How do you pull off cursing in your writing?

Mark Manson used the F-Bomb 103 times in Chapter 1 alone.

It's not just about quantity; check out the oscillation of profanity:

It starts slow. The first "fuck" doesn't come until page 3, and it's a lonely fuck, an "iso-fuck" (the only fuck on the page).

But several times, Mark breaks through with a proper "clusterfuck," sometimes including 14 fucks on a single page (almost every other line).

In addition to quantity, there are multiple tenses of fuck (known formally as a polyptoton). We see the word so often, in so many different formats, that we experience "semantic satiation." It sheds it's taboo, becomes re-contextualized, and starts to feel like a normal word.

Takeaway: There's a subtle art to cursing. Don't curse in ways that are cliche and lazy. Don't curse for the sake of cursing. It's a tool for surprise, humor, and release. Whether you use it once per essay, once per page, or every other line, be intentional.

The Subtle Art of Cursing

How do you open an essay?

David Foster Wallace introduces the Maine Lobster Festival by listing off an absurd amount of detail. He loops through geography, events, food, and souvenirs.

Let's break down the beginning of Consider the Lobster:

PLACES:

We start by building a mental map of Maine in the summer. Notice all the Capitalized names (in green), where he mentions towns, roads, parks, and bodies of water. These "insider terms" (geographically specific) are balanced with universal visuals (in yellow).

EVENTS:

Next, we get a high-resolution glimpse of the commotion inside the festival. Again, there's a mix of wonky, specific events (the William G. Atwood Memorial Crate Race), and more general terms (parades, carnival rides, midway attractions, food booths).

FOOD:

Then he shows all the variations in how they serve lobster. He starts with a quick list, but then unpacks the last 3 examples in more detail. Again, in this third set of things, he's mixing Uppercased Specific Named foods with lowercased general foods.

SOUVENIER:

Fourth and final set: he closes on a short list of (lowercased) lobster-themed souvenirs (shirts, bobblehead dolls, pool toys, hats).

And finally, after four consecutive *lists,* he breaks the pattern.

He switches to more open prose, and he finally writes himself into the scene. We see him there with his girlfriend & parents, taking in this excessive festival for tourists.

The first 1.5 pages have 48 "objects." It's a sensory overload that let's us visualize this place. He lodges us in the festival with placemaking before he gets into the core of his argument.

Placemaking in "Consider the Lobster"

Should you write clear, direct sentences?
Or should you write long, expressive ones?

Do both.

Check out the opening of this Brian Doyle essay, where he flutters between simplicity and complexity.

The first paragraph starts with 4 short sentences.
The heavy repetition anchors the theme in your mind:
Hummingbird hearts.

The paragraph closes with a big sentence.
It's 2.3x longer than the first four combined.

There are 4 parts, each with it's own device:
- A definition ("joyas voladoras")
- Juxtaposition (America vs. Universe)
- Onomatopoeia (sound)
- Scalar contrast (Elephants vs. infinitesimal)

He starts the next paragraph with another sequence of 4 short sentences, returning to repetition.

After the quick jabs, he brings on another long sentence.
But most noticeably, he shifts tone.

After 10+ points of awe around hummingbirds, he gets heavy:
He writes about their death.

Notice the pattern?
Short. Short. Short. Short > Long
Short. Short. Short. Short > Long

Internalize this, and try it in your own writing:
- After a series of simple sentences, you've earned a banger.
- After a big sentence, you need to let your reader recharge.

Brian Doyle: Flutter Between Simplicity and Complexity

You know those Seinfeld episodes where all the separate plots lines magically come together in an explosive climax?

How did they write that?

I diagrammed an episode of Seinfeld to figure it out.

Here's how you layer multiple arcs to tell unforgettable stories:

Jerry's Arc:

Jerry opens with a bit making fun of tuxedos, saying everyone is obsessed with the bride and her dress, and no one care's about the tux.

Men are *interchangeable.*

This opens Jerry's a "macro-loop" that sets up the explosive ending.

