Having completed the research phase and drawn conclusions based on the facts, the writer is free to make the final inductive leap towards a finished piece of writing. For the second time in this course, the techniques of business report writing suggest useful principles for creative writers working in the realms of factual information.

Judgment Prompts Action

In business writing, the research elicits facts whose assembly is, in effect, a detailed profile of the subject. The analytical elements of the research phase, the formulation and testing of hypotheses and, ultimately, the drawing of conclusions, cause the writer to judge the facts: current profitability is insufficient to enable needed investment, the company is running unacceptable risks by failing to take action against employees who flout health and safety regulations, etc.

The element of judgment is important here, because the judgments suggest the need for action.

• The insufficiency of profits or the unacceptability of risks must be tackled: the question is What is to be done?
• By contrast, non-judgmental statements such as profit margin is 3% or some employees are flouting regulations would simply prompt the non-question So what?

In business writing, then, the judgmental conclusions provide the springboard for the creative, inductive leap towards the action plan without which the report would be irrelevant.

The business writing analogy is an imperfect one in the present context: action plans are not the stuff of histories, biographies and fact-based fiction. Even so, it raises two important topics for consideration in fact-based creative writing:

• The need for a further creative leap beyond the research.
• The importance of judging the facts.

The Importance of Judgment

The factual creative writer’s research, like the business writer’s research, provides nothing more than a profile of the subject. The first topic sheet of this course, Beyond the Facts, stressed the importance of saying something new even to one’s best informed readers. In other words, a factual profile is not enough.

If the writer has followed strictly the research techniques set out in these papers, furthermore, the research profile will be completely non-judgmental: in Working with Hypotheses, it was argued that judgmental hypotheses impede factual research by prejudicing the line of enquiry.

Now that the writer is completely in command of the facts (insofar as s/he ever will be), however, it is perfectly reasonable to judge the facts and the subject. One might go further to say that judgment is essential at this stage. The assembled, non-judgmental research, after all, merely prompts a feeble So what?

Only when the writer puts a personal slant on the facts will s/he kindle the spark that will be needed to produce interesting work: biographical character X's life was blighted by self-hatred; the Battle of XYZ changed the course of Chinese history; etc. The work of writing a convincing "proof" of these conclusions is essentially analytical: the writer organises his/her research materials deductively if possible, using inductive arguments (by definition weaker) when necessary.

In short, our hypotheses are transformed into firm conclusions through the addition of two elements:

• justification by facts;
• the writer's personal judgments.

The Final Inductive Leap

If one's writing is purely factual, it may not be necessary to go further. Most great histories and biographies are confined to facts, conclusions and enduring hypotheses. But all writers can go further and creative writers, like business writers, must go further.

Compelling judgments demand action, as we have seen. There may be limited scope for meaningful action if we are writing exclusively about the past. If our subject is a current "hot topic", by contrast, or if we wish to argue that the present has something to learn from the past, we may proceed to become advocates for our cause. The creative writer's "action plan" for the reader may be little more than Change your point of view, but it is an action plan nevertheless.

At this point, the business writing analogy becomes less useful: all serious creative writers are advocates for the causes they espouse, but their advocacy is generally presented at the level of subtext. Whereas business report writers insist that their respective prescriptions are the only way to achieve the required increase in profits, fact-based creative writers usually prefer to nudge their readers gently in a certain direction, or are content simply to make their readers think more deeply about the subject.

The final leap, then, in creative writing based on facts, is one of persuasion. Whether or not the persuasive argument is to be made explicit, the writer must be able to articulate it convincingly, if only to ensure that the finished work will present at least one coherent strand of subtext.

The process of arriving at such persuasive arguments is, inevitably, inductive. The carefully researched conclusions are the observations that foster the inductive leap.

The leap must be imaginative without being fanciful: if the conclusions and the supporting facts cannot be shown to support the persuasive argument, one's readers are unlikely to be persuaded. If the research has been truly comprehensive, there can be no further information to support the fanciful argument and, accordingly, the writer must be content to draw back to a more realistic line of persuasion.