The Writing Craft: Less is More

In Hamlet, Shakespeare wrote, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Like poetry and impressionist painting, great fiction suggests themes and meaning through events for the reader to interpret. In storytelling, less is more. Let’s examine some of the flab you can cut from a manuscript that the reader won’t miss.

One Is A Million

One well-told example can represent a universal truth. Rather than tell the story of five soldiers at war, try telling the story of one. Readers want someone to cheer for, and it is easier for the reader to follow one storyline than five. Focusing the story on one character gives the reader time to identify and understand a soldier’s struggles, fears, and hopes.

Overexplaining

Beginning writers underestimate their ability, so they repeat a concept, explain it, or otherwise beat the reader over the head with it. While it is true that people read most comfortably at a comprehension level three years below their last year of education, writers do not need to dumb down their writing for clarity.

For example, which sentence in this next passage insults the reader’s intelligence?

The night after her confrontation with her neighbor, she found a cat on her porch. When she nudged it with her foot, it didn’t stir, so she bent for a closer look at it. Its skull was crushed. Clearly, the animal had not died of natural causes.

Remove one sentence, and the entire paragraph resonates with emotional impact. The following examples overexplain by telling why a character does something.

As the boat sank, Susan coughed and swam to the shore to avoid drowning.

Burt wrapped his arms around his sobbing wife to comfort her.

Kim shouted to be heard over the roaring diesel engine.

Let the action speak for itself.

Redundancy, Redundancy

This advice from Strunk and White’s Elements of Style has improved writing since 1920–Remove every scene, paragraph, sentence, and word that does not carry weight.

At the sentence level, how many times have we mentioned a body part when it wasn’t necessary? She made a fist with her hand. He shook his head no. Looked with her eyes. Listened with his hears. Stood to his feet. Don’t even get me started on waving a hand. Unless a character is waving a flag, a baby, or a gun, let’s all agree that waving means using a hand. Okay?

Remember to watch for redundancy of meaning between actions and words. How would you revise this mess?

“Yes, of course, I will. Indeed.” She nodded her head up and down.

As-You-Know Dialogue

We’ve all tried to pack information into dialogue that doesn’t belong there. The problem comes when the reader reads it and wonders why characters are telling each other things they should already know. I call it the Russian Lit phenomenon.

“Hello, my older brother, Yorgi. How are you and your wife and five children?”

“We are fine, brother, Dmitri. Do you like your job at the mine where you dig for coal?”

Let the point of view character think about background information instead of forcing it into dialogue.

Name-calling

The next time you’re in a conversation, pay attention to how many times you speak the other person’s name or title in thirty minutes. Let that number guide you when you edit dialogue. Does this passage sound natural?

“Mom, you know I never liked broccoli. Why do you keep serving it?”

“Now, Anna, you need to eat something besides fast food.”

“But, mom, I don’t like vegetables.”

“Anna, you eat French fries, and they’re made from potatoes.”

Perhaps this name-calling habit arises from the desire to reduce the number of dialogue tags (Mom said, Anna said). I suggest using an occasional action tag to remind the reader who is who and what they are doing so the characters are not talking heads floating in space. An action tag is a separate sentence in the same paragraph as the line of speech.

“But I don’t like vegetables.” Anna pushed vegetables around on her plate.

But, but, you ask, what if there are three or more people in the conversation? Name-calling still sounds artificial, so try using more action tags. Anchor the reader in the setting and reveal the physical reactions of the characters to one another and their environment. Let them interrupt one another.

Lecture

Rather than bore the reader with a long passage of background or technical talk or boring stuff that stops the action, use narrative or a character to summarize it. Ask yourself why the reader needs to know the info, and then find an efficient, exciting way to summarize it. Especially with technical stuff, like aerodynamics of flight, nuclear reactors, or medical stuff, summarize! Paraphrase or use a fragment quote to reveal the technical nature of the info, but don’t go on past the reader’s endurance. Boil the tech talk down to an interesting statement about the problem and why it matters. The reader wants to know the time. Don’t explain how to build a clock.

After Bella found her seat on the plane, the woman beside her began a lengthy, incredibly unnecessary retelling of her gall bladder surgery, often saying, “Well, to make a long story short,” which she never did.

Despite the advice to show, don’t tell, would you really want to torture your reader with the entire description of a gall bladder surgery?

Wimpy Verbs

Watch for wimpy verbs and passive verbs. Revise! Aim for fewer words, more vital images, and active verbs.

• Casey walked very quickly from the room. / Casey bolted.
• Pete was playing the drums loudly. / Pete pounded the drums.
• Emily started to whimper. / Emily whimpered.

My last argument for brevity is to speed up the pacing. In the age of social media and umpteen satellite channels, the attention span of humans is decreasing. Cut to the chase. Make it relevant. Entertain the reader.

Long ago, I asked my journalism professor how long a news article should be. He said, “Like a woman’s skirt—long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be interesting.”

Resource: The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.