"Never use two words when one will do."
We all try to avoid vagueness and redundancy in our writing. We want to be efficient with our words and to-the-point with our ideas. To practice this skill, I sometimes like to see just how many words I can pare down from a sentence or paragraph and still express the same general idea. For instance, I'm going to start with a quote from The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Hemingway:
Their courtship began with her admiration for his writing and hitherto spontaneous lifestyle. For her, it represented a new beginning. For him, it was an ending.
I cut 50 words, taking it from 76 to 26. Of course, this is overkill, and alot of the nuance is lost. This isn't meant to be a revising How-To, nor is it a critique of the lines in question. It's just for fun.
Here's what to do:
1) Edit and trim the lines of the poster above you. Try to keep as much of the meaning intact as possible, but be ruthless.
2) If somebody's already done one, but you think you can get it even shorter, go for it.
3) Post something yourself. It can be your own work (preferably first draft/unedited), or a line from a book, article, or any source you like* Lets try to keep it under 100 words per snippet.
*I'm assuming it's okay to use other author's lines for this without violating RYFW because, as I said, we're not critiquing or trying to make the lines better, only shorter, nearly to the point of absurdity. If that's still not cool, mods, let me know and I'll edit this post ASAP to say you can only post your own work.
I'll start by posting a line from my WIP, unedited first draft. For warm-up purposes, I tried to dig through for something that was particularly horrendous and in need of trimming, but you don't have to. Any line will do. The point of this exercise is to become so adept at trimming that you can cut from even the tightest of prose. Here we go:
"James rolls onto his side and sits up, his back and neck screaming at him for sleeping on the hard floor. His mind is sparing him from getting hit with everything all at once. First he feels the cold, then the hangover, then the discomfort from laying on the floor."
We all try to avoid vagueness and redundancy in our writing. We want to be efficient with our words and to-the-point with our ideas. To practice this skill, I sometimes like to see just how many words I can pare down from a sentence or paragraph and still express the same general idea. For instance, I'm going to start with a quote from The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Hemingway:
Their courtship began with her admiration for his writing and hitherto spontaneous lifestyle. For her, it represented a new beginning. For him, it was an ending.
I cut 50 words, taking it from 76 to 26. Of course, this is overkill, and alot of the nuance is lost. This isn't meant to be a revising How-To, nor is it a critique of the lines in question. It's just for fun.
Here's what to do:
1) Edit and trim the lines of the poster above you. Try to keep as much of the meaning intact as possible, but be ruthless.
2) If somebody's already done one, but you think you can get it even shorter, go for it.
3) Post something yourself. It can be your own work (preferably first draft/unedited), or a line from a book, article, or any source you like* Lets try to keep it under 100 words per snippet.
*I'm assuming it's okay to use other author's lines for this without violating RYFW because, as I said, we're not critiquing or trying to make the lines better, only shorter, nearly to the point of absurdity. If that's still not cool, mods, let me know and I'll edit this post ASAP to say you can only post your own work.
I'll start by posting a line from my WIP, unedited first draft. For warm-up purposes, I tried to dig through for something that was particularly horrendous and in need of trimming, but you don't have to. Any line will do. The point of this exercise is to become so adept at trimming that you can cut from even the tightest of prose. Here we go:
"James rolls onto his side and sits up, his back and neck screaming at him for sleeping on the hard floor. His mind is sparing him from getting hit with everything all at once. First he feels the cold, then the hangover, then the discomfort from laying on the floor."
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