When Words Fall Short: Coaching Writers Through the Philosophy of Language

There is a wide and often invisible gap between what a writer says and what they mean. This disjunction is not merely a matter of poor word choice or weak sentence structure. Rather, it is a philosophical fault line that runs through all language—a subtle and persistent divide between intention and expression, between the inner world of the writer and the outer world of the reader. The philosophy of language has grappled with this tension for centuries, and any serious coach or mentor in the writing world must grapple with it as well, if only implicitly. Helping a writer refine their craft is, at heart, helping them narrow that gap, or at the very least, learn how to navigate it with purpose and confidence.

In the mid-twentieth century, the philosopher Paul Grice proposed that communication is governed by a cooperative principle. According to Grice, speakers generally assume that others will interpret their words in light of shared norms and expectations. He famously distinguished between what is said—the literal content of an utterance—and what is meant—the implied or suggested meaning, which may go well beyond the surface of the words. These implied meanings are called “implicatures,” and they are everywhere in literature. When a character mutters, “Nice weather we’re having,” while thunder shakes the house and rain pours in through the broken window, the reader is meant to understand the irony, not to take the words at face value. The meaning is not what is said, but what is meant—and it is up to the reader to discern the gap and make sense of it.

In creative writing, this gap between saying and meaning is a dynamic source of tension and ambiguity. But it is also a frequent source of confusion, especially for developing writers. It’s not uncommon for an author to write a scene that, in their mind, burns with unspoken emotional depth or rich subtext—only to discover that the reader experiences it as flat, confusing, or emotionally thin. A mentor or writing coach is often the first to point out this discrepancy, not in a spirit of correction, but in an effort to help the writer bridge the invisible chasm between what is said and what is meant.

The coach, in this case, acts as an intermediary—someone who stands at the intersection between what the author believes they’ve communicated and what the text actually conveys. Part of coaching is to diagnose where the gap occurs. Is the tone of the dialogue undermining the emotional stakes? Are the descriptive details too vague or too overloaded? Is the pacing preventing the reader from absorbing what matters most? Each of these potential pitfalls is, at its core, a failure of alignment between what the writer intends and what the language delivers.

This is not to say that writers should always strive for complete clarity. In fact, many of the greatest works of literature operate in the margins of ambiguity, implication, and restraint. What matters is not eliminating the gap, but becoming conscious of it—learning to control it, shape it, and sometimes even exploit it. A skilled writing coach helps the author develop a sensitivity to these layers of meaning and shows them how to manipulate language so that what is left unsaid becomes part of the message.

Think, for example, of the kinds of tension that arise in understated dialogue. In the hands of a novice, understatement might simply read as lifeless prose. But with careful coaching, a writer can learn how to infuse those seemingly mundane lines with emotional depth, dramatic irony, or symbolic weight. A mentor might draw the writer’s attention to how Ernest Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory—the idea that most of a story's meaning exists beneath the surface—relies entirely on the reader's ability to sense what is meant but not said. In this light, coaching becomes not just a matter of helping with grammar or structure, but of guiding a writer toward philosophical insight: that language is not a mirror of thought, but a slippery and sometimes rebellious medium that must be handled with both discipline and imagination.

Coaching also plays a vital role in helping writers develop an awareness of audience. When a writer is immersed in their own vision, they often assume that their readers bring the same context to the text that they do. But readers don’t have access to the author’s intention unless it’s somehow embedded in the text—or intentionally gestured toward through tone, structure, and language. The coach is like a first reader, a proxy for the eventual audience, and their feedback is a barometer for how well the writer has bridged the saying-meaning divide. When a coach says, “I didn’t feel the tension you intended here,” or “This scene reads as comedic, even though I know it’s meant to be tragic,” they are pointing to precisely the kind of misalignment that philosophers of language like Grice have long been theorizing.

Moreover, coaching does not simply involve identifying problems—it involves helping writers develop strategies for intentional ambiguity. Some of the most profound moments in literature arise when meaning hovers just out of reach, when a sentence can be read in multiple ways, or when the emotional truth of a scene lies in its hesitation to speak plainly. Coaches who understand this help writers harness implication, metaphor, rhythm, and silence as tools of expression. They don’t just teach craft—they teach control, and with it, the confidence to trust the reader to do part of the work.

This kind of mentorship is particularly crucial for writers working across genres or cultural contexts where the norms of communication differ. In such cases, what is implied in one tradition may be misunderstood in another. A writing coach who brings a philosophical and cross-cultural lens can help the writer see how their language might be received differently by different audiences, and how to craft meaning that transcends—or purposefully plays with—those boundaries.

The philosophy of language reminds us that meaning is not fixed. It emerges through use, through context, through shared assumptions—and sometimes through their violation. Writing is, in this sense, always a kind of negotiation. The writer makes a move, the reader responds, and meaning is constructed in the space between. Author coaches and mentors are indispensable guides in this process. They listen not only to what the text says, but to what it wants to say, to what it could say more powerfully, more clearly, or more subtly. They help writers refine their instincts, test their intuitions, and ultimately grow more adept at guiding readers across the narrow and shifting bridge from intention to expression.

In a world saturated with language, it is tempting to treat writing as a transparent act—the mere recording of thought. But language is never transparent. It is flawed, flexible, charged with nuance, and forever incomplete. To write well is to embrace that incompleteness with purpose. To coach writing well is to help others find their way through it—not to close the gap between saying and meaning, but to teach them how to leap across it, and perhaps, in the right moment, to let the reader fall in.