How do we get it right the first time? Is that even possible? As Mark Twain once stated, “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”
In this post I would like to examine this quote by Mark Twain. It has something to do with you as a writer and us as people. In the very least, the quote is about bending the rules after you’ve learned the rules. This is important to the writing process, regardless if you are a writer OR a Yankee from Connecticut.
Getting your facts straight
Twain embellished facts in his writing, especially when it came to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Historically, the novel is a little untrue, and historical critics railed against it for being anti-historical. That is to say, it did not play by the rules of reality, favoring satire and whimsical narrative over fact.
Yet, Twain’s quote makes a valid point when it comes to writing. We do have to get it right and then we can build from there. Getting the known truths out there is essential, as then you have the ability to embellish that truth. I think if the groundwork is laid, then writers have carte blanche to interpret as they see fit. As such, the genre of the writing does change–maybe from historical to historical fiction.
Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night experiences this interesting transformation. The book deals with the propagandistic efforts of the Nazi party, which truly happened. Then, the reader is given a fictitious trial and imprisonment of the lead character that seems straight from Hollywood.
“Get your facts first” means writers should have a framework for writing first. Wrapped up in a bundle, this means an understanding of grammar or structure, or both. Likewise, writers should hold those things dear and engage in the writing discipline in a practical way. It is at this point that they can “distort” the facts as they please.
Bending the truth and the form
Many famous authors have distinctive writing voices. These authors include James Joyce, Harper Lee, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Joyce Carol Oates, Jane Austen, Kurt Vonnegut, and Banana Yoshimoto. Are they on point when it comes to grammar and conventions all the time? No. But that’s precisely the point. You have to learn the rules to break them. With this in mind, I think that Twain speaks to that exact point in the aforementioned quote.
You have to practice and learn the discipline before you can try to break away to create something new. Unfortunately (or fortunately) writers are bound by structure whether we acknowledge it our not. We learn it young and we see it perfected in text by those who have come before us. No matter, we can take what they have done and turn it into something new. That’s as long as we learn the basic structure first.
Getting to the point where we can break the rules in our art takes time. But, with enough practice and understanding of the fundamentals…we’ll get there.
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