Writing Short When You're Long-Winded

I like to talk.

If you haven’t figured it out by the length of my blog posts by now – just meet me. Chattering is my cup of tea. :-) That’s why speech-language pathology is the perfect profession for me. People ‘expect’ me to talk! And I’m never reluctant to oblige.

Problem is – this propensity toward prattling on isn’t the best skill for a writer. Yes, I know – we have to develop words on the page, but there’s the clincher. Our words must we well chosen, well placed, succinct, and valuable to the story.

In short: what needs to be said.

So, I realized my very bad habit of blabbering and decided to work on it.

A few tips?

1. Get a critique partner who wields an editing pen with the fluidity of drawing breath. Seriously. If you choose someone who writes outside of your particular genre too, then they are a bit pickier. That helped me.

Here’s a comment Ruth Logan Herne gave me once when she was critiquing a chapter for me.

“Your love of words shows. That’s a nice way of saying ax some of them. Tight, tight, tight.” Later on she wrote. “Make the point with snark and not so many words.” Then after she’d written the word ‘delete’ for the twentieth time, she wrote it again and said this, “delete. I love being heartless at your expense. You know that, don’t you? I haven’t had this much fun since I tortured ants with a magnifying glass. SWEET!!! :-)”

LOL. Don’t you just love it! The great thing about her comments is that she’d go through and ‘show’ me ways to tighten. It’s not easy for a lover of words and…oh let’s just face it: blabbermouth. Sigh.

Tightening may be choosing a stronger verb, taking out an extra prepositional phrase, breaking one long sentence into two more concise sentences…and watching for redundancy.

2. Read Self-Editing for Fiction Writers

I just started reading this book last week and I’ve already learned so much. Written by Renni Browne and Dave King, this book was on so many top lists of authors at ACFW, I decided I needed it too. Now, how does this book help you write short? It teaches you about concise writing, appropriate 'beat' writing, proportion writing, and the difference between what is truly needed and what’s superfluous.

3. Write a short story

I challenged myself to write a short story. 2500 words. For a person who writes novels well over 100K, slicing words down to 2500 was incredibly difficult. What I learned? Only the important stuff matters. When you have to tell an entire story in a short amount of time, you are very picky about what you choose to add into it. You can read the short story here - here's a hint, it's a modern day version of P & P entitled Second Impressions.

4. Pretend you’re a scriptwriter

A friend told me to think this way. As if you are writing a script. What happens when you think like a scriptwriter, is you just put the basics. Then, when you go back to the ‘basics’, you layer all the ‘pretty’ stuff on top of it.

Honestly, I can’t tell you how much having a crit partner/or reader helps to slice through the extras in your writing. Writing the short story, though challenging, was a fantastic teacher that I CAN write short.

It’s not my first choice, mind you. I’d much rather ‘go long’, but there’s such a thrill in the challenge. It’s also a great learning experience. I’m in need to do it again – just to remind myself that short writing, teaches you how to be a better long writer.

Ever written a short story?

What are some tips you’d give to be a more concise writer?