The talk compares and contrasts writing science and writing art, in particular, creative fiction. A broad difference is easily identified by us between fiction and nonfiction. Science writing conveys an objective idea to the reader. The writing depends on the appropriateness of the reader. On the other hand, Art — literature or fiction in our context — conveys feelings to the reader. However, unlike in science-writing, in fiction there is no such diversity of writing tuned for the specificity of the reader. Fiction writing doesn’t differentiate the reader on her expertise but perhaps only on her taste for types. A classification of writing that is non-fiction but done with subject expertise include those done by a political columnist, a cookery expert and an art critic. Here again the writing need not be tuned according to the needs of the reader. The only assumption required on the part of the writer is that the reader is interested in following the text and diligent enough to overcome her contextual lacuna if necessary with some reasonable effort. While Science-writing specifies and builds, art-writing expands and ripples — with the exception of poetry, which compresses but reflects. Emphasis on skills to be developed — language free of clutter and verbiage, narration that includes the particulars and the universals, story telling that conveys ideas from a personal vantage, providing visualisation and analogies to grasp ideas and so on — could be taught in a session or semester. But what is to be remembered at the end or even at the beginning of such writing workshops is that they could only teach the craft but not entirely the associated art or science.
Coming Soon!