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odd_buttonsThe following is an excerpt from Part III of the book Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern. The first two parts are very much worth reading as well. The book is available in paperback.
Ambiguity
The difference between ambiguity and confusion can be puzzling to beginning writers. Ambiguity is the controlled and deliberate presentation of a limited number of possible interpretations. For example, the central concern of fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne or Henry James is often an unfathomable mystery. In James's The Turn of the Screw, the central question is whether the governess is to be trusted. Does she see real ghosts? Is she hallucinating? Is she lying for some reason? Are the children plotting against her? Is she completely mad? Any one answer would seem an oversimplification. And that's the point. James leaves it ambiguous because ambiguity is what the story is about. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne is ambiguous about which character is truly immoral. Again, the ambiguity is the point.
Confusion, on the other hand, is the lack of control that results when you omit or leave blurry certain information your readers need to know. Sometimes writers get defensive about what they left out. Every time a reader says, "This seems unclear. I couldn't figure out what was going on in this scene. Were they in the house or in the field? How old were these characters? Was that a man or a woman? What did happen in the end?" the writer says, "Yeah, that's the way I meant it. To be subtle. You know. I didn't want to make everything obvious." It is as if the writer wants the reader to make up for his own vagueness and lack of energy.
Be crisply definitive. John Updike's encyclopedic precision suggests more profound mysteries. Significant ambiguities rise not from withholding information but from being richly informative.
See Negative Positive Knowledge.
Ambiguity
The difference between ambiguity and confusion can be puzzling to beginning writers. Ambiguity is the controlled and deliberate presentation of a limited number of possible interpretations. For example, the central concern of fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne or Henry James is often an unfathomable mystery. In James's The Turn of the Screw, the central question is whether the governess is to be trusted. Does she see real ghosts? Is she hallucinating? Is she lying for some reason? Are the children plotting against her? Is she completely mad? Any one answer would seem an oversimplification. And that's the point. James leaves it ambiguous because ambiguity is what the story is about. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne is ambiguous about which character is truly immoral. Again, the ambiguity is the point.
Confusion, on the other hand, is the lack of control that results when you omit or leave blurry certain information your readers need to know. Sometimes writers get defensive about what they left out. Every time a reader says, "This seems unclear. I couldn't figure out what was going on in this scene. Were they in the house or in the field? How old were these characters? Was that a man or a woman? What did happen in the end?" the writer says, "Yeah, that's the way I meant it. To be subtle. You know. I didn't want to make everything obvious." It is as if the writer wants the reader to make up for his own vagueness and lack of energy.
Be crisply definitive. John Updike's encyclopedic precision suggests more profound mysteries. Significant ambiguities rise not from withholding information but from being richly informative.
See Negative Positive Knowledge.