Writing: an acquired skill
The writer is an educationist based in Kasur. He can be reached at m.nadeemnadir777@gmail.com
Everyone possesses some level of creativity, even if they are unaware of it. That level of creativity can be enhanced or morphed, depending upon our commitment and persistence. Creativity, in general, underscores the ability to generate novel and inventive concepts, connections and problem-solving strategies. It’s in our nature, as human beings, to build resilience and make the best of chances available for self-actualisation.
One way of self-actualisation is to create, which is absolutely a godly act. A writer is a natural creator. Only by sticking hard and long to any aim, we can work wonders. Time and energy invested in something that is in our control is called work. That’s where our most productive focus lies. The need is to build up an ecological relationship between our traits (e.g. our urge to write) and external factors (the requisite skill that can be learnt).
In literary connotation, a composition is the way a writer assembles words and sentences to create a coherent and meaningful piece of writing. There are four classical modes of composition, which were categorised in the late 19th century: description, narration, exposition and argumentation.
A description is a statement or account that says how something or someone looks, sounds or feels: listing characteristic features and significant details as many as you like to provide a reader with a portrayal in words. In a way, a description is transformation from concrete nouns to abstract nouns.
A narration or narrative writing showcases a personal account or a story in a series of facts or events: chronologically arranged and connected. However, the chronology could be in strict order, or we include flashbacks employing the literary device of stream of consciousness.
Often, we are tasked to expound or explain a person, place, thing or event; that is called exposition. The intent must not be only to describe something but also to factualise and interpret it. In some respects, it is to array a proposition to explain a general notion or abstract idea of our subject.
The act to compare and contrast two things or two aspects of a phenomenon is branded as argumentative writing in composition. It is predominantly the methodological presentation of both sides, pro and against, of an argument using logical or formal reasoning. It all eventuates on formulating or asserting the priority of one thing or aspect over the other.
One thing must be kept in mind that these four modes must not be reckoned as stand-alone categories per se; if enacted as discrete types, the dissociation of sensibility will be the backwash. They must be combined to create an organic whole of a literary composition.
However, our writing must be impactful, not the regurgitation of the welter of words.
The area of language that deals with the effect the words wield on a reader or listener is called rhetoric. It beckons us to the writing style of a writer: simply defined as the peculiar way of expressing thoughts in words. It arises from the possibility of choices among alternative forms of expression, as for example, between ‘children’, ‘kids’, ‘youngsters’ and ‘youths’, each of which has a different evocative value.
Style is seen as a character trait. The Count de Buffon’s famous epigram “Style is the man himself” and Schopenhauer’s definition of style as “the physiognomy of the mind” stipulate that; no matter how calculatingly choices are sculpted, a writer’s style bears the imprint of his personality. An experienced writer relies on the force of his habitual choices of sounds, words and syntactical patterns to convey his personality or fundamental outlook. A writer must be himself to be true to his readers.
Albert Camus warns us of the flub: “The great problem is to translate what one feels into what one wants others to feel. We call a writer bad when he expresses himself in reference to an inner context the reader cannot know. The mediocre writer is thus led to say anything he pleases.”
Published in The Express Tribune, December 22nd, 2023.
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