What I Learned about Style and Writing from Watching Bruce Lee

Martial arts isn't everything, but everything is martial arts.

In striking, the most important factors are, in order: accuracy, then speed, then power.

If you can't hit your target, no amount of speed or power can compensate. Once you're on target, it doesn't matter how hard you hit if the strike doesn't get there in time. But when a strike is on target and on time, power naturally emerges.

In writing, especially technical writing, the most important factors are, in order: accuracy, then speed, then power.

If you can't say what you mean, nothing else can compensate. If you can say what you mean, but it takes you too long to say it, your reader will lose interest. But when you say what you mean and say it efficiently, power naturally emerges.

As with martial arts, accuracy, speed, and power are developed with practice. After practicing the fundamentals, you develop style.

Style has a triple meaning in martial arts:

1. There are dozens of styles of martial arts, from Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to TaeKwonDo.
2. Within each martial art, there are various styles, like WFT, ITF, and ATF TaeKwonDo.
3. Each martial artist develops their own style based on their abilities and experiences.

These layers of style inform one another. For example, I'm light on my feet when wrestling because I'm borrowing from my TaeKwonDo footwork.

This is how style is usually presented, as the positive space defined by strengths. But perhaps style is the negative space defined by weaknesses.

Bruce Lee defined the "style of no style" in Jeet Kune Do (meaning The way of the Intercepting Fist). He said "There's no such thing as style if you understand the roots of combat." In this definition, everyone is practicing the same martial art: the practice itself is the art.

A perfect martial artist would have no style as he would have no weaknesses in any discipline to create the negative space in which style lives. A perfect writer would be equally able to write a dissertation, a poem, and a viral TikTok script.

Some champions, like Khabib Nurmagomedov, are champions because of the positive space in their style. Others, like Islam Makhachev, rely on their lack of negative space.

Some writers, like Dave Barry, excel at a single craft for decades. Others, like Steven King, can "take a break from their usual style and crank out a Shawshank or a Green Mile."

The exercise I find most useful when doing valuable writing is to pick a model text from a different genre. The model text, distilled, is a set of style choices that give a starting point for developing a style with both more positive space and less negative space.

Lee's most famous quote reads "You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend." Lee's perception of art survives in changing language, content, and context.