For context, I just finished reading a book called Kinesis. It skipped around in ways that didn’t feel natural to me, and I eventually realized that it was trying to just show the “important” parts of the story. Now I’m wondering how much of the “unimportant” stuff writers can really skip. For instance, there was a bit where the MC saved a bird, demonstrating his character. Then it suddenly changed topics, and I had no idea what happened to the bird. Did he keep it? Did he release it? I was confused until much later, when the bird popped out when he was trying to hide it, advancing the plot. The bird only appeared again when it was important. Or a later scene, where a secondary character was remarkably calm about an alien invasion. He explained it as having already gotten it out of his system. It didn’t feel natural to me, and I think it would be easier to understand him if I saw at least a little of his prior panic. But he was secondary, so his reaction was skipped because it wasn’t important. So how do you determine what’s really “unnecessary”? How do you know what’s okay to skip? (Probably related: Kurt Vonnegut’s “Every sentence must do one of two things – reveal character or advance the action.”)
Ultimately the deciding factor would be a reader. That's why having a few good beta readers can go a long way. Imagine if you had been one such beta reader for that book. But, how do I decide on my own as the writer? What's redundant is probably not necessary. As you quoted, every sentence should either add something to a character or advance the plot. So if a sentence does neither, well. However, also consider that writing doesn't have rules, but more of a pirate's code of guidelines to reference a famous movie series. If you take the absolutist view of what is or isn't necessary, you probably get something very staccato and rough like the book you read. If you have somebody who pays no mind at all to what is unnecessary, I imagine you'd get 100 pages of pointless things happening with no rhyme or reason. In the anime world this is known as filler. In relation to the point of the story as a whole, something may be filler. But some people enjoy a bit of filler, they enjoy the beach episode, because they get to see their favorite characters interact in an atypical context, and maybe that makes them feel more real and well-rounded. After all, life tends to be full of filler. It isn't some perfectly crafted narrative. Or maybe none of it is filler, and it's just your attitude toward it. An anime episode may be filler in relation to the main story, but the episode itself might tell its own complete mini-story. Some people hate the fat on their steak. Personally, I love it. In fact, I've often been the person who is given the fat from other steaks because my friends or family don't want any of theirs (which is probably super unhealthy for me, so it's a good thing I only go on special occasions). How helpful would it really be if instead of this entire post, I had simply responded: "Depends." Technically, that singular word gets across the entirety of my response in a low-resolution way. Is that what you would want though as a reader? If your readers are confused, or left feeling like they missed something, or feel like something important has been skipped, then whatever you removed was, uh, necessary. But writers do sometimes use tricks of characters blacking out, time skips, etc., to advance the plot. Everyone wants to read 1000 pages of Frodo and Sam taking the ring to Mordor, but nobody gives a fuck about their walk back. However, if you want to do an epilogue (which LotR does), then you do a time skip to the necessary part. This is *not* laziness, but more of an intuitive understanding of what is interesting to read and what the reader is going to care about. You'll notice that with the advancement of technology, people's attention spans have grown shorter and shorter. So whereas writing like Tolkien's was once perfectly normal and considered good form, some of it would now be called "purple" or "wordy" or something. For better or for worse. Personally, I think modern fiction reads like this: Spoiler Sentences are obnoxiously sparse. There is less room for voice. It reads like a robot. God forbid extra words. That's not allowed. All authors must sound the same. Conform. Conform. tl;dr What's necessary to me may not be to you. It depends.
The particular example you gave—the bird that was rescued and then disappeared until it became an important plot element again, sounds like a case of failing to keep a character alive. It's bad form to introduce characters (or I suppose animals, especially if they're supposed to be pets of the main characters or attached to them) and then just not mention them at all for several chapters. Makes them feel like no more than props or plot elements with no real life of their own. There should at least be mention, something like— 'The bird squawked occasionally from its cardboard-box house in the other room'. Or at the very least it should have been made clear that they kept it and took over the chores of feeding and housing it. If that were made clear nobody would be wondering what happened to it. In fact the main issue might really just be a lack of clarity about what happened to the bird.
I agree with Vonnegut and think that's some solid advice. It's something I try to put into practice with my own writing. And just doing that seems to keep my writing on the right track.
If the author was striving for word economy, maybe they should not have included the bird at all. Find something else that both forwards the plot and demonstrates the MCs character.
The bird was actually pretty useful to saving words. It’s not from Earth, so it helps the love interest discover the MC is an alien. Since the MC heals it, that’s also setup for him healing his love interest. A lot of the book feels like that, actually. Every element is used in as many ways as possible to avoid introducing excess complications. There are times when it really works. (I did not expect the callback to the time the love interest tried and failed to make a winged robot.) But at the same time, I don’t think the story necessarily needed to be that compacted.
