I’ve spent the first few months of this year editing some stories that have been sitting in my to-edit folder collecting dust. Now that I’ve done some substantial editing, I’m ready to share my thoughts. Yes, I’m just that cocky.
Feel free to take or leave this advice. There are no magical writing tips out there that are going to work for everyone. At the end of the day, writing is personal, between you and the page. You need to be pragmatic when it comes to advice. It’s cheap to dispense, and nobody knows you better than you.
There is such a thing as prose being too sparse, but man oh man, fewer words are almost ALWAYS more powerful than more! I’m a wordy guy, so when I edit my first drafts I’m sorting through a lot of chaff. I was disheartened at first, but I’ve come to realize this is par for the course. It’s the way I write everything now — I barf up some bloated prose, then pare it into shape. In that vein, here are the various ways I’ve learned to trim my words.
Rewrite EVERY DAMN SENTENCE to make it shorter. That’s right. Every one. There is rarely a sentence that is too short, and if you do dehydrate your prose until it reads like a grade-school primer, you can always plump it up again, so don’t worry.
Here is an example from one of my stories that shows the power of chopping words. Here’s the first draft:
His supervisor, Dale Becker, had always been an asshole. Peter had long ago concluded it wasn’t treatment special to him — he was that way with everyone, apparently.
It was simplified in the final draft to:
Dale had always been an asshole.
Dale is a character mentioned for all of one paragraph. He’s named Dale and not “that guy” just to add some specificity, so he doesn’t need a last name. I dropped mentioning he was Peter’s supervisor because in the next sentence he gives Peter his pink slip, so obviously he’s his supervisor. I remove Peter’s thought about being singled out by Dale because it’s not directly relevant to the story, and later in the story I purposefully cast doubt on Peter’s character, so it serves the story to be vague here and let the reader wonder who was more to blame in the clash between Peter and Dale.
Kill similes and metaphors that don’t work. You can grow too attached to your own prose. I’m guilty of leaving turns of phrase in my own writing from draft to draft even if they fall flat because I don’t want to see them die. The thing is, if a construct of prose doesn’t sit well with you as the author, it’s going to flop and die for the reader. Delete anything that doesn’t completely please you.
Occasionally you can repair a lame grammatical construct and save it from the trash bin. Here’s an example. The first draft read:
Max had always kept his emotions folded like underwear in a drawer…
Two things bothered me about this. First, folded seemed like the wrong word. I wanted to emphasize how he hid his emotions away, not how tidily they were organized. Second… underwear? When I think of folded clothes, I think of underwear. I don’t know why. I do know that underwear doesn’t add to this simile, it detracts from it. It’s too specific without any relevance.
Here is the final version:
Max had always kept his emotions tucked away like clothes in a drawer…
Folded has been replaced by the more precise tucked away, and clothes is specific enough — the reader can imagine whatever article of clothing they like.
I talked about re-writing every sentence for brevity. An even better trick is to cut sentences altogether. Review each sentence in your story and ask: Is it important to the story? Does it clarify? Is it redundant?
I still have to edit my own stories repeatedly to get rid of useless sentences. I tend to project what I’m about to show by telling it. Here is an example:
Jeff Archer, head guard on shift, stood at the open door. Like all of Earl’s guards he was young and physically intimidating. Unlike most guards, though, he was also a super nerd, constantly talking about science documentaries. Jeff loved to talk when he was bored, and Earl’s pacing was clearly boring the hell out of him.
“So they were talking about infinity, see, and explaining that it’s all around us. They said imagine an inch of empty space.” Jeff held his thumb and forefinger up about an inch apart. “Now cut that space in half.” He moved his fingers closer together. “Then again.” He moved them closer yet. “You can basically do that forever and your fingers will never touch, because there are infinite little spaces between them. Cool, huh?”
Much of the first paragraph is unnecessary. Why say Jeff is young and physically intimidating? He’s a prison guard, most of us would assume as much. I don’t have to say he’s nerdy because I’m about to show it with his dialogue. And I don’t have to project that he’s about to speak out of boredom, because adds nothing to the scene.
Here’s the edited version:
Jeff Archer, head guard on shift, stood at the open door.
“So they were talking about infinity, see, and explaining that it’s all around us. They said imagine an inch of empty space.” He held his thumb and forefinger up about an inch apart. “Now cut that space in half.” He moved his fingers closer together. “Then again.” He moved them closer yet. “You can basically do that forever and your fingers will never touch, because there are infinite little spaces between them. Cool, huh?”
That’s it for now. I hope these tips help, and happy writing.
