Write Simply

Counterpoint; writing simply isn't useful in all cases, communicating simply is telling a first grade student that multiplication is repeated addition, yes it works in most day to day examples, but it breaks down when you start looking closely - how do you add something to itself zero time?

Communicating simply can leave vague generalities to a technical conversation or decision making process that allows for those involved to make the wrong assumptions; but if you take the time to give precision to the process you can remove those assumptions without harming the overall communication. One doesn't need to go in depth about how a decision tree works or a random forest works to explain the pros and cons of the process, and the assumptions made to get the results.

Writing simply in all cases is the equivalent of "when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail," writing precisely is using a screwdriver when you're working with screws and a hammer with nails. Use the right tool for the job, sometimes simple isn't correct, and sometimes precision isn't either (elementary school algebra vs algebraic theory).

Yes - I certainly didn't want to impart 'the obvious' in my response, but I'm not sure if there's an answer to your more literal question. If there was, we would have read an HN post on how there's a great new AI that develops compelling literary works, art, and music based on analyzing past masters and current psyche. Of course, there are AI writing, painting, and music composition systems, but other than seemingly random chance, they have yet to produce something compelling (novel, yes).

I do believe many great artists had a certain degree of mental affliction - not so much to incapacitate, but to provide additional insight. For example, it's been said that Ravel's Bolero was written in the early throes of his mental affliction, hence the repetitive theme. I completely agree with you - compositions (classical and modern) ultimately take us on small adventures from one place to another and back - happiness, despair, melancholy, and so on. As you mention, the melodies are the main 'characters' in the story, supported by chord sequences, rhythmic patterns, ostinato, and so on, all perversely using our ancient and deep auditory instincts of baby wails, hurt fellow tribe members, dangerous animals, thunder, laughter, etc. against us to elicit an emotional response. A great song creates a personal story in the listener's mind based on past experiences. Great painters and authors strive for the same response, but I think it's a more difficult task; for some reason we're more susceptible to auditory emotions vs. visual or the written word. Of course, soundtrack composers combine the visual with auditory very effectively; the whole being more than the sum of individual parts.

As for creating an entire world on which to base novels and characters on, Hemingway does touch on this as well, stating roughly that he could have made The Old Man and the Sea 1,000 pages with every detail exposed and examined (and that approach has successfully been used before), but it was much more compelling (and difficult) for him to eliminate all unnecessary things and have the town exist under the waterline as internal experience and just let the novel show whats important, which connects the reader with the story, as they have to fill in the details with their own experiences and ideas as opposed to Hemingway's.

Jacques Barzun somewhere remarked that what makes for difficult reading is not length or number of words but density of thought. He instanced Dickens as a writer who used long words and complicated syntax but whom everyone finds easy to read.

Regarding writing as editing:

This is a big problem in churches. As a child and young adult I spent countless hours listening to sermons on Sunday mornings. At some point, I realized that many sermons were delivered without editing. Every week the pastor has to deliver a certain amount of content, regardless of whether they have anything valuable to say. As a result, at many churches what you get is a combination of plagiarism and stream of consciousness. At only a few did I find any evidence of editing, and at even fewer editing by another person. The difference in quality was immense, and I believe that to a substantial extent the growth of the church would be correlated with that factor.