Kramer's Arc:

Kramer loves the opera. He has 6 tickets, but Jerry and the crew aren't interested (the music, the clown theme, the tuxedos).

They're reluctant, but Kramer convinces them. Micro-arc closed.

But the opera sets two other arcs in motion:

Elaine's Arc:

She invites her boyfriend (Joe) to the opera, but soon realizes he's off his medication, going insane, and also trying to get revenge on Jerry. They break up.

Joe dresses up as a clown & vows to kill them at the opera.

This open-loop builds tension all episode.

George's Arc:

George wants to bail on the opera.
His tuxedo is too small & his girlfriend cancelled on him.

He finally finds hope in a scheme to scalp his tickets (for 3x the price).

Guess who him (and Kramer) sell it to?

Some guy dressed as a clown.
(Elaine's killer clown!)

The episode closes in the opera, where all the arcs resolve:

- Kramer goes to the opera (joy)
- George bails (escape)
- Elaine learns they scalped a ticket to her killer ex-bf (horror)

It also resolves Jerry's loop from the opener:
Through scalping, men are interchangeable.

It's unbelievable when it all perfectly comes together.

The trick is to start with the largest arc & zoom inwards.

- MACRO: What is the starting tension and how does it resolve?
- MICRO: How do 2-3 themes build to that resolution?
- DETAILS: How can every word count?

Once you have a mental map of the arcs, the details resolve themselves.

Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David were meticulous editors, refining and rewriting until characters arcs would crash together in hilarious and unexpected ways.

I worked with @tobi_emonts on a piece of fiction. Here is the Miro boards we used to develop and unfold arcs throughout the story.

You can use a table to visualize your arcs.
- Horizontal rows are the scenes/sections.
- Vertical columns are the arcs/themes.

Check out @nathanbaugh27's post for more on this.

Micro Loops give quick payoffs, while slowly chipping away at the Macro Loops. Synthesizing these two scales creates a constant tension that keeps the reader hooked.

https://twitter.com/nathanbaugh27/status/1673676647965290502

Homework: Watch this Seinfeld Episode on Netflix (S4, E8).
It's a classic episode, and a masterclass in layered story arcs.

Follow me on Twitter for more visual writing breakdowns, and
RT the opening tweet to vote for more threads on storytelling.

The Layered Arcs of Seinfeld

The story of Alphonse Mucha
(or, how selling out can enable the artist within you)

You probably recognize this feminine style of art.

Mucha was one of the first artists to popularize Art Nouveau & he was etched into history as "the floral background guy."

In reality, he was more interested in religious iconography.

But Art Nouveau paid his bills.

Young Mucha was unknown & struggling. He designed portraits, posters, icons & tombstones.

But in 1894, he went viral.

He made a poster for the play Gismonda, featuring famous actress Sarah Bernhardt. She loved it.

She ordered 4,000 copies & plastered them around Paris.

This led to a sudden flood of commissions for Mucha.

Companies wanted the "Sarah Bernhardt style" to sell their products.

Art Nouveau was popularized to sell cigarettes, alcohol, and casinos.

From 1895-1904, Much was a one-trick pony, rendering women in gardens over and over.

Mucha finally found stability in his life & moved into a 3 bedroom apartment in Paris with a dedicated art studio.

He was featured in exhibits & magazines, and was known internationally as a pioneer of Art Nouveau.

But his personal art during this time was shockingly different.

"La Pater" featured 7 paintings; each one is a line of the Lord's Prayer.

It's radically off-brand: no color, and the pretty gardens are replaced with eerie visions of suffering, transcendence, and glowing-eyed demons.

When was this? 1899, the peak of "Le Style Mucha."

Mucha's "meme-self" (the floral background guy) enabled his real-self (the Pan-Slavic mystic) to come to life.

In 1904, Mucha stopped taking commissions. Instead of seeking more money & fame, he began an all-consuming passion project that would take him 18 years:

The Slav Epic.

