DFW demonstrates that clarity doesn't necessarily mean simplicity.
Rules are made to be broken, right?
Right. Especially in art. Beware the story coach who tells you to write This instead of That, use These Words instead of Those, write only What You Know, or that Characters Need to Be Likable. No. Way. That kind of advice is a dime a dozen and not meant for a seasoned writer like you. Nuance is the way of the writing warrior, and most writing rules aren't set in stone.
Except for this one: Write with Clarity.
Most writing rules aren't set in stone. Except for one: Write with Clarity.
I don't mean that you need to write simple words with simple sentence construction, or use language that speaks to the lowest-common denominator. Take, for example, a passage from "Incarnations of Burned Children" by David Foster Wallace—one of my favorite short stories in the English language:
The Daddy was around the side of the house hanging a door for the tenant when he heard the child's screams and the Mommy's voice gone high between them. He could move fast, and the back porch gave onto the kitchen, and before the screen door had banged shut behind him the Daddy had taken the scene in whole, the overturned pot on the floortile before the stove and the burner's blue jet and the floor's pool of water still steaming as its many arms extended, the toddler in his baggy diaper standing rigid with steam coming off his hair and his chest and shoulders scarlet and his eyes rolled up and mouth open very wide and seeming somehow separate from the sounds that issued, the Mommy down on one knee with the dishrag dabbing pointlessly at him and matching the screams with cries of her own, hysterical so she was almost frozen.
— from Esquire
This story breaks all kind of so-called writing rules: missing commas, run-on sentences, clauses that may confound the inattentive reader. However, if the reader steps up to the plate and brings to the prose the same commitment with which it was written, the passage presents itself in brilliant, vivid, harrowing color.
All this to say: Clarity doesn't mean simplicity or sticking to the rules. You can write in your own style, however experimental it might be. But you have to do it with precision. You reject this advice at the risk of losing your reader. You might as well throw all your fancy writing tricks—metaphor, voice, theme—out the window. If the prose isn't clear, nothing else works.
Clarity doesn't mean "simplicity" or "sticking to the rules." You can write in your own style, however experimental it might be. But you have to do it with precision.
Let's take a closer look at the passage above. What specific work is the prose doing to ensure the attentive reader never gets lost in its twists and turns? There is a lot to say about this passage (I could write an entire guide on the author's tense choices and the physical placement of objects, for example) so we'll focus on just one aspect of Foster Wallace's effort to maintain clarity in this work. And that aspect comes in a quite modest form: The comma.
Commas as Structural Signposts There aren't many commas in this passage, but the ones he does use are employed strategically. Let's take a look at the long second sentence. Note the author puts his six meager commas into service as structural signposts, placing them carefully between key ideas to guide the reader through the scene.
The author puts his six meager commas into service as structural signposts, placing them carefully between key ideas to guide the reader through the scene.
The First and Second Commas: Setting the Stage
The clause before the first comma, "He could move fast," is simple: subject, auxiliary verb, verb, adverb...Boom. The same goes for the second clause: "...and before the screen door had banged shut behind him the Daddy had taken the scene in whole..." The Daddy saw something. OK, everything's clear so far.
The Third Comma: Setting up a Series
Next comes the third comma, which sets off a series of three items that the Daddy has just witnessed (highlighted in green):
...the overturned pot on the floortile before the stove and the burner's blue jet and the floor's pool of water still steaming as
its many arms extended...
Notice he uses the conjunction "and" instead of a comma to separate these items, because he's already hired his commas to do a bigger job. Foster Wallace's commas don't have the time to separate items in a laundry list—they're separating Big Ideas, for Pete's sake!
The Fourth Comma: Setting up a Key Image
Surprise, surprise. There's actually a fourth thing the Daddy has seen after the pot, the burner, and the pool of water. The fourth item the Daddy has taken in is of greater importance than the pot et al. It is critical, it is the thing around which the entire story is based, the thing that will keep us up at night long after reading the story. The author gives this item its due by employing his fourth comma to set up this image of:
...the toddler in his baggy diaper standing rigid with steam coming
off his hair and his chest and shoulders scarlet and his eyes rolled up
and mouth open very wide and seeming somehow separate from the
sounds that issued...
Notice more "ands" instead of commas. Serial commas would have only muddied up the passage—and the tumble of words created by the comma-less list of terrors creates a feeling of chaos.
The Fifth Comma: Setting up a Second Key Image
More surprises! There's actually a fifth thing the Daddy has seen after the pot, the burner, the pool of water, and his injured toddler: his wife, a.k.a. the Mommy. The Mommy is critical here not only because she represents yet another harrowing image, but because the Mommy is a proxy for the horror the Daddy is about to face. Having found their young son seconds before, she is, in a sense, enacting the indescribable anguish awaiting the Daddy. Foster Wallace's fifth comma sets off this image:
...the Mommy down on one knee with the dishrag dabbing pointlessly
at him...
The Sixth Comma: Authorial Commentary
Until we get to this point, there is very little interiority—Foster Wallace creates a sense of horror with objective, strangely distant descriptions: a baby's steaming head and rolling eyes, his disembodied cries. But finally, in this last clause, we get the commentary about the Mommy. The narrative assumption of the Mommy's state of mind is "earned" only because of the objective, particular, and detailed evidence that preceded it. Here we are ready to believe her state of mind:
...the Mommy down on one knee with the dishrag dabbing pointlessly at him and matching the screams with cries of her own, hysterical so she was almost frozen.
David Foster Wallace once called himself a five-draft man. Read his short stories with care, and you'll see evidence of his fastidiousness on every page, a hundred times over—much of it in the name of the only writing rule that matters: CLARITY.