The cult of mediocrity will always defend padded out self-indulgence. I think you're missing what some are saying. Personally I'm not suggesting 'it must be short to be good'. It's; if you can cut down on the useless filler, do it. If you can't, then don't. Proper brevity requires effort, something many writers are unwilling to invest. Edit: I can't find the story of the Poet laureate who was paid a huge amount to write a poem for an inauguration and after several years delivered a 7 word poem, and when questioned she replied: I'm sorry, if I had more time I could have made it 5. But I did find these: In 1918 Woodrow Wilson was asked about the amount of time he spent preparing speeches, and his response was: "That depends on the length of the speech. If it is a ten-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all. I am ready now." 1690 the philosopher John Locke released his famous work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke commented on the length of his essay: "I will not deny, but possibly it might be reduced to a narrower Compass than it is; and that some Parts of it might be contracted: The way it has been writ in, by Catches, and many long Intervals of Interruption, being apt to cause some Repetitions. But to confess the Truth, I am now too lazy, or too busy to make it shorter."
That's it. I've tried to read too many shitty amateur books where all I can think is 'get the fuck on with it. I don't care.' The problem isn't that a work itself is long, it's that bad writers pad out stories with boring, useless, meaningless rubbish. Get on with it!
Did the thread's assertions - "brevity is good" ; "few is better than many" ; and a couple of others - suggest "it must be short to be good"? I think we can't tell - they're too short for that to be clear! But I'm sure that isn't what I was objecting to. I thought I was talking about the implication that "shorter is better." Better than what? Itself? I say the comparison of a longer version and a shorter version of a passage a writer is editing is as false as the comparison between Persuasion and Anna Karenina. Whichever version is cut down or expanded up becomes counterfactual - it ceases to be. It isn't that the edited version is better than the unedited version - they are categorically dissimilar because the edited version is and the unedited version is not. The shift from the brevity of the work to the quality of the writer I also find false. Bad writers would still be bad if they cut down their useless filler. They would still be bad if they showed instead of telling. Our limiting factor is our characters - who can never rise above our own character.
Actually I'm kinda the opposite of this – as writers we're hip-joined with themes and morals. And when the strangle-hold of formula gets us we tend to write pretty much the same fiction as everyone else. Especially when trends play a part as well. The very thing that does separate us is word usage. It's not that both will use dog – or black dog it's that the stand out will write – a meddlesome suburban dog – (Lolita Nabokov.) Mediocrity is in the details not the ideas.
I was simply countering one silly statement with another. I'll lay it down. Short does not inherently = good. But writing can often be made tighter, shorter, and more effective. Too often do writers waffle on with meaningless shit. It's lazy and bad. There's 100% truth that things can be too short. I think the aim is to be as efficient as possible but still convey the correct information, feeling, tone etc. And this may mean some flowery passages and other brief ones. A great example of this is in the movie 'Genius' where they edit a seemingly beautiful piece of writing down to a single short statement. Despite both loving the prose, they did it to make the work better. They did it with logic and purpose. They did it for effect. The power of (and need for) brevity: Start at 2:45
You could Occam’s razor it and say that we shouldn’t multiply entities beyond necessity. Where most people would see that in terms of words (say it in one word rather than more than one), I’d be willing to think of it in terms of meaning. If someone said “there’s a briefer way to say that”, one could reply “not without losing what I wanted to say”. Think of the beautiful descriptions, similes, metaphors and analogies that would get lost from writing if we were just willing to say “she was tall” or “he walked in”. Yep, it’s quicker, but did you just want to point out their height? Did you only want to tell me that they entered the room?
As per the clip above, it's important to stick to the point. What are you actually trying to say. There's also a difference between what you want to say and what you should say. Proper brevity is difficult, which is why most people seem to object to the idea. To say what you mean in the simplest possible way is hard. Beautiful descriptions have their own function. But so does brevity.
is it really more common for a piece to be too clipped and sparse than it is for it to be full of unnecessary bullshit? I think unnecessary bullshit is way more common. For my part, I do try to make my writing lean. Some marbling is good; I don't want it to be threadbare, but that is so seldom the problem. But what's more important is that the writing have some sort of life and sparkle to it, which I think leanness can be in the service of; but leanness and brevity can become dryness pretty easily. There should be a certain moistness and a generosity of expression. But it is better to feast once in a while than to indulge in a surfeit all the time, because you can't enjoy the food the same way when you glut yourself. I think the ideal is a nice, moist piece of writing which isn't oversaturated. Spongy yet firm, so to speak. That being said, brevity is the soul of wit. That's absolutely true. And anyone who's tried writing poetry ought to know that you should choose your words for maximum effect. Where one can bear the weight of two, then one will do better than two.
This is another of those things where people want to choose between the 2 sides, but really there's a center point. What you want to do is find the balance point. Too Little_______JUST RIGHT_______Too Much /\ Important to note—the balance point isn't directly in the center, it moves. The trick is to find the perfect place for it each time.
The relationship between verbal and written is tricky. How do you simulate an actual conversation? The following would all mean different things if spoken. Is that what you thought I said? Is that what you thought I said? Is that what you thought I said?
You could use italics where you bolded, but it's best to let the reader supply emphasis. They should be able to tell which version was intended by context. Or possibly a little re-wording would get it across clearly. I make it a habit to read over my stuff and look for anything that can be misunderstood, and especially unintendedly stupid or funny word-images. When I find something like that I think of better ways to express it. If I had written a line like that and the meaning wasn't clear I'd find a way, through context or otherwise, to make it clear, unless absolute clarity wasn't important. Sometimes a little ambiguity is better.
