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