Long
story short . . .
Anybody who tells you, “Well, to make a long story short . . .” will
invariably do just the opposite, talking on and on until your polite smile
becomes a rictus and your eardrums are limp.
It will make you appreciate those rare short speeches.
In all my time of taking photos to accompany my magazine articles, I’ve
seen few shots that could not be improved by cropping.
And throughout a long lifetime of writing articles and fiction, I’ve
produced little that could not be powered up and made more engaging by
pruning. Ruthless deletion of adverbs
(those lazy ly-ended words that seem
to sprout throughout our fields of exquisite exposition like weeds—tiredly,
carefully, cutely, dejectedly, confusedly, serendipitously, expialidociously. Banishing strings of mischievous adjectives
that can so gang up on a poor simple noun they overwhelm it—“One dark, damp,
humid, windy, hopeless, haunted, sleepless, nightmarish night, I . . . .” Excising all unnecessary words and phrases
and rearranging sentences to make them simpler.
And thus clearer.
Nothing teaches you expertise in this area better than strict article or
short story word limits. When you have a
900-word story you want to enter in a 500-word-limit contest, or a 4,000-word
magazine article your editor will reject if it’s not shrunk to 2,500 words, you
might fume and curse, but you’ll find you can do it. And later you’ll realize the writing is all
the better for having undergone that life-saving surgery.
From 1950 through 1997 Reader’s
Digest Condensed Books came out with four to six hardcover volumes each
year, each containing three to six abridged versions of current best-selling
novels and nonfiction books. Sold
through direct mail, they were popular.
A 1992 volume, for example, contained Acts of Faith by Erich Segal, Hard
Fall by Ridley Pearson, Bygones
by LaVyrle Spencer, and The Stormy Petrel
by Mary Stewart, all packed together in something like a fourth the total space
the original books had apparently needed.
Those editors were skilled, able to carve thousands of words out of
best-sellers while preserving the essences and emotions therein. I’ll bet in every case an author would have
sworn her or his book could not be cut so drastically without damage. And I’ll bet in every case that author was
pleasantly surprised at the condensed result.
The one criticism of my debut suspense novel, GUNS, in an otherwise glowing review by Publishers Weekly, was long pages of information-dumping the reader
did not need to know. I’ve since hung my
head and revised my more recent Kindle and Create Space versions.
I have lots more to say on this subject, but this entry’s already too
long.
Phil
www.philbowie.com
