When it comes to writing good history, there are three critical elements: a good idea, adequate evidence, and engaging writing. These are distinct, but interrelated. Over the past few weeks of copy-editing for the Quarterly I have encountered a rare bird, a piece of scholarship that can boast a great idea and ample evidence, but very rough writing. Discretion does not allow me to say whether or not the submission will ultimately be published, but I can say that I enjoyed the work of reviewing it because it had well-supported, illuminating ideas (again, I cannot discuss anything particular to the piece here in case it is printed). Bracketing desperation-induced apathy ("I have to turn something in tomorrow, whatever its quality"), everyone writes what he thinks are good ideas with plenty of evidence to accept them, clearly conveyed, yet their readers beg to differ. So I'm going to indulge in the fantasy that a few paragraphs' reflection on these elements can help me avoid false positives of good ideas, evidence, and writing in my scholarship.
A good idea is definitely the most difficult element to define precisely, but here's a go at it: you have to provide something new and valuable. A narrative survey of the major points of the American Revolution is certainly valuable, but such a narrative has been written thousands of times, and most new treatments are likely to be more milk and not the cream at the top. A purely-aesthetic assessment of the best and worst dressed at the Second Continental Congress would probably be new, but the audience who found it valuable would likely be small. One of the greatest errors in this area is the conflation of "interesting" and "valuable." Though not a silver bullet, the question, "Why should a person care about this" can help clarify between the two.
Adequate evidence inheres a lot, and in every case it is largely defined by the idea being explored or argued. The more ambitious the historian in his idea, the more evidence will have to be marshaled. I suspect that the pitfalls change the further into the academy a person goes, but at the undergraduate and graduate level it seems that writers are generally most vulnerable to underestimating the scope and depth of evidence necessary. If an exhaustive treatment is not possible, a good historian has to explain how a representative sample was obtained. As with so many things, a little bit of acknowledgment goes a long way. Another exasperatingly common mistake is the failure to recognize the evidence that is most difficult to square with the author's thesis. Often the difference between a strong scholarly work and a truly influential one is the consideration of different sets of evidence that support divergent conclusions. As a final quick note, the available evidence is a major factor in assessing the feasibility of an idea. A biography of the Calusa man who killed Juan Ponce de Leon in 1521 would be a great idea...except for the fact that no documentary evidence exists from which to write it.
Quality writing is powered by the twin pistons of clarity and artistry. Any avid student of history will read texts--often textbooks--that present the information with no ambiguity, but with so little artistry it feels like chewing on hardtack. Then there are the historical poets who write with so much purple prose that readers' eyes are rolling too often to be able to stay focused on the text and its ideas. This is perhaps the most element for the historian, because it is the most subjective. I believe that the old popular historian Will Durant to have achieved a fantastic combination of dry wit and honest assessment of where adequate evidence ends and speculation begins--many find Durant just dry.
As has been hinted at a bit, these three elements are integrally-connected. An extraordinary writer can supplant an old classic's summary treatment of the French Revolution, but for an ordinary writer the same idea is a bad one. Conversely, even an amazing writer will flounder with a poorly-chosen idea, e.g., the biography of Ponce de Leon's assassin. Some topics, such as the English Restoration, provide quality writing within the sources themselves. Curating some of the more gifted mid-17th century writers for evidence can kill two birds with one stone--back up claims with evidence and give the reader some entertaining 'juice,' so to speak. If your subject writes poorly, or communicates in clichés, as Adolf Eichmann apparently did, then you'll need to quote sparingly and season with wit, as did Hannah Arendt.
Reflecting personally, I am most prone to underestimate (often out of laziness) the amount of evidence that I need to cite to support my thesis. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
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