Less: On Wordiness

During the toast she gave at my wedding, my oldest friend, who’s known me since infancy, announced to the room, “Carrie’s first word was a paragraph.”

That might just be the most correct and succinct way anyone’s ever described me.

In just about every way I communicate, I pile words on top of clauses on top of sentences and hook them together to make long, winding trains of thought. This habit hasn’t been helped by my day job. Academia discourages brevity and often pressures published research into using unnecessarily obscure language, or totally redundant phrasing. (I can still hear one of my grad school professors ranting about the phrase the way in which. “For God’s sake, just say ‘how’!” she’d beg us.)

Honestly, though? I can’t really blame academic writing culture this time. As my friend implied, I’ve been wordy forever.

There’s a line in Ole Rølvaag’s 1927 novel Giants in the Earth, in which a character reacts to the flat treeless expanse of the Dakota Territories prairie: “How will human beings be able to endure this place? . . . Why, there isn’t even a thing that one can hide behind!” To some extent, that longing accurately describes my relationship with wordiness. It’s a thing for me to hide behind.

Sure, there are good—even great—reasons to be wordy, in all genres of writing. Sometimes you just need more length, whether it’s to explain an idea in full, or because a character is naturally verbose, or because the story has a lot of integral parts. Many of my favorite novels use detailed and lengthy prose to slow down the experience of reading. It’s incredibly gratifying to roll around in a massive field of words someone’s carefully grown for you.

But when you layer language on top of language on top of language, you also risk creating distance. For readers, yes, but also for yourself.

I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot lately, while I’ve worked on developmental edits for my debut novel, Loser of the Year. In her feedback for me, my editor very gently pointed out my tendency to overwrite, and suggested that I could cut down significantly on overall word count while not amputating any scenes or chapters. I’ll be honest: when I first read this, my immediate internal reaction was resistance. I’d been through this manuscript dozens and dozens of times by this point! I’d already gotten rid of so much! Every detail remaining absolutely had to be included, or it would compromise the integrity of the story!

But deep down, I knew my editor was right. So I dove back in and, over the next two months, killed as many darlings as I could. Ten thousand words, slashed for good.

Some of what I cut had to do with improvements to the quality of my writing, including some pretty basic mistakes that I’ll chalk up to being a debut writer. In the draft I sent my editor, I used a large number of filters—phrases that separate the reader from immersion in the story. Getting rid of those had the added benefit of lowering word count:

Mattie could make out the dark crescents of his nails, easily visible against pale skin. [Original]

The dark crescents of his nails stood out against pale skin. [Revised]

We already know Mattie’s the one observing this character’s nails because the book’s told through her POV. Rather then filter our perception through her eyes, we can just see what she sees.

Other revisions paired down unnecessarily long sentences. For me, the best writing is specific writing, and so I often build description around the attempt to capture a very particular experience or feeling. But, as my editor pointed out, some of those attempts ended up pulling the reader along an unnecessary track:

That frisson up Mattie’s spine was back, licking at her covered skin, crawling up her bare arms. [Original]

That frisson up Mattie’s spine was back, licking at her skin. [Revised]

Is the original more specific than the revision? Sure. But is anything really lost by eliminating that last clause (other than a second present participle, another one of my grammatical weaknesses)? We know Mattie is having a physical reaction to this moment, and we know how that reaction manifests. We don’t need every detail about where, precisely, her body experiences it.

All of the above changes tightened the manuscript significantly. But the biggest and most important revisions were for emotionally intense moments, when description often bogged down pacing. Often, the urgency of the MCs’ back-and-forth got lost, as in this early interaction (note: very slight book spoilers follow, but nothing that isn’t hinted at in the blurb):

“No,” Mattie said. The word sent a rush of exhilaration through her. “Our students don’t belong to you. Or me. As far as I’m concerned, everyone’s allowed to audition, and that’s what I’ll tell my classes.”

 After all, Mattie wasn’t about to push away any interested students, especially when most aspects of this job seemed more daunting than they had yesterday.

If she was going to spend a year of her life laying low, disciplining mean girls, and, apparently, finding ways to get over a very inconvenient attraction, at least Mattie could do all that with the best cast and crew she could assemble.

Jillian looked at her as though she’d turned green and sprouted two additional heads. “No?” [Original]

———

“No,” Mattie said. Refusal sent a rush of exhilaration through her. “Our students don’t belong to you. Or me. As far as I’m concerned, everyone’s allowed to audition, and that’s what I’ll tell my classes.”

Jillian looked at her as though she’d turned green and sprouted two additional heads. “No?” [Revised]

Normally, I’m not a big fan of clichés, but sometimes they’re right: less is more. If I’ve done my job as a writer, the two paragraphs in between the dialogue should be completely unnecessary. Readers already know Mattie’s take on this situation. Eliminating those paragraphs gets us right to Jillian’s stunned reaction, which is what we really care about.

Hiding behind too many unnecessary words is especially dangerous in romance, where the primary goal is to make your readers feel. When revising, I began to realize an uncomfortable truth about myself: part of the reason I’ve always loved language is because it can serve as a protective shield—a filter—between my brain and my emotions. With Loser of the Year, though, I’ve had to push back against that old habit in order to write the book I want to write. During edits, I stripped whole scenes down as much as I could, doing my best to leave only what’s necessary. Just Mattie and Jillian and their bruised, blazing hearts.

So will I avoid being long-winded in future? No way. (This blog entry alone is proof of that!) But I like to think I’m a better writer for forcing myself to prune relentlessly. I’ve certainly learned a lot about pacing, character, and story in the process. Hopefully, my next book will be even stronger because of it.

And in the meantime, I might try to be quiet a little more often. Turns out that sometimes, you can hear feelings better when you’re silent.

If you, too, would like to benefit from my editor’s insights, you’re in luck! She’s got a whole series of books on writing available for purchase.