Yin And Yang

Good prose is often described as “efficient.” Eliminating extra words helps the reader by letting the author get out of the way.

Conversely, “designed by engineers” is, at best, a backhanded compliment.

Your text has many jobs to do, but it can all be summed up in terms of form and function. Functionally, text must convey a semantic payload. That is, meaning with a little m. On the flipside, the form of the message is your style. It’s the flavor that makes your work uniquely yours. Both are important: have something worth saying, and then say it well.

Where to draw the line between spare and terse is subjective. It’s also genre-dependent, and at the mercy of fashion There is no one right answer. Writing clean isn’t about brinksmanship, skimming the event horizon of a flat voice. It’s about not burying the message under ten feet of fluff. (Or substituting prolix phraseology for actual content.)

Blurry lines become a bigger concern when you write with a partner. What if one of you suggests taking out “some extra words,” referring to a passage that’s essential to the other’s identity as a human being? Not that it’s been that extreme, but this issue is relevant in the writing cave lately. Jen is nearly three-quarters of the way through an editing pass on Book Three of the Divided Man series, and it’s a manuscript that hasn’t been workshopped as much as the other two. Translation: there’s a lot of cutting to do. Kent is, for the most part, on board with those cuts. Really, 99+% of them are things he agrees with, even when the overabundant descriptors being excised are things he lovingly placed there to begin with. When it comes to that sub-one-percent, though, he takes a stand.

Your writing partner can help you rein in your verbosity, or provide the missing sizzle for the steak. You can do the same for her.