Leave Out Any Extra Words That You Don’t Really Need

First Pass Pages of Promised

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

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’s brain, the more impact they will have.  If I can do it in five words instead of eight, I might snare my reader’s attention long enough to keep him reading into the next concise sentence.  Over the span of a book, the whole pace can feel tighter, stronger.  That’s simply good writing.

Considering my sentences word by word, like a poet, forces me to reconsider precisely what I’m trying to say.  It is not a dry, mechanical exercise, like checking spelling.  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.

For me, this is pure fun.

I am working on my first pass pages for Promised (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  a real book.  It’s easier to spot if I use the same phrase, like “she said coolly,” only a few pages apart.  That’s distracting.  What’s 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.  When I look closely enough, I can figure out which words are extra, or which sentence adds the least to an explanation or description.  Chances are, the spare words and the quasi-redundant sentence can go, and with cutting, I give more impact to what remains.

Favorite things to watch for:

A sentence that begins “There is/are…” can almost always be reworked to be more concise.

The word “really” almost always can be cut, except when it adds to voice.

If a character “starts to” do something, she can probably just do it, so cut the starting

Thanks, Strunk & White, for “Omit needless words.”  For me, in practice, it’s really more like “Cut needless words.”  Now I just have to find the right ones.

FIRST DRAFT:  Just for fun, here’s my first draft of this blog post, before I omitted needless words.

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

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

Also, considering my sentences word by word, like a poet, forces me to reconsider precisely what it is I’m trying to say.  I find mistakes that way, not just in language but in the ideas that still need to be refined.

For me, this is pure fun.

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’ll have on the page is that I can read them faster, like I read a real book.  It’s easier to spot if I use the same words, like “she said coolly,” close together in a distracting way.  You can say that once in a while, but not too often.  What’s even more important is I can sense better when a passage starts to drag.  In those cases, it’s 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.  Chances are, it could go, and by cutting, I’ll make the remaining sentences have more impact.  They’ll matter more.

Off to look for exmples.