{"id":1709,"date":"2012-04-02T11:30:34","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T15:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=1709"},"modified":"2012-04-02T11:37:21","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T15:37:21","slug":"leave-out-any-extra-words-that-you-dont-really-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/writing\/leave-out-any-extra-words-that-you-dont-really-need\/","title":{"rendered":"Leave Out Any Extra Words That You Don’t Really Need"},"content":{"rendered":"
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First Pass Pages of Promised<\/p><\/div>\n

Or as Strunk & White<\/a> put it: \u201cOmit needless words.\u201d\u00a0 I love that maxim.\u00a0 It never fails to make me laugh, like I\u2019m wise to an inside joke.\u00a0 It\u2019s so incredibly concise!\u00a0 I embrace this advice as much as I possibly can when I\u2019m revising.\u00a0 Early drafts are all about ideas, coming up with them and expanding upon them.\u00a0 Characters, plot, and setting must come first.\u00a0 But eventually I go around a corner where I focus on the best way to transmit my messy ideas, and that\u2019s when I invoke Strunk & White in my tightening.<\/p>\n

Producing clean, tight paragraphs and sentences is as relevant in fiction as it in non-fiction, because the more efficiently I can get my ideas into someone else\u2019s brain, the more impact they will have.\u00a0 If I can do it in five words instead of eight, I might snare my reader\u2019s attention long enough to keep him reading into the next concise sentence.\u00a0 Over the span of a book, the whole pace can feel tighter, stronger.\u00a0 That\u2019s simply good writing.<\/p>\n

Considering my sentences word by word, like a poet, forces me to reconsider precisely what I\u2019m trying to say.\u00a0 It is not a dry, mechanical exercise, like checking spelling.\u00a0 I find deep mistakes, not just in lazy language but in the ideas that still need to be refined, and this can send me back to an idea stage again.<\/p>\n

For me, this is pure fun.<\/p>\n

I am working on my first pass pages for Promised<\/em> (yes, still), and one of the cool things about seeing the text formatted on the page as it will appear in the printed book is that I can read the story faster, like \u00a0a real book.\u00a0 It\u2019s easier to spot if I use the same phrase, like \u201cshe said coolly,\u201d only a few pages apart.\u00a0 That\u2019s distracting.\u00a0 What\u2019s even more important is I can sense better when a passage starts to drag, which is the biggest clue that I need to omit more needless words.\u00a0 When I look closely enough, I can figure out which words are extra, or which sentence adds the least to an explanation or description.\u00a0 Chances are, the spare words and the quasi-redundant sentence can go, and with cutting, I give more impact to what remains.<\/p>\n

Favorite things to watch for:<\/p>\n

A sentence that begins \u201cThere is\/are\u2026\u201d can almost always be reworked to be more concise.<\/p>\n

The word \u201creally\u201d almost always can be cut, except when it adds to voice.<\/p>\n

If a character \u201cstarts to\u201d do something, she can probably just do it, so cut the starting<\/p>\n

Thanks, Strunk & White, for \u201cOmit needless words.\u201d\u00a0 For me, in practice, it\u2019s really more like \u201cCut needless words.” \u00a0Now I just have to find the right ones.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

FIRST DRAFT: \u00a0Just for fun, here\u2019s my first draft of this blog post, before I omitted needless words.<\/em><\/p>\n

Or as Strunk & White put it: omit needless words.\u00a0 I love that Strunk and White maxim.\u00a0 It never fails to make me laugh, like I\u2019m remembering an inside joke.\u00a0 I also embrace it as much as I possibly can when I\u2019m revising.\u00a0 Early drafts are all about ideas, coming up with them and expanding upon tham.\u00a0 But then, I go around a corner where I start considering the best way to communicate or express those messy ideas, and that\u2019s where I start tightening paragraphs and sentences.<\/p>\n

This is as relevant in fiction as it is anything else, because the more efficiently you can infuse your idea into someone else\u2019s brain, the more impact it will have.\u00a0 If you can do it in five words instead of eight, you might get your reader\u2019s attention long enough to go onto the next consice sentence.\u00a0 Over the span of a book, it can make the whole pace feel tighter, stronger.<\/p>\n

Also, considering my sentences word by word, like a poet, forces me to reconsider precisely what it is I\u2019m trying to say.\u00a0 I find mistakes that way, not just in language but in the ideas that still need to be refined.<\/p>\n

For me, this is pure fun.<\/p>\n

I am working on my first pass pages for Promised (yes, still), and one of the cool things about seeing the words formatted to fit on the page in the placement\/orientation they\u2019ll have on the page is that I can read them faster, like I read a real book.\u00a0 It\u2019s easier to spot if I use the same words, like \u201cshe said coolly,\u201d close together in a distracting way.\u00a0 You can say that once in a while, but not too often.\u00a0 What\u2019s even more important is I can sense better when a passage starts to drag.\u00a0 In those cases, it\u2019s not too late to cut something, and when I look closely enough, I can figure out which sentence is adding the least to an explanation or description.\u00a0 Chances are, it could go, and by cutting, I\u2019ll make the remaining sentences have more impact.\u00a0 They\u2019ll matter more.<\/p>\n

Off to look for exmples.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or as Strunk & White put it: \u201cOmit needless words.\u201d\u00a0 I love that maxim.\u00a0 It never fails to make me laugh, like I\u2019m wise to an inside joke.\u00a0 It\u2019s so incredibly concise!\u00a0 I embrace this advice as much as I possibly can when I\u2019m revising.\u00a0 Early drafts are all about ideas, coming up with them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[109,37],"class_list":["post-1709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-promised","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1709"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1715,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709\/revisions\/1715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}