Mucha used the money from his Art Nouveau work to buy 27-foot canvases.

His lifelong dream was to render epic scenes of Slavic mythology.

He said, finally, he'd be able to make something good, "not for the art critics, but for the Slavic souls."

Mucha created 20 of these masterpieces.

He became a figure in the Slavic independence movement, and was asked to design the currency of the new republic of Czechoslovakia.

These project are "off-brand" & unknown to the public.

But to Mucha, it was all that mattered.

Mucha's career was 100 years ago, but he gracefully straddled the line between commerce & visionary art.

What's the lesson?
- Double-down when you pluck a nerve
- Pursue off-brand explorations
- Know when to stop
- Don't lose sight of your purpose

I've been writing online for 3 years, and still feel the tension between writing for myself vs. my audience.

What is the "Mucha method" in today's Creator Economy?

Follow my Substack for an in-depth answer to this question.
(link in bio, out tomorrow)
https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1671626757760319490

The Mucha Method: Funding Visionary Art

"Don't repeat yourself."

We live in an era of minimal, efficient, and robotic prose.

But repetition done well brings an intangible magic to your writing.

18 types of repetition in Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut you can try out:

There are dozens of formal, PhD-level, Latin-sounding types of repetition, like "epizeuxis," "anadiplosis," and "chiasmus."

Let's make it simple.

We'll break these 18 quotes into 3 groups: Stamps, Loops, and Mirrors.

Starting with Stamps ...

The most obvious form of repetition is to repeat words. Stamps are a tool to emphasize ideas and layer meaning. There are multiple ways to do it.

1. DOUBLE-STAMP (Epizeuxis)

Put two identical words next to each other for emphasis.

2. NEAR-STAMP (Diacope)

Repeat words and syllables, but with other words in between them.

3. FRONT-STAMP (Anaphora)

Repeat the beginning of a phrase.

4. BACK-STAMP (Epistrophe)

Repeat the end of a phrase.

5. CARRY-STAMP (Epanodos)

Carry an important word from sentence to sentence.

6. MULTI-STAMP

Weave multiple words from sentence to sentence.

It starts to get fun with Loops.

Create loops by repeating phrases across back-to-back sentences.

A loop lets you expand or relate ideas, while setting the pace.

Kurt Vonnegut does this in imaginative ways:

7. CUT-LOOP

Repeat a phrase, but make it shorter.

8. GROW-LOOP

Repeat a phrase, but make it longer.

9. ASYMMETRIC-LOOP

Make it so that the content after each loop are unequal in length.

10. FLIP-LOOP

Invert the meaning of a loop to its opposite.

11. LIST-LOOP

Start a bunch of sentences with the same phrase.

12. ARC-LOOP

Create an arc by varying the length of each loop.

13. BACK-LOOP

End nearby sentences with the same word.

14. MID-LOOP (Symploce)

Repeat the middle phrase in consecutive sentences.

Mirrors are the 3rd (and most challenging) type of repetition. They're about creating a "line of symmetry" and then repeating words either near or far from that line.

When done right, they create balance, show cause and effect, and sound phonetically pleasing.

Some examples:

15. EDGE-MIRROR (Epanalepsis)

Start one sentence with a word, and end the next sentence with that same word.

16. PIVOT-MIRROR (Anadiplosis)

Start a sentence with the ending of the last sentence.

17. DOUBLE-MIRROR (Antimetabole)

Flip the order of two adjacent fragments.

18. INVISIBLE-MIRROR (Chiasmus):

Create symmetry through meaning instead of identical words.

That's it. Study repetition, practice it, then forget it. Let it come out intuitively. Repetition is masterfully laced through all of Vonnegut's writing.

Here's an excerpt showing 7 types of repetition coming together.

18 types of repetition from Cat's Cradle, all in one image.

Bookmark this and use it when you write.

Once you get the hang of Stamps, Loops, and Mirrors, it adds a new dimension to your prose.

Follow for more breakdowns, RT, and let me know what to dissect next.

