Envylope
En-Chan Queen Vampy!
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2022
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Preface
Concision"That's great. How do we be concise? And why is it important?"
Why is it important?- Writing gets straight to the point without beating around the bush.
- Impactful moments have more oomph.
- Vocabulary is expanded to account for one word, which can fill the role of three.
- Writing doesn't feel like a large exposition dump. Note that you can still dump exposition while being concise.
- Writing has less "tell." By eliminating redundancy and unnecessary explanations, your writing stops feeling like a "tell."
- Readers don't feel like you are calling them stupid. Over-explaining will make intelligent readers feel like you, the author, are calling them dumb.
- Readers feel like your writing is more confident.
How do we be concise?Anytime you can cut out these words, do it: That, Was, Pretty, Just, etc. The worst offender is just because you can just put it just about anywhere, and it just works. That is also an example many people use too often along with pretty.
Stop using filler words outside of dialogue. Stop writing sentences that try to include as many commas as possible.
Spending too long on explanations and descriptions is also bad. Not only sentences and words. Describe enough so a reader can make a picture with broad strokes in his/her/their head.
The reader needs to use their imagination to fill in many details. Spending too long on more information takes time away from telling the story. Overdescription is the enemy of plot continuation. Any time you take a moment to describe, the plot is stalling.
Most readers will care about your characters and story more than the details that (example of unneeded words) you care about. They pretty much forget those details anyway unless they are important.
I may update this thread with examples@Story_Marc
Important note: This is in general and not a shot at you or anyone else.
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