The Arts of Legal and Creative Writing
I was recently asked in an interview how my background as a lawyer has influenced my fiction writing. Answer: it can help and it can hurt.
It’s easy to mock the “wherefor” and “herewith” clauses that infest legal documents. As a lawyer, the only time I use such terms is when they’re part of formulas based on centuries-long practice. Woe betide a lawyer who tinkers with the standard opening to an affidavit, “Affiant, being duly sworn, hereby deposes and says…” It might be thrown out as evidence.
However, good legal writing requires specificity, which has a place in fiction. One of the hardest lessons I had to absorb as a newly minted lawyer was never to assume a judge would infer anything I thought obvious. The problem for a fiction writer is how and when to present the specifics.
Here’s the first sentence of Brideshead Revisited: “When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.”
Now, at the risk of inciting Evelyn Waugh’s ghost, here’s how this information might appear in a legal document. I have interpolated some details from elsewhere in the novel and other sources:
1. Charles Rider (“Rider”) arrived above the estate known as Brideshead on or about seven o’clock in the morning of March 24, 1943.
2. Rider asserts, and contemporaneous weather reports confirm, that visibility was limited due to mist. (See Exhibit “A.”)
3. Rider states that C Company had situated itself at the top of the hill overlooking Brideshead.
Each statement addresses one circumstance at a time. In the first, time and place are established, and in the second, the weather. In the third, we’re told where Rider found C Company. Since this fact might be contested, its source, Rider, is named. To backtrack a little, the mist would be mentioned only if it had a bearing on the case.
By omitting precise timing and placename, Waugh’s graceful description sets the reader’s imagination going. By contrast, legal writing makes no allowance for imagination.
So, how is specificity a positive? Waugh’s first sentence pulls readers right away into the story. But even though he didn’t spell out the details, he needed to know the time of this scene, its location and why it matters that Rider was up there on that hill. Eventually, readers would expect to be told, and Waugh would need to satisfy their curiosity.
Then there’s precision. My upcoming novel, Caroline, purports to quote from the transcript of a trial, where a lawyer is sure to ask at some point, “what did you do next?” and the witness will be instructed to limit the answer accordingly. A court forces all participants to stick to the subject.
As a novelist, I try to make it look as though I don’t restrain my characters chattiness. In reality, I circumscribe dialog so that the characters say only what’s needed for the story. If the morning’s grocery shopping and last night’s call from Uncle Bob aren’t relevant, out they go.
In the law, a fact is or is not admissible. In that Brideshead Revisited sentence, the mist might be inadmissible as irrelevant in a court case, but Waugh wanted it for atmosphere. In fiction, it makes sense. However, fiction’s greater flexibility doesn’t mean the kitchen sink can be thrown in, unless that kitchen sink relates to some aspect of the story.
In training a lawyer to suppress imagination, a law background can hurt a novelist. But in habituating a lawyer to focus on relevance, it can help. Even in the world of fiction, where mystery, fantasy and speculation abound, a novel must get us from beginning to end without loitering.
About Adrian Spratt
Adrian Spratt practiced law for twenty years, mainly in consumer protection, before returning to his first love, fiction writing. He graduated from Amherst College and earned his law degree from Harvard. Retinal detachment led to his loss of vision when he was thirteen. Today, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the artist and photographer Laura Rosen. His website, where he maintains a blog and showcases selected stories, essays and memoir excerpts, is www.adrianspratt.com.