How I write
A short note on process, influences, and tone.
When I first stumbled upon Orwell’s Politics and the English Language, it was a revelation. How had I only just found this, I wondered. His essay should be required reading for anyone who writes anything about politics. In fact, for anyone who writes anything about anything.
Clarity of thought, as much as anything, is a simple courtesy when asking readers to pay attention to one’s work. It’s also essential when institutions want people to understand important information.
Take the following example of corporate fog:
“We would like to ensure that we are prepared to implement the necessary steps required to control an outbreak of an infectious disease that represents a risk to patients, employees and others associated with our clinics”.
Here’s what it sounds like in plain English:
“We want to make sure that we are ready to control an outbreak of an infectious disease in our clinics”.
As Orwell understood, vagueness and complexity are not always symptoms of poor writing (although they are that as well) but often deliberate tools of evasion. They allow people in positions of responsibility to avoid accountability. The classic line everyone knows is:
“Mistakes were made”.
The passive form removes the author of those mistakes from the equation. Who made the mistakes? We’re not told because doing so would have consequences.
I mention all this because I try to bring the same rigour to my own writing – not always successfully, of course. But that’s the aim.
My writing influences, among others, are Roger Scruton (moral seriousness), Thomas Sowell (empirical rigour) and Sam Harris (intellectual honesty). But Orwell is the benchmark for prose. His principles apply to anyone writing analysis: a preference for the concrete over the abstract, short words rather than long ones, and cutting anything that obscures meaning. His test still works: Could I put this more plainly? Have I said anything avoidably ugly?
Most pieces begin with something that bothers me – often the gap between what everyone can see and what our institutions pretend not to notice. It might start as a comment under a newspaper column or another piece on Substack, which I later develop into a complete article. This involves doing more research, looking for concrete examples, and identifying the strongest counterarguments.
I never commit to a long-form essay until I know the basic shape of the argument I want to make. Structure comes before prose. I outline the logical flow and figure out what each section needs to do. This usually prevents drift and rambling, although I no doubt succumb to that in places. But the basic idea is that every paragraph should be doing some work.
I draft and redraft the essays myself, then use editorial feedback – including AI – to test arguments, surface objections, spot missing context, and catch typos. That’s how editing works when you’re trying to make a piece as good as it can be. All the writing and thinking, and any remaining errors – including factual errors – are mine alone.
The results are what you’re reading here. These essays are my best attempts to tackle something that bothers me about the culture. You’ll pick up on the irritation – often anger – that comes through in the writing, which can make it caustic at times, even sarcastic. But the aim is always for honesty over comfort, reality over pretence.
I’ll get things wrong at times or fall into the writing habits I’m criticising. Nevertheless, I’ll always do my best to avoid cliches and jargon, evasive language and obfuscation.
Thanks for reading The Gadfly.
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Frederick Alexander