Trim the fat!

Trim the fat!

Summer’s nearly over. Is your current project wearing it’s bikini body, or is it still packing a few pounds of last winter’s over-indulgence in words? Time to trim the fat, get that project honed-down to fighting weight and beach-perfect body.

Every short writer (short stories, short features, short essays) knows that wordiness can kill a submission. Strunk, and White, in their treatise on style admonish, “Omit needless words.” Shakespeare wrote “Brevity is the soul of wit.” In his “Sweet Thursday,” Steinbeck puts it another way, through the voice of one of his characters, “I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.”

Is your work full of hooptedoodle? (Define that any way you like.)

Okay. Maybe. Mine too—sometimes. So what’s the solution? How do we trim the fat? Ken Rand, in his concise “The 10% Solution” puts it simply: Cut ten percent. First then, I suppose we ought to attempt to differentiate between what is and what isn’t “fat.” We want to “trim the fat without cutting the meat.” We can all probably agree on things like redundancies, bloated phrases, too many examples, too much description. Do a quick scan. You might be able to lop 5-10% right there. Let’s fine tune that, though, take it a little farther. Our editing goal is to be accurate, clear, brief. Yes, even novels. Think about what makes you stop reading. Some of the best advice I ever got was “Leave out the stuff readers skip.”

Another great piece of advice was avoid adverbs. Do a search-find in your document for “ly” I’ll bet you found a lot. Now go back and replace those adverbs with strong, active verbs. The same for most adjectives. Pepper your writing instead with solid, vivid nouns and verbs. That said, not all modifiers are bad, are they? Well, no. It might be important to know the get-away car is blue.

Exercise: take one short writing example or excerpt, up to 1000 words for instance, and deleted every word ending in “ly.” How much ground did you gain? Did you reduce the example by 10%? Good. There’s more to cut, so let’s make a list. Remember, we strive for accuracy, clarity, and brevity. We are in “editor” mode here. Think of it as the need to justify every word to the Boss. What to look for (you can use your word processor’s search-find to great advantage here):

1. Eliminate redundancies and bloated descriptions – “He ran quickly” is the same as “He dashed.”

2. Delete adverbs (“ly”); reduce adjectives. Less is more. Don’t use two words where one will do.

3. Examine every instance of “to be,” especially was and were. These two verb forms often indicate passive voice. For stronger writing, avoid passive voice. (As in “Mistakes were made.”)

4. “That” indicates that there might be a problem. You can get rid of it most of the time. (Or, “That indicates a problem.” Cutting four words reduced the sentence by 50%.)

5. “Of” - The second sentence in item 4 above can be re-phrased: “In general, you can delete it.” (Four words, 40%). Still, I wouldn’t write America’s United States, not without a good reason.

6. Use only “said” as the attributive in dialogue. (If you’ve wiped out most “ly” words, you may have satisfied this all ready.)

7. “By” often indicates a problem area. “By the time” could be reduced to “when.” However, if accuracy and clarity depend upon knowing it was the bus and not the train—well, that is where you, as writer, must decide.

8. Him and her – when used as modifiers. Not talking about gender here; talking about redundancy. “His car was blue” (passive voice) or “he had a blue car”?

9. –ing – okay, it’s a gerund, whatever that is. I leave it to you to look up. They are not bad words, but they slow things down, and if you can find a better way to write the sentence, good.

10. “Like” – Like everyone, I like a good simile like I like a good cookie; but like anything else, you can carry a good thing too far. Time flies like the wind; fruit flies like bananas.

11. “About, very, sort of, kind of” and other weasel or wishy-washy words.

This is my list, or part of it. I encourage you to use it and expand it. Mr. Rand lists 22 words he calls problem indicators. Some of them I mention here. If you want to give your editor side some keys to writing tight, I suggest you find and read a copy of his book. Use the search-find in your word processor to help you trim the fat.

Just keep writing!

Marty “10%-less-fat” Gorsching