In Today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* As You Have Time
* On Tightening Your Writing
* Of Interest
Quotes of the Day
“‘Moderately prolific’ is about a thousand words per day, average. That’s about four books a year.” Dean Wesley Smith
“Creative voice—the more you use it, the more it wants to be used.” Dean Wesley Smith
As You Have Time
I suggest you stop by James Ron’s Before I Forget… and check out some of his fiction.
James was kind enough to donate to the Go Fund Me effort for my young friend’s wife. That makes him one of the good guys in my book.
On Tightening Your Writing
By “tighten your writing,” I mean remove any excess, whether description or dialogue. I’m fortunate that I can do a lot of this (cycling) on the fly as I’m writing, but I often do a little more during a dedicated cycling session after I’ve finished a chapter.
As I was cycling over a chapter in my current novel, I came across a good example.
To set the scene for you,
It’s dark outside.
After parking his rental car a half-block away, my guy has just entered an old warehouse full of tractors and bush hogs. The floor is illuminated only by starlight through the windows, many of which are broken out, that line both long walls.
He’s on his way to interrupt an illicit meeting in an interior office near the other end of the warehouse and perform an assassination. Only a moment ago, he finally spotted the door to the office.
Here’s the segment as it read initially:
I weaved my way among the tractors, and I’d closed the distance to maybe forty feet when the doorknob clicked and the door swung open. A rectangle of light and the grumbling of quiet voices spilled into the warehouse, and I crouched behind the huge back tire of a tractor. I peered past the back of the tire.
A man in a suit had stepped out. He stopped just outside the door, still holding the doorknob, and jerked his head over his shoulder. “What?”
Here’s the segment with the revision:
I weaved my way among the tractors, and I’d closed the distance to maybe forty feet when the doorknob clicked and the door swung open. A rectangle of light and the grumbling of quiet voices spilled into the warehouse. I crouched and peered past the huge back tire of a tractor.
A man in a suit had stepped out. He stopped just outside the door, still holding the doorknob, and jerked his head over his shoulder. “What?”
If you didn’t spot the revision, the last sentence in the first paragraph is now two sentences, yet the passage is still 7 words shorter.
So the entire new segment is only 7 words shorter (77 vs. 84). But with the unnecessary excess removed, the description is a little tighter and the tension is ramped up a little more.
Here’s the point: If you want to ground the reader in the setting (and pull him deeper into the scene and story), accurate description is vitally important. But excess description wastes the reader’s time.
And of course, your long-term goal as a fiction writer is to always be aware of (and grateful for) the reader on the other side of your manuscript.
Part of being grateful for the reader buying and reading your novel is respecting his time. To do that, do whatever you can to be certain he’s fully invested in the story and that he knows his investment was worthwhile.
In other words, be accurate and tighten your writing. Or as Hemingway put it, “write one true sentence.”
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
How to Design a Thriller or Mystery Book Cover (2026 Guide)
How I Built a Street Team That Shows Up for Every Launch