Some of you may have noticed, a million years ago when I made my latest TIWIK post, I posted #64, then went straight on to #66, my last TIWIK post. I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again: I’m a writer, not a mathematician. Clearly, the universe was telling me to take a break from blogging. But I’m back now, missing post in hand, ready to show the world that I CAN count to 70, let alone 101. One one final ironic note, this post is about counting. Word Count, that is.
Without further ado, #65 of 101 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Wrote my First Book:
One of the starkest differences between the writing of a beginner and that of a seasoned writer is wordiness.
This is a topic where I have been historically weak. One of my greatest challenges has been learning how to cut my writing down to bare bones. Sometimes writers don’t notice we’re writing wordy prose. Sometimes we do it on purpose, trying to emulate what we think of as an academic or intelligent-sounding writing voice.
Either way, learning to cut words out of your prose will change the way you write forever and put your books in league with the best authors out there.
Cutting words can be difficult because it’s not just a matter of a chop-chop here, a chop-chop there. It’s not merely removing excess “thats” and unnecessary adjectives. Cutting words actually requires you to rethink the way you structure your sentences and paragraphs, to consider how to put your ideas in the simplest form possible.
One of my greatest aids in this endeavor has been Word Count. My journey into sparsity started when I took a short story I had written in about five thousand words, and attempted to shave it down to two thousand words for a writing contest. That’s right, I had to shave off roughly two-thirds of the story.
Most of the word-count was reduced by changing key elements of the story; shortening scenes or removing them altogether. But ultimately I reached a point where at least a thousand words had to go, with little change to the structure of the story itself. I had to harvest these words sentence by sentence.
The process taught me that no matter how many words you think you need to tell a story, you can always tell it in fewer.
After going through this with a couple more short story submissions, I began to see the value of applying it to my longer works. I assigned myself maximum word-counts for scenes, and stuck to them. I still use this technique sometimes with line editing. If my manuscript is 150K words, I’ll arbitrarily decide to shorten it to 145K words. Since the plot is already set at the line edit stage, all of these words have to come out of the prose.
So what are some ways to shorten wordy sentences? These are some techniques that work for me, but there are surely as many word-slashing methods as there are writers.
Avoid Redundant Ideas
Chances are there are entire sentences, or large parts of your sentences, that are restatements of ideas you’ve already said somewhere earlier in your writing. Sometimes restating ideas is necessary, when you want a certain thing to really stick in the reader’s mind. Most of the time, however, you want to avoid it, and you always want to be aware of doing it, never restating ideas without having a good reason. When you line edit, read through the draft once through quickly, looking for ideas that are stated over and over again. Have you ever been reading a book and thought, “ok, we get it already, she wants to be a vampire!” This is also a place where writing groups and beta readers can be extremely helpful. If your initial readers are confused when you reference an idea later in the book, chances are you haven’t repeated it enough. So, err on the side of less is more, because you’re more likely to hear about less from readers than about more. But more will still be irritating, and it will cost you word count.
Avoid Wordy Descriptions
Find one or two words that deliver a visual image with maximum impact. Have you ever read a book where the author takes a paragraph or more to describe a character? Not only does this take a toll on your word count, it also can bog down the reader, slowing the pace. The same can happen on a sentence level, when you use too many adjectives and adverbs. When you come across wordy descriptions during a line edit, don’t panic! Chances are the image you want is in there somewhere, you just have to chisel around it. Start by circling words that most closely fit the impression you want to give about your character (or whatever you are describing). Can any of these words be more specific? Pull out your resources from previous posts, thesaurus’ etc. Set a limit or goal, such as, “I’m going to cut this paragraph to one sentence,” or “I’m going to use only one adjective to describe this character’s eyes.”
Marry Action and Description
I’ve mentioned this before but it bears repeating here. I can’t take credit, this concept came from the illustrious Laurel Leigh. Instead of inserting a paragraph or even a sentence of description amidst the action, slip your description into an action sentence. “His muscles bulged as he parried, throwing back sweat-damp black curls with a toss of his head.” Ok, maybe you don’t have to be that campy, but you get the idea. It’s still better than: “He was a muscular man with black curly hair dampened by the sweat of his exertions. He parried . . .”
And, speaking of action . . .
Avoid “Staging” Action Scenes
Instead of step by step action sequences, reword your action scenes to leave an impression of the actions you wish to convey. When you stage action step by step, not only are you using valuable words on actions that are probably not necessary to state outright, you also run the risk of having your action scenes read like a list, rather than a high-impact, seat-edging, page-turning thrill ride. When I write action scenes, I try to think in terms of POV. If the point of view character is observing the action, what are the things that stand out to them, and why? For example, who they are rooting for will alter where their eyes are drawn as the action plays out. Likewise, if your POV character is the one engaging in the action. What parts of the action impact the player the most? What are they looking for in the action around them, and with what important actions are they responding? As with redundancy of ideas, it’s a fine line. Leave too much out, you risk confusing the reader. Put in just enough action to help the reader connect the dots and form a cinematic picture in their mind.
Lose the Conjunctions
Find a sentence in your work that has two clauses and is split with a conjunction, and separate the clauses with a period instead. Or rather: Find a sentence in your work that has two clauses and is split with a conjunction. Separate the clauses with a period instead. Yes, this only takes out one single word. It can make the writing stronger. It can be a good thing to do during action scenes, when you want short, punchy sentences. Warning: This won’t always make sense. You don’t want to go around slashing conjunctions willy-nilly. Try it in a few places and you’ll start to get a sense of where it makes the writing stronger, and where it just sounds weird.
Remove Passive Voice, Put the Subject Up Front
Another way to think of this is to understand sentence structure at its most basic form: subject, action, object. “The girl threw the ball.” The further the subject is from the beginning of the sentence, the greater a chance that you have some unnecessary words in there. Passive voice, a notorious offender when it comes to obscuring subject, always adds at least one unnecessary word, and tends to make the writing weak. “The ball was thrown by the girl.” Unless you have some reason for emphasizing the ball in this example, move the girl back to the beginning of the sentence where she belongs. Here’s another example: Wordy: “It is with great sadness that we deliver this news.” Better: “We deliver this news with great sadness.”
Practice Sparsity with Social Media
Twitter is the obvious culprit, but Facebook posts need to be spare in order to get people’s attention, and even blogging can be a great practice at economy with words. Replying in comments also requires brevity and clarity. The more you post in social media, the more these practices will seep into your fiction writing!
So that’s the missing post, folks! How do you eliminate wordiness in your own writing? Let us know in the comments.
Next time on 101 TIWIK, we cruise past the already posted number 66 and on to #67, about how writing poetry can inform your prose. Till next time . . .
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