Avoiding Professionalism

There’s a human tendency to stratify just about every pursuit between amateurs and professionals. In some cases, of course, this is useful; it’s good to know the person you just hired to re-wire your house is a licensed, professional electrician and not someone who is fascinated by the way electricity causes fires, for example. And if someone offers to buy you some drinks, it’s helpful to know they’re not going to punk out after ten or eleven rounds.

This drive towards professionalism is sometimes harmful, though, and is sometimes used merely to create an exclusive strata so those on the right side of the velvet rope can feel smug. Creating jargon and secret information that only the initiated can parse is one way of doing this; jargon can be an incredibly useful shorthand for professionals, of course, conveying reams of information in a condensed form almost like the episode Darmok from Star Trek: The Next Generation where an alien civilization uses short phrases that convey entire scenarios with incredible depth of meaning.

But professionalism isn’t always useful. Sometimes it’s just flattering yourself. That’s how it is in writing.

Jargon for the Loss

Some young writers strive for the secret knowledge that professionalism can provide because it makes them feel like they’ve slipped past the velvet rope even if they haven’t written anything worth reading or published anything. And that’s the real danger here; being able to discuss The Hero’s Journey in depth, or explaining to anyone who will listen that the ?climax’ isn’t the end of the story is great and all, but it doesn’t mean anything if you’re not actually writing.

In other words, don’t waste too much energy on being able to talk a good writing game. Instead, put that energy into the actual writing. No one’s gonna care if you call the denouement of your novel That Moment When It All You Know Kind of Gets Ironed Out and Everyone is Done Fighting—if your story is great. If your story is great, you can call the plot mechanics by any names you want, and literally no one will care.

Sure, knowing the jargon and concepts will help you discuss writing with your fellow novelists, but trust me when I say that this is overrated. Also overrated? Ending blog posts with a coherent restatement of your premise.