speak less fancy

Recently, I purchased a subscription to the New Yorker. It was another step forward that I took into being a more serious and better writer. Prior, I've read a couple of their longform articles and essays, and I've quite like what I've read (the one that really sealed the deal is An Error in the Code by Richard Preston). I committed to the $1 per week subscription for a year.

I of course have to make sure that I am not treating it like the ol' January 1st gym membership. Thankfully, my circumstances provide an easy fix to this: I seem to be spending a good amount of time these days either waiting for or being on public transit, which I’ve used as opportunities to read articles. I read my fair share of The Lede and Infinite Scroll, making sure to catch new entries into the Annals of [topic] when they come out. I skip most of the political articles, read the short story if it sounds interesting, and maybe play a few of the games (but I'm no good at crosswords; catch me destroying everyone at Laugh Lines).

It was fun and interesting for the first month, maybe, but these days, when I open up a new article to read, I find myself put off by the word usage. I wish I knew a little about linguistics so that I could describe exactly what was so different about the writing that I was reading. The only word I can use is high-register. Some fancy way of putting things, slightly roundabout in a mildly snarky, sarcastic, maybe a little bit millenial way. Which I should say isn't objectively bad. It's just not my style. Here, let me tell you about what is my style.

The first writing class that I took was a short stories class, and I decided that I was going to read some short stories. You know, to get a feel for how the greats do it. One of those was Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants." I decided at that moment that Hemingway is the greatest writer to have walked this Earth.

Makes sense; he's famous after all, and this story is well-known, highly-rated, critically-acclaimed, and whatnot. Something something iceberg theory. But that kind of stuff just flies over my head. For me, just one line did the trick: "Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?"

And at that moment, I realized that we're all shit at writing dialogue. Our inadequecy is so ubiquitous that I just never noticed. The people in our novels talk in a manner that is some cartoon caricature of the way that we speak in real life.

Again, it's not bad. It's just the narrative frame of novels. Take musicals for example. People break out in song in musicals, even though we definitely do not do that in real life. The medium is meant to be theatrical, glitzy, drama! And I eat all that shit up. I remember going to Broadway for the first time, watching Chicago, and falling in love with the exaggerated emotions. It's fine as long as it's consistent.

But my point is more that we don't realize that most (you should pardon me for making categorical statements earlier; it was a hyperbole) writing, even realistic fiction, is not a real representation of the way people talk. Because sometimes we use slang and imperfect English. Sometimes we use 'like' and 'uh' too many times, or start and end the same sentence with 'bro.' Sometimes we trip over our words and your friends take a minute to poke fun at you before returning to the topic.

And that's the beauty of humanity. That's the human of humanity.

One more example because I'm a weeb: In the second ending (like, the part where they play a song and roll the credits) of season 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen, the cast goes to the beach. Many of the clips that play are filmed through the phone of the protagonist. One of them, I remember very vividly. It is of two of the girls jumping away from the waves. The way they moved seemed so human, her feet lightly touching the sand as she waved her arms to balance.

I'd say this is one of the most beautiful animation that I've seen. Here's the link: https://youtu.be/L_TJS4Xnj-I?t=36.

Reading these high-register articles in the New Yorker remind me of that one period of my life when I stopped eating "junk" food. Between Life Alive bowls and boiled veggies over rice, I felt something missing: what I called real sustenance, or the feeling you get after you finish a juicy steak burger and fries. I miss my high-calorie informalities with an unhealthy helping of slang. I need that back in the language I consume. Unfortunately, our brains are not too far from large language models (well, LLMs are not too far from us), and I have become what I eat.

It's not a terrible thing exactly; nothing wrong with experimenting with your writing style. That way, you can develop a better understanding of what works and what doesn't in broader situations. And I'd say from this experience that I miss the Gen Z YouTube video essay. I'd like to write like who I am outside of the page: a big back, an unfiltered yapper, and a real person.