Let me tell you, up front, the most important thing in writing:
………………………………………………………. .. ……………What’s new for the reader.
“Wow!” you could say “My English teacher tells me that kind of thing all the time! She’s constantly saying, ‘Tell me something NEW and INTERESTING! show me who you are thinking for yourself!’
“Oh yes—– she also says, ‘And remember Thoreau and Walden Pond! Simplify! But for God’s sake, most of all, make sure you say something. NEW!‘”
Oh—–so “What’s New for the Reader” doesn’t sound special new for you, is that it?
Okay then—–Let me ask you just six questions to clarify why what your teacher said about writing something new has always frustrated you (right?) and to show why that advice (from the best textbooks out there) never really helped you:
- she shows you a process to get”what’s new?”
- Do you define novelty in terms of what is old?
- Does she teach the five main types of OLD that NEW can not exist without
- does she tell you five main different types of NEW?
- Does it show you how everything written is directly related to News for the reader?
- Point out how and where News for the reader is used all the time by writers of published essays, short stories, and novels?
See what I mean? But let’s not blame the teacher —– she was trained that way.
Teachers aren’t the only ones who are lazy about writing novelty. I have been told by several so-called scholars of writing that novelty in writing is taught in many modern composition textbooks. It’s funny though—–these supposedly well-informed scholars recommend books and assure me that the novelty principle is already taught in those books, but when I diligently read the books they recommend, I can’t find what they say should be over there
For example, one of those recommended books that didn’t meet the teaching of novelty is they say i say (2006) by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. These authors actually deny that provide anything but forms or templates, leaving the content and novelty for the writer to generate. This is what they say on page 11 of their book:
Also, these templates do not dictate the delighted from what you say, which can be as original as you can make it, but just suggest a way to format as You say.
As you can clearly see from this quote, the authors bluntly admit that the templates they teach are only to “suggest[ing] a form of formatting” (form) and have nothing to do with generating content and novelty.
The strangest reference I’ve ever had from a writing scholar was to the all the work of Professor John Swales, a leading linguist who has worked primarily with gender analysis in applied linguistics. After some unsuccessful research attempts to find a novelty process taught in his work, I found his address and emailed Professor Swales directly.
Professor Swales kindly replied that my informant was “misinformed”, although he conceded that the informant might be referring to his studies on introductions,
and how they try to establish a gap in prior knowledge to pave the way to say that the next contribution offers something new.
Professor Swales referred me specifically to his book, Gender Analysis (1990), Chapter 7, Research Papers in English, Introductions, pp. 137-166. In Chapter 7, he actually devotes about thirty pages to refer to novelty, but only in terms related to the creation of contexts to introduce significant and relevant novelties. There you have it—–“set a gap” to “pave the way to say that the next contribution offers something new”, very similar to they say i say—–form, not generating content novelty.
Another book that I have been constantly referred to is The Allyn & Bacon Writing Guide. That’s a good book, and it does refer to novelty. But, like so many other writing textbooks, it still doesn’t provide a process for generating novelty, nor does it recognize the fundamental centrality of novelty in every thesis and in all its support in every essay. In short, novelty gets less attention than topic sentences or paragraph development.
You see, no matter how rhetorically correct an essay is, or even how impeccably organized and grammatically perfect: if the thesis and the support for it are not new to the reader, then that essay is a failure.
Writing teachers should focus students on the most important principle when writing essays and everything else—–
………………………………………………………. .. ……………What’s new for the reader.