Writing History

I've never been able to write creatively in my academic work. The essays I write now are an evolved version of what I wrote at school. To be fair, the key moment in the development of my academic writing was that very first tutorial in Roman history, where the tutor (can't remember her name right now) went through my essay and rewrote it with me, making it analytical rather than narrative.

Building on that, the thing I've always absolutely focused on has been putting the argument down. The way I plan an essay is something like, a) know the argument, b) work out all the elements needed to make the argument, and defend it against potential criticisms, and put it in scholarly context, c) arrange all those elements in a line, which ends in the conclusion of the argument.

It doesn't actually seem bad, right? Isn't this what an academic essay should be? But I've started to realise, I think, that there are all sorts of questions and problems relating to this.

It's related to thinking more about writing fiction: the thing there is, fiction shows that sometimes a straightforward argument isn't the best way to get something across. Especially, I suppose, if what you want to do isn't just make a point that you already think you understand, but to ask also ask something, investigate something, recognising that whatever answer you have will be incomplete. That's how fiction treats life; doesn't it apply just as much to history?

And maybe in a more dishonest way, I also think there might be something in using a less confrontational method; an oblique approach. If you put an argument straightforwardly and linearly, there's little for the reader to do but to agree or disagree with all or parts (and it's hard to read something like that and think, "I totally agree" - for one thing, if you want to contribute to a debate, disagreement is the most obvious way). But if you're not obviously doing that, if you appear to be mainly telling a story, or exploring a theme perhaps, then readers can take something else from it, can look at it in a different way - maybe you can have a different kind of conversation.