Vonnegut, Vonnegut! (repetition thread)

Frank Lloyd Wright was known for his radical buildings in the 20th century.

But he was also a prolific writer, and a philosopher whose ideas transcended architecture.

Here are 16 quotes from FLW about creativity, conformity, poets, prophecies, Emerson (and not buildings):

The song, the masterpiece, the edifice are a warm outpouring of the heart of man— human delight in life triumphant: we glimpse the infinite.

Really to believe in something is the greatest boon, I think, and to believe wholeheartedly in it and to serve it with all your strength and your might is salvation.

There is a deadly tendency towards conformity which in the human spirit is something like gangrene in the human flesh.

The greatest harm that man can do in life is to spoil the faith, the trust, and the fresh vision of the child.

The cardinal sin or architecture is overdoing anything.

The [Welsh] definition of genius was very simple, very true, and very good: A man who can see nature; a man who has a heart for nature (that is, who loves nature), and a man who had the courage to follow nature.

A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart.

Good reading of the great poets is just as essential to the spiritual life as sitting down at the table and eating when you are hungry.

Cultivate the poet. The poet is the unacknowledged legislator of this universe and the sooner we knock under to that the better. Get Emerson’s essay on the American scholar and read it once a year.

The artist himself, of course, is of his time, or he is not an artist. He is the prophet of his time and of his day; he is the seeing-eye of his people. He can see a little further and more clearly than his people see.

The architect must be a prophet... a prophet in the true sense of the term... if he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect.

Get the habit of analysis -- analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.

I have never wanted to be finished. I have never wanted to feel that what I have done was the best I could do. I have to be careful of that because that is poison to the creative spirit.

I am not a “masterpiece man”— the next one I am going to do is always the best. When a man points to his masterpiece, he is finished. Do not look for much from him.

You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Beyond Architecture

In the opening of 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,' Hunter S. Thompson shows off his absurd drug collection.

You know what's even more absurd?

His talent at structuring lists.

Here's a breakdown on how to use rhythm and form to make epic list-sentences (no drugs required):

Hunter doesn't just write out a list of items.

He includes quantities, containers, and adjectives to make each item more specific. The syllables change from line to line, creating forward motion.

The sentence has 3 distinct structures. Let's check out each one:

In Structure 1, each item (green) has a quantity (blue) and container (purple).

Notice how the first item has all 1-syllable words, and the following lines get more complex?

The "acid" line introduces an adjective (yellow), and the last line describes the container in detail.

Structure 2 starts with the same [quantity, container, adjective] form, but then lists out (4) 2-syllable items.

While the containers above are literal (bags, pellets, sheets), he uses a metaphor here: "galaxy."

He switches the items from specific drugs to types of drugs.

Structure 3 is similar to 1, but it's more reserved.

The quantities and containers are mostly 1-syllable, he repeats "quart" twice, and only the items (in green) vary in syllables.

He sets a pattern through repetition, and then breaks it in the last line to end the sentence.

Here's the full sentence again.

Read it out loud.

You can intuitively feel how rhythmic it is, and now you analytically understand why it's working, and how to do it yourself.

- List your items
- Get specific
- Vary the syllables
- Break the form


Hunter's List Sentence

On The Road is the defining novel of the 1950's Beat Generation.

It's spontaneous prose mirrors the free-spirited counter-culture it describes.

I was surprised to learn the author was living in the suburbs of Florida with his mother in a defeated state of self-exile...

The author, Jack Kerouac, did go on four epic road trips between 1947-50.

On the Road romanticizes hitchhiking, casual sex, drugs, non-conformity; all rendered in loose ecstatic writing.

While the book turned Kerouac into a legend, the author's real life was way more nuanced.

Our image of Kerouac is over-indexed on 'the hitchhiker.'

In reality he:
- Yearned for the stability of home life
- Was shaped by a Catholic upbringing
- Intensely studied religion and writing

And while writers see him as lazy and undisciplined, he was actually studious.

