My Most Concise Writing Advice
Tight is right
Once I get started on a story idea, my thoughts go in many directions—blessing and curse. Even as I noodled the sentence you just read, I backed up, recrafted it, added the bit at the end. By then my mind raced into tangents.
But this is a post about reining all that in. So it’ll be among the shortest Writer’s Guide post ever.
The upshot:
As you write a story, let your mind wander and collect all the ideas you can. Then set most of them aside.
The best writing, whether it’s a 140-character social media post, a 1,400-word essay, or a 140,000-word book, is tight.
Tight is not the same as short. Tight is concise. Tight is right. Tight is never windy. I get windy when I write. I’m doing it already. So let’s rein this post in and get back to the premise:
Every story can be shorter. Every paragraph can be shorter. Every sentence can be shorter. Almost. And just about every time you use fewer words in a story, a paragraph or a sentence, good things happen. The writing becomes more vibrant. Snappier. More active. Everything fits and flows better. There’s less fluff, less padding, fewer gerunds (verbs with “ing” tacked on).
Readers are unwittingly thankful for all the extraneous words and thoughts you did not include.
So write tight. Avoid tangents and parentheticals. Respect the period. Say what you need to say, and nothing more. And just see if that doesn’t improve your writing.
Cheers,
Rob
PS: The blessing part? All those crazy directions your mind goes, all the tangents and questions and ideas seeds, are fodder for other stories. The trick is to parse them out, use the necessary ones and set the rest aside. Start another file, save them for a rainy day. Someday I should write a story about tangents, but now I’m off on one so …
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I enjoy reading your posts. In this one, your spellcheck let something slide through. I think you meant "rein" and not "reign."
Thanks for the good stuff!!
Ack! That's 100% my fault, not spell check. Thank you for pointing it out. I've fixed it on the permanent web version. Really appreciate you taking the time.