The War of the Words

There is often some kind of tension in a piece of writing – something that is unsettled; something that is not known; something not completely understood. For tension to be created and resolved, the question must be real and have some level of complexity.

Is ESP real or not? Is depression psychological or chemical? Is intelligence genetic or influenced by environment? There are several problems with these questions, at least in the way that they are formulated. Some are unanswerable, and a writer can only state an opinion. The real interest is not the yes or no but the writer’s ideas and leanings, the evidence he/she dredges up and how it is examined. Questions that demand yes or no answers are not questions to be written about. They reduce the world to black and white, and we become simplistic. The world is not simplistic. The world is black and white and blue and crimson and day-glo green.

A question is not real if there is only one possible solution or if the solution is known beforehand. Or the lack of a solution is known beforehand.