And not a word more...

[John Dean]

I have been working with a number of new writers over recent months and to be exposed to their creativity, enthusiasm and burning desire to learn their craft has been a joy.

One theme that we keep coming back to is the requirement to ensure that every word is needed. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, all writing is about every word doing its job and with that come numerous pitfalls. Yes, you may have lots to say but in doing so do you distract from the story?

In a number of pieces on which I have advised, words, lines, passages and even whole chapters ended up being cut to avoid overwhelming the reader with information that they did not really need.

Did the stories lose anything for that? Not really. For example, they may have left the reader to work out a little more about the character, using the information they were given, rather than having the character’s personality explained to the nth degree but that’s OK. Readers like having to make up their own minds about things as long as they are given enough information to work with.

And, crucially, all the works in which cuts were made remained powerful pieces of writing.

Making cuts is probably the most difficult part of writing given that we all know how hard we worked to create the words in the first place! Removing then can be truly dispiriting.

But, if it helps, I ask a single, simple question of my own work – if this word/section is removed will the story be any the worse for it? If the answer is ‘yes’ then keep it in. It is doing a job. If the answer is ‘no,’ that the story will be fine without it, then it’s time to hit the delete button.

So how long should a story be? Well, publishers all have their own preferences but, within those strictures, the answer is however many words you need to tell the story. If a novel needs 50,000 words then so be it, if 85,000 is what is required then that’s the right decision.

But the golden rule is that the piece should not have a single word more than is required to tell the story. That’s the true art of storytelling and always will be.