What does “This story just won’t write” mean? Is this still an acceptable English phrase today?

Question

The New Yorker (March 20) carries an interesting story about the writing style of Time magazine posted by Calvin Trillin who worked for Time magazine as a ‘floater’ and editor in 60s under the title, “Time Edit.”

There is the following statement:

Writers at Time paid a sort of homage to those leftover tics by using phrases like “short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump.” It was largely because of the constant pressure to compress that Time prose struck me as more difficult to write than to parody. A common complaint then among Time writers who found themselves stuck on a story was “this story just won’t write”—as if the story had a will of its own and was using it to resist being shaped into a coherent narrative. I may have used the phrase from time to time myself. The problem was mostly space.

I don’t understand what “This story just won’t write “mean. I feel like agreeing with 'This story tells ....," but can the story write a story by itself? What does it mean?

The author explains that Time writers used this expression ‘from time to time’ because of space constraint, by admitting by himself "it looks like as if the story has a will of its own," and "the problem was space (constraint)."

However, is the expression,“This story just won’t write” grammatically right? Does it make sense to most native English speakers, or is considered good Time-style English?

If this is just a usual expression both grammatically and rhetorically, why the author should have picked up this particular episode in explaining Time’s writing style and its obsession to space, which seems to be rather wasting space to me?

Answer 1

Section IV of the OED2’s write (verb) entry is labelled “intr. for pass.” (so intransitive for passive), and contains this sense and citation:

27b. To be penned or written.

• 1862 O. Cockayne St. Marher. (1866) p. v, — The manuscripts..write straight away from end to end of the ruled lines.

I believe that covers your case, either in the passive or maybe even the reflexive:

• This story just won’t be written.
• This story just won’t get written.
• This story just won’t write itself.

Like Rob, I feel this is a somewhat informal even casual sense. But it is certainly contemporary.

Answer 2

'to write' is normally a transitive action. That is, an actor/agent performs the action of writing, and the written object is acted upon. A story is therefore the thing being written by the author.

It a strange poetic/figurative turn of phrase to treat the story itself as the actor, forgetting the author entirely. It sounds 'off' at first hearing. It should not be taken as an everyday usage that generalizes. But then it is not an idiomatic grammatical construction, rather just a clever turnaround.

Answer 3

In English it is quite usual for certain verbs, such as open, to be both transitive and, at least apparently, intransitive, though really transitive and passive in meaning without an expressed agent. So we have as possibilities:

• They open the doors every morning at seven o'clock. Here the verb is used transitively in the active voice.

• The doors are opened by the staff every morning at seven o'clock. Here the verb is used transitively in the passive voice and an agent is mentioned.

• The doors open every morning at seven o'clock. Here, the verb is apparently active and intransitive, but the meaning is transitive and passive, i.e, the doors are opened [by some unspecified agent] at seven o'clock. It is not possible here to specify an agent, at least not in the normal way by using a prepositional phrase beginning with by, although one could use very unnatural phrasing such as "through the instrumentality of".

• The doors are opened every morning at seven o'clock Here the verb is used transitively in the passive voice and an agent is not mentioned, although it would be idiomatically possible to do so.

There are some verbs that are used so often as in the third example that we do not feel that there is anything unusual going on as far as usage is concerned, nor does the usage seem necessarily either informal or formal. Another such verb would be close. But other verbs, such as write and drink, are not regularly used in this way, and when they are, the slight oddness is felt, a feeling which makes the usage seem most appropriate in an informal context.

As for the last two examples, both of which have passive meaning without an agent being expressed, the former seems more common. In the latter example, in which the verb is also passive in form, the difference, perhaps, is that the action feels more vivid, so that even though an agent is not specified, his or her presence is less "ghostly" than in the immediately preceding example where the active voice is used with a passive meaning.

Answer 4

[This is actually a comment on Mitch's comment just above and is too long to post as a comment. I understand that it may be deleted if this is not acceptable.]

• Using a transitive verb intransitively is not an instance of hyperbaton (which is the correct spelling), not even according to the definition to which you link.

• The clause beginning "that the pattern" has no verb. I presume that you meant to write "is" just before "a specific"; if not, please tell us what you meant to write.

• Although the article in the The New Yorker might not be considered an example of strictly informal language, the quote within the article “this story just won’t write” is clearly a case of representing what writers at Time did speak or write in an informal context.

• While deliberateness and articulateness may not be hallmarks of informal language, their presence does not exclude the possibility of informality. Indeed, sometimes writers choose deliberately an informal expression in order to be more articulate.