Before Kerouac's road trips, he wrote over 1 million words in traditional prose in the 1940s.

Kerouac dreamed of writing "The Great American Novel," and studied classic poets and writers like Whitman, Melville, and Wolfe.

His experimental prose can be traced back to one friend.

NYC. 1946. Kerouac meets Neal Cassady.

While Kerouac was (relatively) introverted, Cassady was wild (he was the psycho bus-driver in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test).

Cassady had a restless, adventurous energy that Kerouac thought would make a great story.

They went on 4 cross-country trips together.

Kerouac captured Cassady's unrestrained lifestyle in the character "Dean Moriarty," making him the muse for both the Beat and hippy generations.

While Cassady influenced Kerouac's philosophy, he had a bigger impact on his craft.

1950, in the winter after their last road trip, Cassady sends Kerouac the "Joan Anderson Letter."

It was "the best piece of writing he's ever seen" (13,000 words, 40 pages on a 3-day benzedrine-binge)

Spontaneous prose was born.

Kerouac thought: imagine a whole book like this?

1951. Kerouac is ready.

He had road journals, old drafts, marked up maps, a decade of practice, and now an new vision around prose and process from Cassady.

In 20 days, he huffs out On the Road in 1 take, without paragraph breaks, on a 120 foot scroll.

Was it any good?

The consensus from his rejection letters was: "enormous talent, but unmarketable."

At a subject level, it was a culture shock to conservative ethics.
At a style level, he refused to edit anything.

Between 1951-53 he wrote more radical novels among radical friends.

No takers.

By 1954, Kerouac was exhausted. Cassady's lifestyle wasn't sustainable, and his inability to get published was existential.

After reading Thoreau, he retreated into nature. For 3 years, he studied Buddhism, and wrote books on sorrow, solitude, and mysticism.

This new phase peaked in 1956, when he spent 63 days on Desolation Peak in full isolation.

Kerouac dreamed of being a hermit. This comes from his Catholic roots and his brother's vision of the Virgin Mary before his death. For once, Kerouac had solitude.

Turns out, he hated it.

It was the end of road.

Neither the vagabond or monkish lifestyle worked out, and in July of 1956, he moved to a small 2-room house in Orlando, Florida with his mother.

None of his books were published.

At his lowest point, his career took off.

Two months after Kerouac moved to Florida, the poem "Howl" goes viral. Written by his friend Allen Ginsberg, it's both popular and controversial.

It brings light to the "Beat movement," and suddenly, publishers see an urgent opportunity to publish Kerouac's work.

After years of frustration and resistance, Kerouac finally agrees to have his original scroll of On the Road edited.

This was led by editor Malcolm Cowley who gives it a linear structure, adds chapter breaks, and tones down the obscenity.

How was it received?

The NY Times was the 1st to give it attention.

It was a "historic occasion" & “the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the [Beats]"

Kerouac became the 1st "writer celebrity of the TV age."

But the public's reaction tortured him.

Intellectuals scorned him, and the youth worshipped him for a failed lifestyle experiment from 10 years ago that he since outgrew.


While  Cassady was the actual embodiment of "the Beat," Kerouac got all the unwanted fame and flack.

After his rise, did he continue writing?

Kerouac was an introvert, and attention destroyed him.

"No time to think, no time to write."

After his fame, all his earlier books got published, but his writing dried up and got dark.

He denounced his friends and drank himself to death at 47 years old.

Kerouac's tale was a tragic one.

His public image was distorted.
His philosophy was misunderstood.
His life was tortured by alcoholism.

And his craft (the thing he cared about most) was written off as rambling.

Is he sometimes long-winded? Yes.

Could his books have been better if he was more open to editing? Sure.

But if you're patient, he does break through with some unbelievable prose-poetry (like this sentence from Dharma Bums).

I'm on a quest to read Kerouac, wade through it all, pick out the best parts, and break them down.

Follow me here on Twitter if you want to see sentences & paragraphs from Kerouac (and others) visually deconstructed.