-Blockster]

Subscribed! Loved the content, message, and passion. I would also enjoy your take on Elmore Leonard.

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

You're in luck! He was the first writer I covered in this series some time ago, here's a link: kzbin.info/www/bejne/j5SsmpdtibWFbtE

[@reghardtleroux7970]

Awesome video!!! Best writing advice on the internet.

[@jorgeavalos816]

Interesting, I have always thought that C.S Lewis "Narnia" was a good series for children because it helped them to develop moral and emotional awareness for the way it described their emotions and thoughts. I read all the book of Narnia when I was a kid, and I am re-reading it now at 24. You won a subscriber now! PD: Sorry for my english, it is my second language.

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

Thanks for watching and subscribing! No need to apologise for your English, I greatly admire anyone who knows more than one language.

[@johnparnham5945]

Where do these quotes come from? Is there a book on writing by C.S. Lewis? or is there an available essay? I would like to have these quotes to hand. By the way, a really good video as always. I write for junior school children so this advice is very important. When I do write for adults, under a pen name, ,it will still be good advice. C.S Lewis is an inspiration.

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

Hi, you can find the sources in the video description, but almost all of these quotes are from letters he wrote to aspiring writers. There are loads more there that I didn't include as well!

[@jameskingsbery3644]

You'll note, he does not say don't use big words, he says don't use big words when small ones will do. There are cases where writers use big words because that's the right thing to do.

[@michellewidlake7765]

Keiran, I was wondering if you could do a video in the future about good places to share writing online for constructive feedback. How to get bata readers etc. I have a lot of writing and nowhere to put it.

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

Really good topic to tackle thank you. Instead of writing a super-long response here, I'll work on making it a video instead as you suggested. The short answer is that I think it's a case of finding places that are inhabited by writers and building friendships one on one over time rather than looking for quicker results. The best feedback comes from someone you trust and you rate highly. I do have a discord server if you're interested in that (tinyurl.com/yj7amccn) though it's a quiet place really. It can take a long time and a lot of interaction to get to the point where you feel comfortable sending work to people, it's not a fast process, but it's worth doing I think. Hopefully video soon!

[@michellewidlake7765]

awesome@@KierenWestwoodWriting

[@WritingAdviceUA]

That's awesome)

[@mcrumph]

I have never sat down with an Umberto Eco novel & not had a dictionary nearby (laudits to William Weaver, his translator), which is one of the reasons I absolutely love Eco's works. I like & expect to be challenged by the books I read. Decades ago now, I was reading Zafon's Shadow of the Wind. He was doing pretty good, I was enjoying it, piecing together everything he was putting down. & then came the point in the book where he started explaining everything he had already written. I put it down & never picked it up again. You seem to be saying race to the lowest common denominator, & even though you said something about 'not dumbing it down.' In the three arts, there is a question that one must ask oneself: why am I doing this? Do I want to be popular? Rich? have thousands of people enjoy my efforts? Or is it I have something to say & I don't care how many people swoon over it. (There are those occasions that the two aspects do conjoin, but that seems to be an ever-rarer event in today's world.) I have gone back to my read first writing efforts (a fantasy novel), & I thought: Aaarhuugh. What was I doing? There were passages that were okay but they were in the minority (maybe 10%), and even those spots that truly shone (maybe 1% of the 10%). I did give up on it back then because my reading habits had changed. I wanted something different; so, I did what every writer should do: I read more novels, how to read better, more novels, books on writing (Please read Stanley Fish's How to Write a Sentence.), more novels, literary criticism, more novels. I grew my curiosities. I focused my writing on short stories & novellas. It was perhaps happenstance happening that after I had written my second novel (finished this time), a spy story, that I met someone from a publishing house (yes, in a bar) we got to talking, one thing led to another and I sent him a copy of my manuscript. he liked it (tl;dr). I ended up pulling it because they were wanting to make wholesale changes. I was writing the life of a long-term embedded spy & what that was like psychologically. There was almost no action, much like Knut Hamsun's novel Hunger: the protagonist never mentions his life on the occasion he does come into some money, only those times he is without it. I am now working on my third novel (not counting the fantasy one) about a fictional city on a fictional island; &, I am putting things together for the 4th one. I realized, I enjoy writing, & I don't care about being published at all. Writing is weird that way. Someone can paint for a hobby & people accept that they aren't trying to get into a gallery, another person can play music for their own enjoyment & people don't ask him when he's going on tour. Writing, it seems, is the only effort where one is expected to do everything they can to get published. (I would however like to publish my own letterpress edition of Spencer's Faerie Queen, with my illustrations.) As far as writing advice, take everything with a grain of salt. Sometimes tell, other times show. Use both long & short sentences to help adjust the pace & rhythm of your scene (Thos. Mann as well as Dashiell Hammett). Grammar is fluid. you're not an historian or philosopher, you're a novelist. I both enjoyed & 'liked' your video & will check out others. Keep up the good work. I wish you well. (apologies for taking up so much virtual space.)

[@KierenWestwoodWriting]

Appreciate your thoughts, you definitely raised some points I hadn't considered. I wouldn't consider what I said to be aiming for the lowest common denominator. There are people far more intelligent than me who might speak English as a second language for example. While their ability to comprehend text in English might be lower than others, their ability to understand the concepts wouldn't be. That's why I promote communicating a message in the simplest terms you can, because you can reach more people. But as you said, maybe that's not the aim of every writer or every book. That's a good point. Some writers may focus entirely on self-expression, their phrasing might matter more to them than if others follow what they're talking about. I can see that being true for sure. What it boils down to is that I personally would like as many people as possible to be able to engage with my story to a point where they're able to feel immersed in it. I try to say in every video that what I talk about is only my single opinion and not some universal truth, I can't remember if I said that in this one though!

[@mcrumph]

@@KierenWestwoodWriting That is a good point about ESL, & one I should have considered since most of what I read has been translated into English. Well said.