THINK YOU USED ENOUGH DYNAMITE THERE, BUTCH?

by John M. Floyd

Just a thought: how many times have I read a long novel and wondered why it was so long, or read a short novel and wondered if it should have been a short story instead? Sometimes I even think a long novel should have been a short story instead.

If I have learned one thing as a writer of fiction, I have learned that all of us tend to write too much. And I don’t mean too many projects; I mean too many words. I agreed with Stephen King when he said, “If your first draft runs about 4,000 words, your second should go about 3,000. . . . The object here isn’t to shorten for the sake of shortening but to speed up the pace and make the story fly along.” Some of the published stories I’ve read look as if they could stand another draft or two, and that kind of overpadded fiction can be as dangerous—and dumb—as blowing up the money along with the safe.

A failure to communicate

Why do we tend to overwrite? I think there are several reasons:

(1) We learned, when producing term papers in high school, that more is better. The longer the paper the higher the grade—or so we thought. If, when finished, we could heft the result and it had weight, we felt we must have done a fine job. I’m reminded of the time Ward Cleaver sat at the breakfast table reading over a school composition the Beaver had prepared. He asked, “Do you really need ‘Mr.’ before this name?” Both Wally and Beaver nodded and said, “That counts as a word, Dad.”

(2) Writers, even famous writers, often seem to think readers just won’t get it if something isn’t explained in exhausting detail. All of us fear—and for good reason—writing something that isn’t clear and just doesn’t get the point across. Occasionally, however, the result is not clarity; it’s an information dump. That can be insulting to the reader: I assume you’re not too bright, so I’ll spell it out for you.

(3) A writer might think, since he’s done a huge amount of research on a subject, that he needs to include in the story all or most of what he’s learned. That’s a mistake. I think a writer should try to include only those things he himself found to be the most interesting during the research process; that’s probably the information a reader would find interesting as well.

(4) The last reason is the most unfortunate: writers sometimes just don’t have that much to say, and wind up adding loads of “filler” to inflate the story to the required word-count. The risk here is that that kind of padding is usually obvious. Afterward, I tend to avoid reading other stories and novels by those writers.

If there’s anything I hate when I’m reading, it’s feeling the need to skip over something—words, sentences, paragraphs, even entire pages of text. And don’t be fooled into thinking a reader is less likely to skip things in a short story than a novel. Lazy writing is lazy writing.

DANGER—QUICKSAND AHEAD

As a writer, watch out for the places in your story where things seem to get a little boggy. See if you’re using too much exposition and description. Consider inserting an exchange of dialogue. Try shortening your sentences and paragraphs a bit. Check for the overuse of passive voice. Weed out unnecessary commas and double words and adjectives and adverbs. You know the drill.

I still love the quotes by Alfred Hitchcock (“A short story is life with the dull parts taken out”) and Elmore Leonard (“I leave out the parts people skip”).

Don’t let your project blow up in your face. . . .