I’ve spent a good amount of time this summer editing my most recent novel. While doing this I noticed that I was deleting a lot of long phrases that weren’t necessary. Most of the time they were overly verbose or somewhat redundant descriptions. Basically, I was showing off.
Showing off is usually a rookie and/or a first draft sort of mistake. Think of one of those people who talk just to hear themselves talk. Often they don’t even say anything, not really. A writer who is showing off is using words for the sake of using words. Getting carried away by the words or by our own clever ability to spin them into pretty phrases can happen to the best of us.
Try to avoid it and resist the temptation to keep them. Don’t think that no one will notice. I really liked some of the phrases I had to get rid of but they had to go. No matter how much I liked them they made me sound pretentious or, even worse, boring.
Hemingway once wrote a six word story. Six words. Of course he was a minimalist writer and we can’t all write like Hemingway. The world would be very dull without a variety of styles. Even the more wordy styles though choose their words carefully and avoid saying the same thing over and over again in different ways.
Be careful, be choosy and make sure every word pushes the story forward in some way.
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