A few weeks ago, I shared how to line edit like a pro, which involves assessing your story writing through a developmental lens at the paragraph level to make sure the paragraphs, sentences, and words are in the right order to serve your reader well. Today, I’m taking that a step further and talking about tight writing.
Tight writing guides the reader’s experience of your work and can make the difference between clarity and understanding and opacity and confusion. After all, it’s much easier to follow a clear and concise narrative than one that is convoluted and stuffed to the gills with excess.
This article shares three ways to tighten your writing on a technical level by reducing fat, using parallel constructions for reader ease, and remaining consistent.
Fatty Writing
When we talk (or pen that first draft), we inadvertently add lots of words that add no value to our sentences. Trimming the fat means your writing sheds extra weight by losing unnecessary words and phrases.
During story drafting, you likely used all the space you needed to explore characters, plot, and settings through language. Sentences ballooned to epic proportions, as you crammed into them every bit of detail you knew that the reader might need to know later. Now that you’re revising your story and preparing it for your reader, trim the fat to present a nice, neat piece.
Here are some ways to identify fatty sentences and to improve them:
Fatty Noun Phrases
Never use a noun phrase when a simple noun will do. Otherwise, you may distract your reader from the important words in your sentence. One quick way to identify fatty noun phrases is to look for sentences with “The ____ of ____” constructions, and then reduce those constructions.
These bulleted lists are not all-inclusive, but they should help you locate all that pernicious fat clogging up your story.
- The process of caramelization → Caramelization
- The field of journalism → Journalism
- The existence of fairies → Fairies
- The volume of water → Water
- The level of anger → Anger
While you won’t be able to eliminate all “The ____ of ____” constructions, getting rid of as many as possible will tighten your language and bring concision into your story.
Fatty Verb Phrases
Similarly to their noun counterparts, verb phrases are also at risk of fattiness. Hunting for fatty verb phrases is a bit more nuanced, however, than hunting for fatty noun phrases because the sentence constructions vary, though many include key words like, “of (e.g., a study of the effects of . . .)” and “to (e.g., have a tendency to . . .),” and all have multiple verbs — even hidden verbs — when a single verb will do.
Here is another not-all-inclusive list for your fatty verb hunt, in which I’ve underlined the verbs or potential verbs:
- Do a study of the effects → Study the effects
- Serve to make reductions → Reduce
- Make decisions about → Decide
- Make changes to → Change
- Is indicative of → Indicates
Again, you may not be able to eliminate all the double-verb phrases, but getting rid of as many as possible will tighten your writing, keep your reader’s eyes moving, and clarify your story.
Other Fattiness to Lose
Since the goal here is fat reduction, examining every sentence in your story for excess weight is critical to trimming and shaping your language. Look for long descriptions and explanations — wordiness — ripe for trimming:
- Many of the attendees → Many attendees
- The making of bread → Making bread
- It is Amelia who left → Amelia left
- The facts given in → The facts in
- Fill up the glass → Fill the glass
While you’re looking for those long descriptions and explanations, pay careful attention to sentences beginning with “There is/are” and “It is/was, which can almost always be reduced without losing meaning:
- There is a long list of people who would fit in well. → Many people would fit in well.
- There are many tools in Mom’s toolbag. → Mom’s toolbag has many tools.
- It is said that people who read are intelligent. → People who read are intelligent.
- It was known that the boss was on his way out. → The boss was on his way out.
And don’t forget to lose weak modifiers that add no real value, like hidden adverbs and adverbial phrases: Actual/actually, active/actively, certain/certainly, eminent/eminently, particular/particularly; and lose that which the reader should otherwise glean from context, words and phrases like per se, really, very, quite, rather, and somewhat, to name a few.
Parallel Constructions
Sometimes, the reader may become hung up on the way a sentence is written not because it’s excessively heavy or out of a natural order but because it’s constructed in non-parallel comparative or relative phrases. These non-parallel phrases may result in pseudo tense confusion and may lead to re-reading for understanding.
If the reader has to re-read too many sentences, the mental load of reading may become too heavy to carry for the length of the story and cause the reader to put down the book. To avoid the dreaded did-not-finish rating, remember to make parallel the words and groups of words following each part of the pair.
When hunting for constructions that could use some paralleling, keep your eyes open for coordinating conjunctions (e.g., and, but, for, nor) and correlative conjunctions (e.g., either—or, neither—nor, not only—but also) for quick identification.
- The land sale was opposed by both indigenous people and environmentalists. → The land sale was opposed both by indigenous people and by environmentalists.
- Solving the problem requires that you both understand it and act upon it. → Solving the problem requires both that you understand it and that you act upon it.
- The papa bear, the mama bear, and their young cub → The papa bear, the mama bear, and the baby bear
- He commented reservedly, she with bombast. → He commented reservedly, her bombastically.
Inconsistent Writing
In context, inconsistent writing has nothing to do with plot holes, character development, or minor story details (though those elements are important when developing your story). Instead, inconsistent writing refers to unexpected or mismatched information delivery which may chop up the cadence of your text and turn your pretty passages into slogs. For example, when we write lists, we put down the list elements in whatever order they come to us, but we should reorganize those elements by length, complexity, and chronology.
Order of Elements
When ordering items in a series or list, arrange from short to long, from simple to complex, for reader ease.
- sciences and arts → arts and sciences
- pineapples and pears → pears and pineapples
- Baltimore, Miami, and Chicago → Miami, Chicago, and Baltimore
- Cubism, futurism, gothic, and surrealism periods → gothic, cubism, futurism, and surrealism periods
- The Wizard of Oz, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, and Snatch → Snatch, The Wizard of Oz, and Killer Klowns From Outer Space
However, sometimes, the reader has internalized a natural order of elements, the cadence of which is important to avoid snags:
- red, blue, and white → red, white, and blue
- liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and life → life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
- lemon water with lunch, dinner, and breakfast → lemon water with breakfast, lunch, and dinner
- Earth, Mercury, and Venus are closest to the sun → Mercury, Venus, and Earth are closest to the sun
Language consistency also refers to spelling and hyphenation choices, capitalization, and symbols. Once you begin tightening your writing for consistency, it’s time to create your style sheet to track certain choices:
- Spelling: sizable VS sizeable; traveling VS travelling
- Hyphens: antismoking VS anti-smoking; nonviolent VS non-violent
- Capitals: figure 2 VS Figure 2; the President VS the president
- Symbols: percent VS %; 10° VS ten degrees
And while you’re tightening your writing, don’t forget to check in your pronoun-antecedent pairs for clarity.
TL;DR:
In his book, Edit Yourself: A Manual For Everyone Who Works With Words, Bruce Ross-Larson wrote: “Be brief unless you have a reason not to be.” Brevity in writing means that when you do finally take the time to explain something or add more detail, the reader will know whatever they’re about to read is important and will have a reason to invest the time.
So, what’s your favorite tight-writing tip? Let me know in the comments.
Happy writing!
<3 Fal
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Fallon Clark is a story development coach and editor with more than a decade of experience in communications, project management, writing, and editing. She provides story development and revision services to independent and hybrid publishers and authors spanning genres and styles. And in 2018, she had the joy of seeing Forever My Girl, one of her earliest book projects, on the big screen. Fallon’s writing has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine and The MicroZine. Find her online at FallonClarkBooks.Substack.com, or connect with her on LinkedIn or Substack.