What Separates Malcolm Gladwell from Most Writers?
This is a case study, not writing advice
If you have found your way into Medium, into my article but have never heard the name of Malcolm Gladwell, I have a question for you:
Have you been living under a rock?
Just kidding.
There is a difference between who Malcolm Gladwell is and who he is for me. Objectively, he is a Canadian journalist. For me, he is a source of inspiration, someone to look up to.
I recently read Gladwell’s book “What the Dog Saw and other adventures” which is a collection of his stories published in the New Yorker magazine. I spent some time analyzing the stories. I had an agenda in mind. I wanted to know what sets Gladwell apart from most writers.
The articles Gladwell has written for New Yorker magazine are rather long. They are around 5000 to 6000 words. There is a concept of long-form journalism. Gladwell’s works mostly belong to this category. But long-form journalism is not only about the length. For example, there is a piece written about the controversy about J K Rowling. The length of it is around 2700 words. Even though by its length it’s not exactly comparable to Gladwell’s stories, there is a point I want to make.
Here’s a summary of the Rowling controversy article:
J. K. Rowling published a tweet that insulted the trans community. Some people defended Rowling’s freedom of speech and others said that Rowling should be more careful with her words. The writer of the article sees both sides and suggests that people should learn to discuss things more constructively.
I haven’t followed the case. But I didn’t learn anything new by spending 10 minutes reading the article. The writer is all the time repeating himself. Not only is he expressing the same thing many times, but also using the same words to do that. For example, he uses the expression “It all started” 5 times during the article. Also, he is all the time expressing his personal views related to the issue. Even though he uses many words, those words aren’t used to make the reader realize anything beyond superficial.
Based on my analysis of Gladwell’s articles, he uses his words wisely. There is no room for unnecessary repetition. Gladwell has a unique perspective in his pieces of journalism. He has different approaches depending on what kind of story he wants to tell.
There is a story “John Rock’s Error” about the inventor of the birth control pill. In Gladwell’s stories, there is always an underlying idea Gladwell is aiming to make the reader understand. I’ll borrow Gladwell’s words to explain this:
The Church could not square the requirements of its faith with the results of his science, and if the Church couldn’t reconcile them, how could Rock be expected to? John Rock always stuck to his conscience, and in the end his conscience forced him away from the thing he loved the most. This was not John Rock’s error. Nor was it his Church’s. It was the fault of the haphazard nature of science, which all too often produces in advance of understanding. If the order of events in the discovery of what was natural had been reversed, his world, and our world, too, would have been a different place.
Gladwell analyses people’s characters to understand their actions. Gladwell tells a story about the relationship between individuals and the world. He speculates what could have happened if something had happened differently.
If Malcolm Gladwell had written a piece about the Rowling controversy, here are some things he could have done:
- He could have written some personal information about Rowling
- He could have shared what people from both sides of the controversy had said. Not only paraphrasing but actual tweets, for example.
- He could have written about the science of cancel culture
- He could have presented similar cases
Gladwell has a habit of writing about science. Be it an article about an investment strategy, homelessness, or intelligence agencies, there are theories mentioned, studies explored and scientists introduced. Using science in your articles is nothing new under the sun. But to do it well is a skill not many have developed.
For example, this article talks about how people can avoid anxiety as a writer. The author of the article mentions that 19.1 percent of the American population suffers from an anxiety disorder. Also, in the article, it is a couple of times said that “research shows that”. Not only in this article but oftentimes someone uses scientific facts only as a quick way to prove a point.
Gladwell also uses science to support the perspective of his story. But he has a different approach. Gladwell goes deeper. He needs to go deeper. This has to do with Gladwell’s tendency to pick a unique perspective. He manages to show past events, phenomena, and people in a light none came to think about earlier. To make the reader understand the new perspective, he uses many ways. Explaining science in a meaningful way is one of them.
I’ve noticed something some people tend to do when they write online. Name-dropping. Mentioning names of important people to sound smart. I found an article about being able to hold contradicting thoughts. The article wasn’t bad. But it made me laugh as there were 14 names from influential people mentioned.
Gladwell doesn’t do name-dropping. He does introduce interesting people. But not too extensively. Quite often he introduces people most people don’t know. Instead of just sharing a quote from someone, Gladwell usually delves deeper into people’s characters. He shares relevant information about people’s backgrounds. By sharing information, the characters of Gladwell’s stories become more relatable. Sometimes that is needed to make the reader understand the perspective of the story.
By writing this article I am not saying that everyone should write like Gladwell. But there are things anyone, whether you are an aspiring or an experienced writer, can learn from Gladwell. Gladwell doesn’t have “a secret recipe” for all his stories. His stories share common elements but how the topic is being explored varies. There are still some common elements that can be found in Gladwell’s stories.
Those elements are:
- A unique perspective
- Explaining science in a relatable way
- Using many examples
- Introducing interesting people
- Appealing to the reader’s emotions
Anything Gladwell writes, he writes in a way that appreciates the reader. I hope someday, I can write in a such way. And I hope that this article inspired you, also, to write in a way that awakens the curiosity of the reader and holds it, until the end.
