The Law of Literature: Building Structure in the Creative Mind
By: alexander brock
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before — An aspiring fiction writer gives up on his hopes and dreams, eschews the life of a struggling artist in the city, and makes his parents very proud by pursuing a career in law. Gone are the late nights of whiskey-fueled inspiration and crumpled up poems. Long afternoons spent musing in coffee shops replaced with even longer nights beneath the library’s harsh fluorescent lights. Goodbye Paris Review, hello Law Review.
All is not lost for the once aspiring prose writer. The common belief that creative types must abandon the flowery style they hold so dear is ill-placed. On the contrary, many of the skills that are relentlessly hammered into the 1L mind apply equally to up-and-coming auteurs. Though young writers may not want to admit it, the world of fiction is not without its own set of rigid rules, developed over centuries of literary exploration. Every good writer, whether focused on law or leisure, stands to benefit from a little discipline instilled by the ever-patient legal writing professor.
Trim the Fat
One rule reigns supreme when it comes to developing writers — delete, delete, delete. It never feels good to see the fruits of one’s labor crossed out into oblivion by the dreaded red pen. The loss is usually harder to accept in the creative realm, where every word is a precious kernel of artistry. Still, the result is ubiquitous — every good writer must learn to how trim the fat. “Brevity is the soul of wit,” Shakespeare once wrote. That lesson hits close to home when first year law students are 1,500 words over the limit four hours before the memo is due. Because creative guidelines tend to be less rigid, many writers have difficulty facing the truth — that sentence that you love so much? It has to go.
Structure
Invariably, every high schooler learns about the parabolic plot arch that successful writers must follow — the exposition, rising action, climax, and so on. But modern fiction writers like to think that rules were meant to be broken. My novella doesn’t need a backstory, it’s just 84 pages of climax that takes place in one hour with no ending and it will be revolutionary. While the world of fiction is still waiting for the revolution to arrive, anti-structuralist writers could all benefit from a healthy dose of CREAC. Readers of both appellate briefs and experimental fiction need a balanced structure to fully appreciate a writer’s product. Without it, the language of the literary revolution will fall upon blind eyes.
Research
In legal writing, toiling over research is an accepted precursor to the drafting process. However, the young fiction writer often feels that emotion and style are the guiding principles of the story — that petty details are a mere vessel to the depths of the writer’s mind. Regardless of form, a good writer must maintain credibility as an expert of the subject matter at hand. One cannot write a good story about a chemist while confusing protons and electrons, nor a story about a zoologist while misplacing alligators with crocodiles.
Though there may be no Bluebook for fiction, developing a thorough grasp on the nitty-gritty is crucial to a writer’s success in connecting with an educated reader. A legal writing professor is just like any other audience — quick to criticize and extremely particular. Often, the only way to satisfy such audiences is to give them exactly what they want. Professors tend to be explicit about their preferences. Fiction audiences? If we knew what they wanted, we wouldn’t be in law school.
