In a deviation from my preferred modus operandi, I’ll be using the term ‘aesthetics’ under a definition I prefer not to. Whereas I’ve tended to define ‘aesthetic’ as ‘relating to beauty’ or ‘relating to coherence on all levels in reflection of God’ (a rough definition of beauty), today I’ll be using it a little more conventionally. Today, ‘aesthetic’ refers to the intuitively derived element of writing (and, I presume, of other arts), to the set of small and great decisions which have not rational (to avoid plot holes, etc.) but, well, ‘aesthetic,’ ‘this is fitting,’ justifications. This aspect of writing it immensely important, to a scale we must carefully appreciate, but we must also take care to regulate its presence.

Part of the my problem in ‘writing about writing,’ is how many of the important minutia are decided not by a flowchart or a checklist, by cold, articulated reason, but by inarticulate intuition, often combined with some reasons that alone do not suffice for the choice. As a rule, this is how I choose words, how I identify sentences that need editing for reasons other than lack of clarity, how I adjust sentence rhythm, how I decide those million little choices that accumulate into prose.

Indeed, when I choose to write a story in a style distinct from my standard voice, while I do establish certain rules of engagement, like limiting thought-dialogue to specific instances (this story) or choosing a specific perspective (this story), I also work to establish a certain tone in my own thought about them. Thus in writing my alternate ending for the tale of Turin Turambar (here), I prepared not by deciding what proportion of certain sentence structures I would use but by reading Tolkien’s prose and choosing music suitable to the desired tone of the story.¹ Sometimes, moreover, I re-read a part of what I wrote the previous session not merely in order to maintain plot continuity (as a rule, I have all that stored in my brain) but in order to get all my ducks in the proper row to keep stylistic continuity.

Part of the result of these aesthetic choices, part of the reason for making them, is this element of ‘style.’ If we compare two great writers (Chesterton and Tolkien), we will soon see that style can make a big difference to a story. Imagine Manalive in the high, nigh-Biblical style of The Silmarillion. Now, that’s a story I’d love to read; it sounds awesome. But it would be a very different story. Conversely, imagine reading the story of Turin Turambar in Chesterton’s agile, witty prose instead of Tolkien’s mythic rhythm. Here too the story might be good, a tragedy a little like the end of The Napoleon of Notting Hill, for Chesterton possessed sufficient skill to rescue the story from style-induced farce (or to sanctify the farce), but it would be an immensely different story, even if every story beat and character were the same.

But, if we think about it, this ‘style’ is elusive, ephemeral, and (worst of all) emergent. Style is a concatenation of all those little choices, not a precise equation that we can copy-paste into our work, and so writing a particular style cannot be achieved merely by counting out parts of speech, developing an order flow-chart, and collating a vocabulary. Well, actually, it probably can be, since that’s parallel to (though not the same as) what an AI would do, and AI can convincingly imitate a general style, albeit without any purpose, meaning, or genius (AI Tolkien will always be inferior by far). For us people, though, this sort of mechanistic reproduction is largely a dead end. We can pick up directives, as did I in trying to imitate some of the straight-forward, short-clause elements of Tolkien’s dialogue, but even applying those directives is done not as a conscious artifice but with intuitive recognition of fittingness (conscious moderated in part).

Style, aesthetic, all these ineffable things are difficult to deal with because they are unquantifiable, subjective, and, as stated, ineffable (not reducible to a concrete set of syllogisms without losing some of their essence, at least not by anybody short of a master- and those syllogisms would likely be epigrams). I can’t give you a system of rules to write like Tolkien, but I can see the almost unbearable beauty of his writing at times, how even unfinished the tale of Tuor (from The Fall of Gondolin) is a joy to read for the prose alone. This element also coordinates with the points of sudden insight which make C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton (as well as Tolkien, who tends to put his in dialogue) into rewarding quote-mines even apart from their narrative merits.

Aesthetic in this sense is therefore an immensely powerful tool, one we wield through intuition built up over time, choosing words through a process we are only half-conscious of, only partially aware of the weights we assign to various factors. It even applies beyond the micro-scale, where we’re dealing with words and sentences and paragraphs. It appears too in considering how a plot should run, albeit generally with more rational consideration, and (for me at least), it plays a role in character arcs, where I use an instinctive understanding of a character built up through the process of that character’s creation in order to decide how, why, and when that character will change, how he will display that change or (alternately) the character he already possesses.

Like all powerful tools, though, it has a danger. I could, if I wanted, rely entirely on aesthetic for guiding my characters around, for deciding plot beats, for building the setting. I could. That would be a very bad idea. Pure instinct, particularly in the author who has not ingrained his skill past bone deep with decades of work (as I have not), is only so reliable. It will go awry at some point. Too easily can we pollute our aesthetic intuition with other priorities: being nice to characters we like, hurting characters we like (authors often gain a sadistic streak), making more Moments of Awesome (that, unconstrained by other factors, too often fall flat), and the like.

Just because an element makes aesthetic sense doesn’t mean it makes actual sense. A plot built entirely by what seems interesting, as this too easily becomes, or by what looks like it works in the moment, that plot will nearly inevitably develop cracks and holes (unless you’ve really succeeded on tone and atmosphere, to the point that genre conventions give you extra room). For instance, I might write element B to match element C, just as I wrote B to match A, but because I don’t apply rational, thought-out checks, I miss that element C doesn’t fit with A, aesthetically or logically. A giant river-mouth port and a river turning into non-traversable mud flats as it reaches the ocean can both work with a river, and each one may be very nice for other elements of the story, but they don’t work with each other. Non-traversable rivers do not have massive ports.

This all makes sense to us. Of course characters and plots and settings need rational double-checking. They need care and intentional coordination to keep all their ducks in a row, all their heads attached, and all their gears engaged. Where the temptation to rely on ‘aesthetic’ gets real strong is with theme. See, theme and style are closely linked. Indeed, a discord between them can easily be fatal to the theme in particular; a light tone and a heavy theme or a heavy tone and a light theme, both are a recipe for farce, to oversimplify the matter. Nevertheless, we cannot relax our vigilance. In the theme where the truth of God’s nature (and of man’s) is declared, there we must guard ourselves lest we smear the idea to illegibility. Worldview is native to story, and the distortions of over-reliance on aesthetic can produce dysfunctions. One such dysfunction is the modern TV phenomenon of heroes who the writer clearly intends to be heroes but who act villainously when the substance, rather than the aesthetic is considered. For other characters, meanwhile, the music may be ominous, but the actual actions are justifiable (and possibly admirable).

In sum, we must cultivate our aesthetic-stylistic capacity. Reading and writing and writing and reading and reading and writing, these are the tools of that cultivation. We must not, however, unhitch it from careful, explicit consideration of the elements of our stories and how they work together. My current mini-project (as well as this short story) puts style and aesthetic front and center, as it takes heavy inspiration from Tolkien’s mythic style (and Isaiah’s poetry), but I have been careful to keep the substrata of plot, character, setting, and theme in my mind, to not let style run away with the show, even when it keeps me from indulging in a few truly pleasurable sentences. The skeleton cannot be lost when we’re putting the skin, hair, and make-up on, however integral that skin is to the story’s working.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – The variety of music viable for writing is immense. The closest I have to a hard rule is that editing music needs to be wordless (or the lyrics need to be unintelligible in some way, whether due to style or language barrier).