How to say the unsayable
writing April 29th. 2008, 7:33am
What do you do when you feel like you need to say something but you just can’t find the right words to communicate it?
Telepathy would be so much easier, wouldn’t it? Gone would be the guessing games, the frustration, the hurt feelings and time lost due to misunderstanding. The perfect words wouldn’t have to be so perfect anymore when direct mind-to-mind communication, free of filters and barriers, could transmit any thought, feeling, or concepts between two or more people.
Credit: Writers block 3 by Jonno Witts
Alas, telepathy is currently impossible. We must rely on our five senses (smell, taste, and touch don’t tend to be used very often: at least not intentionally) to tell the story.
Given these constraints, it’s easy to understand that we can struggle with the right way to communicate something. We use different languages with hundreds of thousands of characters, symbols, and groupings to move information between minds. Sometimes we get the message across, sometimes we don’t.
But what do you really want to say?
What’s worse, sometimes we can’t even figure out what we want to say, even if the thoughts feel maddeningly close to the surface, just like we could snatch them up and start using them. Sometimes these words and thoughts will dive deep, scamper away, or otherwise evade our grasp. Instead of transmitting a meaningful message, we broadcast gobbledygook that even we, the author, don’t understand.
How do we get the right words out?
Dig out your words by spoon or by excavator
One of the most important steps in accurate communication is to know exactly what you want to say before you say it.
Depending on what you want to say, you might need a spoon or an excavator to “dig out” the right words.
A simple fact is easy to communicate. Here are a few examples:
- the current temperature
- Newton’s third law of physics
- the colors of checkers or chess pieces
- the cost of your daily newspaper
A spoon will suffice to dig these thoughts out of your brain.
You might need an excavator, however, to extract complex, abstract, or multi-emotional thoughts and to make them understandable.
Here are some examples of the more difficult things to express:
- Complex – describe all of the possible moves of the pieces of a chessboard in very few words.
- Abstract – describe religion, metaphysics, or mysticism.
- Multi-emotional – describe the sensation of feeling delighted and guilt-stricken at the same time and why you feel that way. Be prepared for this one to take awhile. It’s not that uncommon to encounter situations that evoke multiple emotions.
Personally, I find that emotionally charged issues are often the most difficult to write about, but that’s me. Maybe quantum physics or organic chemistry would be harder for you to describe.
Four ways to dig them out
Here are four suggestions for dealing with some of these trickier topics. In all cases, you’re trying to identify key concepts, root causes, or major feelings that will describe the subject of your message.
Write it out
If you can express your thoughts or feelings in words – any words at all – you’ve got a decent starting point.
Image by Mamilia Insipidiai
Start with individual words or phrases - think of them as puzzle pieces or building blocks.
- Quickly make a list of words and phrases that describe your subject, even if it’s just a series of quick thoughts, observations, or touch points.
- Next, go through that list and describe each word or phrase in more detail. Find any connections between these words.
- Summarize your ideas into a more coherent whole.
In a sense, I’m giving you the opposite of Strunk and White’s counsel to “work from a suitable design”. However, I suspect that what you really need to do at this point is to just write some stuff to get past an emotional blockage of some kind. Once that’s done, I’d work on the design and then describe your thoughts and feelings in more detail until you think you’ve got it.
Speak it out
You’ll need a tape recorder or digital recording device for this one. Just record whatever comes to mind about the topic. This is an audio version of “write it out” – some people find it easier to speak than to write. Replay your audio and try to pick out the main points that you wanted to say. Capture them on paper and try to put them into a logical sequence.
Image by mab @ flickr
Ask for advice
Try explaining your idea to a friend or family member. Explain that it’s difficult to describe what you want to say so you may need to ramble a bit to get it all out. Once you get it all out, try to put your words in some kind of logical order and cut out any unnecessary description. Again, put it down on paper.
Image by Manon Manon
Draw it out
If speaking or writing words are failing you, try a picture. It doesn’t have to be a fine work of art. Try stick figures, cartoons, portraits, finger paints, crayons, whatever. Try to draw something that describes what you are thinking or feeling. Once you have that down, start describing the picture and use that as a means to start communicating your idea.
Image by vrogy
Then, after following any of these four suggestions, there’s one more step:
Tear it down and build it up stronger
Review what you have come up with. Time to be ruthless:
- Is it honest?
- Accurate?
- Does it project the right feeling?
Experiment. See if you can rewrite any parts of it better, more clearly, more succinctly. Don’t be afraid to let a little bit of time pass and then review it. Sometimes a bit of distance and time can work wonders.
After all of this toil, you should have achieved your goal: saying what you couldn’t say.
Words of Encouragement
Sometimes it’s very easy to say something. Sometimes it’s not. If you are in a situation where the words just aren’t flowing freely or logically, I hope that these ideas will help you “dig” out the right words.
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