In every published essay, you will find that they all have one thing in common: they all say something new to the reader. But when critics and teachers talk about essays, they almost always overlook or ignore that fact. (I know, it seems hard to believe, but it’s true). Indeed, we can see a pattern in all published essays of first identifying the old view, the familiar and accepted view, of something and then almost immediately identifying a new view. , which always opposes or inverts the previous vision. The thesis of the new vision is then always followed by a support. (By the way, you can Google the titles of each of the essays I’ll mention here if you put them in quotes. Google will provide you with a link to at least one online instance of each essay, in its entirety.) For example, the first paragraph of George Orwell’s widely published essay, English language and politics, talks about the degradation of the English language and the ugly politics of the British Empire, how the two interact and seem to be unbreakably linked. In the second paragraph Orwell notes that “the process is reversible” and that improving the use of the English language can improve English politics and thus help save the British Empire. That’s a clear pattern from old to new, a new investment view. And it is followed by support. Another good example is Carl Sagan’s popular published essay, The abstraction of the beasts. The first sentence of the essay clearly establishes the old point of view:
“Beasts do not abstract,” John Locke announced, expressing the prevailing opinion of mankind throughout recorded history.
In the second paragraph, Sagan presents his new point of view in reverse of the previous one by asking whether animals might be capable of abstract thought, though possibly less deeply or more rarely than humans. The remainder of the essay provides facts, reasoning, and speculation to support Sagan’s new view of animals that really think or abstract. A third good example is Isaac Asimov’s rather amusing essay (at least at first), The Eureka Phenomenon. It is true that the fullness of the relationship between Asimov’s old and new vision occurs in three stages. But he clearly talks about his old problem with writer’s block first and then explains how he learned to solve it by watching an action movie, which is his new vision. (Interestingly, the point of view above isn’t really expressed at the time. Since Asimov is a thinker and a writer, he knows a lot of people who run into the problem of Writer’s Block, so he assumes that most Some people have some kind of Mental Block from time on their thinking and would be interested in a good solution to that recurring problem.) Next, compare voluntary and involuntary thinking with voluntary and involuntary breathing. And in paragraphs ten and eleven he makes a formal statement of his new vision thesis. To support that, he immediately begins to tell the famous story of Archimedes solving the king’s problem and running naked through the streets shouting that he found the solution. What most of us usually whose After reading this essay, remember that Asimov provides further support, discussing various boring stories and incidents involving scientists using the involuntary method of thinking to come up with great advances in science. And finally, he makes a third version of his original new vision thesis out of that, involving what he sees as an ongoing pattern of scientists not giving due credit to the involuntary thinking they actually use to make scientific advances. The pattern of the three analyzes I just gave you—old view, then new view thesis, then support—of three popular published essays is standard for published essays. Try the pattern on any published essay and you’ll see how true it is. So how do we, as writers and as writing teachers, make novelty prominent in our own writing and in our students’ writing, especially in their essays? Are you ready for this? Here’s the big secret-
We gain novelty in our own and our students’ essays by becoming sensitive to the everyday patterns of novelty that exist in our culture and learning to use them in our everyday thinking, writing, and communications.
For example, there is the Dark cloud, silver lining cultural pattern of novelty. Normally, when something very unpleasant or bad happens in our lives, we get depressed and then one of our friends says something like, “Don’t worry, Carmen, although things look pretty sad right now, something good will come of this.” Just wait and see.” The new aspect of this pattern is that we don’t expect something good to come out of something bad, but it does! The negative expectations of the old view are reversed, thus producing a new view. Here are some examples of the Dark Cloud, Silver Lining pattern that students can easily relate to:
- I cried when I bombed the final exam, but I was so happy when I found out that my grades on all the quizzes, reports, and other tests in class helped me.
- Our basketball team had a bad and sadly disappointing season, but in the playoffs we were absolutely ecstatic when our team won every game and won the state championship!
- My circle of friends and I are poor, but we’ve discovered that the real fun is in the sharing, not in the glitzy, glamorous, expensive activities.
- My family’s house is very cheap and in a poor neighborhood, but we are actually very proud of having the cleanest and best maintained house in the whole damn city.
- My part-time job is so terribly boring and pays so little that I wonder why I’m still working there, until I look around and notice a lot of kids don’t have any jobs.
Then there’s the David against Goliath cultural pattern of novelty. This is how it works: we all know that the big ones bully and overwhelm the little ones; that’s the way things are, what everyone expects and accepts because we see it happening all the time. For example, some large health insurance companies take advantage of powerless individual policyholders. Movies are made about these kinds of situations, like the heartwarming 1997 film the rainmaker, starring Matt Damon and Danny DeVito, in which a large insurance company is defeated by a little woman and her lawyer wet behind the ears, fresh out of school. So when the little guy beats the big guy, like David did with Goliath in the Bible story, everyone is a little surprised and a little happy. It is very similar to ‘Good conquers evil’ since the big ones or groups almost always display their power and abuse the good little ones like you and me. The novel aspect of this pattern is that experience has taught us all that the big, powerful bad guys tend to chop up the little good guys, so when the old negative perspective is reversed, we have a new perspective. Here are examples of the David vs. Goliath cultural pattern of novelty:
- My poor aunt took the IRS to court to stop them from taking her car to pay her back taxes. She knew that she would lose. But my meek aunt beat the IRS in court by standing up to them, passionately showing the facts the IRS tried to cover up.
- Larry was a smart student, but he was actually very small and very meek and mousy. So when he had a long and moving argument in our civics class with the captain of the debate team and embarrassed him, everyone cheered!
- My little sister, Jenny (7 years younger), and I often compete for time with Dad, and I always win, of course. But I have to admire how lately she has learned to charm him and his wallet so cleverly away from me, the little brat!
- My friend Emily has a little sister (4 years younger) who always wants to go with our circle of girls, but Emily never lets her come. Last Friday, however, the little sister convinced the rest of us to take her with us and leave Emily at home!
- I’m really stupid with computers, and my brother Stan is kind of a computer genius. So when his computer crashed one Saturday and I figured out how to fix it, I promised I’d never let him forget it.
Many cultural patterns of novelty exist ‘out there’ for us to take advantage of, both to generate new ideas and pre-existing formats to convey our new ideas. Can you think of others from your own experiences? Let me suggest a few more that I’m sure you’ll recognize, just by their names:
- Glitters, Not Gold (“All that glitters is not gold”).
- Lion Roars, No Teeth (“Someone or something powerful does nothing or fails”).
- What came first, the chicken or the egg? (“Cause and effect are reversed/changed”).
I’m sure you can provide the examples of these three cultural patterns of novelty without my help. The big idea here, of course, is that novelty is all around us, particularly in published works like essays. And if we’re going to write an essay or anything else, we’d better make sure we focus on the #1 focus in all communications, published or not… What’s new to the reader.