There are perks to having a philosopher on your team. My co-founder Bill Jaworski is a philosopher. It’s fun to work with him because he’ll say something super insightful, off the cuff, and then I won’t be able to stop thinking about it.

Last week, he drew this spellbinding analogy between writing a great book and building the Parthenon:

“The Parthenon is supposed to look perfectly symmetrical, the same in all dimensions. But as you approach the Parthenon, the two outer columns are not framed against the rest of the building. They’re framed against the sky. Because those two columns are framed against the sky, they look thinner than they are.

"In order to create the appearance of this perfect symmetry, the Greeks designed those two outer columns to be wider, so that when you approach the Parthenon from that angle, it does look perfectly symmetrical. They gave people the experience of symmetry, but it’s an illusion. And there’s a similar thing with writing. There are ways of sculpting the writing so that it creates the experience of a natural conversation.”

The Greeks had a vision for the viewer’s experience—an experience of perfect symmetry and balance. Yhey used an illusion to create that experience. As writers, we have a vision for the reader’s experience, and we use some illusions to bring that vision to life. We give readers the experience of a great conversation—by distorting the characteristics of actual speech.

For example, here’s one of the sentences that Bill used when he was explaining this Parthenon analogy to me on the fly, followed by the sentence I used to share it with you:

• Spoken sentence: “They sort of have this, there’s this illusion of symmetry, which they were trying to sustain, to give people a virtual experience of symmetry.”
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• Written sentence: “They gave people the experience of symmetry, but it’s an illusion.”

I haven’t stopped thinking about this great analogy. Now in the back of my mind, I’m looking for more examples of how it applies to writing. Let me know if you think of one.

Have a great weekend,

Ellen

P.S. ~ Bill co-wrote a fantastic short book called Ask Aristotle, which is now available in all formats, including an excellent audiobook read by Shakespearean actor Clifton Duncan!! You can get the audiobook on Amazon/Audible as well as Spotify, among other platforms. 🎧