Persuasion vs Entertainment

Creative and analytical writers approach the issue of how best to present information from fundamentally different perspectives.

• Analytical writers are primarily, if not exclusively, concerned with the work of persuasion. They want their readers to understand, accept and be swayed by the logic of their arguments. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is legal process, which aims to strip away all extraneous information in order to present a robust deductive argument.
• Creative writers, meanwhile, are primarily concerned with storytelling. Many are content simply to engage their readers' attention and to entertain their readers.

In practice, most writers work somewhere between these two poles. For example:

• In trial by jury, advocates routinely use inductive arguments that are designed to sway the emotions of the jurists.
• Politicians use rhetorical techniques to heighten their use of language and to draw attention away from the questionable logic of their arguments.
• Thriller writers present the facts of their essentially deductive arguments in a deliberately abstruse way, so that readers are at once entertained by the story and made to work hard to establish the deductive logic for themselves.

Factual writers, such as historians and biographers, must also work in this middle ground. Readers must be persuaded of the writer's point of view, but they must also be compelled to read on. Unlike the captive jurists, they are not obliged to stay with a story that does not engage and interest them.

Communication for Ease of Understanding

Business writer Barbara Minto offers a method of organising logic and communicating it effectively, which she calls "the pyramid principle".

• At the topmost level of Minto's metaphorical pyramid, the writer's arguments are expressed in their most concentrated form, in a single sentence.
• At the next level, the argument is drawn out into several sentences, either as a deductive line of reasoning or as a series of observations that support the inductive argument at the top level of the pyramid.
• This process of subdividing arguments or adding inductive support is repeated at successive levels of the pyramid until, at the lowest levels, the writer lays out the bare facts that underpin the logic.

Any writer who wishes to "spell out" the logic of his/her thinking starts at the top of the pyramid and works progressively downwards, explaining the logic at each level before moving to the next. Readers begin with a simple "overview" of the subject which they develop gradually as the writer guides them through the successive layers of the pyramid. Each statement at the top or middle levels of the pyramid enables the reader to prepare a "space" for the supporting information to come, such that much or all of the information may be committed to memory within a logical framework.

This form of communication is particularly useful in business and politics: for people who want to get to grips quickly with the essential elements of a report, and who are not necessarily interested in the detail. The upper levels of the pyramid are the "management summary". The lower levels, expressed only in the full report, are of interest only to those who need to get to grips with the detail or who seek to check or challenge the logic.

Creative Confusion

These logical principles are at odds with the craft of creative writing.

• Good storytellers like to keep their readers guessing and to surprise their readers.
• The details are an essential read for everyone: without them, situations and characters cannot properly be brought to life.
• Few creative works, even largely factual histories, conform to strictly logical principles.

In short, creative writers may use techniques such as Barbara Minto's when it suits them, but they are generally free to make their own rules. Having said that, the logical principles outlined above have much to offer creative writers who wish to organise their materials for best effect.

Creative Pyramids and Subtext

Minto's pyramid is particularly useful for factual writers or thriller writers who need to communicate a complex matrix of information without submitting to the full rigour of the pyramid principle. In other words, the writer constructs the pyramid of arguments and supporting information, only to use it as a checklist for ensuring that each relevant argument or supporting fact is presented somewhere in the course of the story. When writing the actual text for the reader, then, the writer gives full rein to his/her talents as a storyteller without any loss of intellectual rigour.

Notice that the storyteller makes his/her readers work much harder than the pedlar of logic. Unlike their business-minded counterparts, creative writers generally do not begin by revealing the core of their message; nor do they assist their readers by enabling them to build a logical framework for the retention of ideas. The resulting freedom of thought enables the readers' inductive processes to work more effectively, using randomly selected items of information (such as the writer might not have dreamt of associating with one another) to inspire inductive leaps of imagination. This is why creative writing is so rich in subtext, whereas rigorously logical writing is not.

Inductive Logic In Storytelling

If the creative writer is not to present facts in their "logical" sequence, then, what principles should s/he use to avoid the chaos that might result from presenting arguments and facts at random? The answer lies in the inductive principles that govern not only the pyramid principle and virtually the entire contents of this course, but also the art of storytelling itself.

In purely logical terms, the essence of good storytelling is the withholding of information. The storyteller presents readers/listeners with elements of inductive and/or deductive reasoning: selected events in a character's life (from which both reader and writer draw inductive conclusions), a pattern of events leading to an inescapable, deductive conclusion, etc. At least one crucial element of the logic is usually withheld until the climax of the story.

• If the defining logic of the story is deductive, the conclusion might be withheld or, if the conclusion is already known, a crucial missing link in the deductive logic might be withheld.
• If the logic of the story is inductive, the inductive leap itself is likely to be withheld. Readers draw their own inductive conclusions as the story unfolds: the storyteller aims to surprise them with an inductive conclusion that is both surprising and satisfying.

Having decided which information to withhold, the next issue for the storyteller to order the rest of the materials for maximum effect.

The traditional method of storytelling was to follow the timeline of the story, presenting facts in the order in which they happened. This has changed radically with the advent of radio, film and television, which enable writers to move more freely within the timeline. This subject was explored in greater detail in the Exciting Plot Writing course, notably in the topic sheet entitled Controlling the Timeline.

The pyramid principle also has something to offer in terms of ordering the facts. The creative writer might construct the upper levels of the pyramid as if s/he planned to tell the story plainly, "logically". The arguments at the second and subsequent levels may then be ordered in various different ways: for example, a series of observations might be sequenced in keeping with the timeline, in descending order of importance, and so on. The chosen sequence provides a useful framework for constructing the story to be told.