Brevity
Monday, November 17. 2008
Doing NaNoWriMo is, admittedly, somewhat detrimental to my writing abilities. Specifically, it encourages me to be as long-winded as possible, which generally is not what I want to do in work I expect to get published.
In order to reach 50,000 words in one month, most people who write for NaNoWriMo have to engage in a little bit of "padding." Not necessarily every day, and not necessarily every chapter, but it does happen. One stares at the blinking cursor and realizes there's no more plot coming out of that part of the brain tonight, but there are still 500 words to go to meet quota. What to do? Why not have the protagonist review in his mind what's happened so far and how he feels about it? That'll eat up a good couple of pages.
The bonus exposition and needless dialogue I sometimes insert in these situations is not completely useless. It often helps me refine a characterization in my mind, collect my plot thoughts, or think harder about setting and tone. But I've spent a great deal of time over the last year trying to be shorter and more to the point in my writing, and this process is the antithesis of that one.
Granted, most of my writing since NaNoWriMo 2007 has been short stories. In novels, some verbosity is tolerated, or even expected. But in a short, one has to be much more efficient. I wrote what I consider my best story to date, called "The Price of Paradise," and put it up on Critters at something like 10,000 words. I received some good comments, but many of them were of the "it's too long" variety. Point taken, and I put it in the queue a second time at just over 7,000 words. Still "too long," they say, but I feel I've already cut it to the bone; any more editing for length and I start taking away what I believe is essential structure. That one's wandering in the wilderness right now, waiting for me to have at it again. I think it'll get published one day. I hope so, after I've poured so much into it.
Yet here I am writing my 2008 novel, and patting myself on the back for saying things like, "He wanted to ask Srrmhr about it, but since it was probably about number seventy-three on his list of questions in terms of priority, he didn't immediately press the issue." In a short, this sentence would be immediately excised. Maybe in the final novel it will be, as well. But for this month, it represents thirty-one valuable, hard-won words, and it stays.
And thus do we continue in the month of November, the time of my verbosity, the days that reward words piled upon words which, though they may have some flow and poetry in places, will most likely be discarded in the next draft.
Come December, I'll be brief again.
Doing NaNoWriMo is, admittedly, somewhat detrimental to my writing abilities. Specifically, it encourages me to be as long-winded as possible, which generally is not what I want to do in work I expect to get published.
In order to reach 50,000 words in one month, most people who write for NaNoWriMo have to engage in a little bit of "padding." Not necessarily every day, and not necessarily every chapter, but it does happen. One stares at the blinking cursor and realizes there's no more plot coming out of that part of the brain tonight, but there are still 500 words to go to meet quota. What to do? Why not have the protagonist review in his mind what's happened so far and how he feels about it? That'll eat up a good couple of pages.
The bonus exposition and needless dialogue I sometimes insert in these situations is not completely useless. It often helps me refine a characterization in my mind, collect my plot thoughts, or think harder about setting and tone. But I've spent a great deal of time over the last year trying to be shorter and more to the point in my writing, and this process is the antithesis of that one.
Granted, most of my writing since NaNoWriMo 2007 has been short stories. In novels, some verbosity is tolerated, or even expected. But in a short, one has to be much more efficient. I wrote what I consider my best story to date, called "The Price of Paradise," and put it up on Critters at something like 10,000 words. I received some good comments, but many of them were of the "it's too long" variety. Point taken, and I put it in the queue a second time at just over 7,000 words. Still "too long," they say, but I feel I've already cut it to the bone; any more editing for length and I start taking away what I believe is essential structure. That one's wandering in the wilderness right now, waiting for me to have at it again. I think it'll get published one day. I hope so, after I've poured so much into it.
Yet here I am writing my 2008 novel, and patting myself on the back for saying things like, "He wanted to ask Srrmhr about it, but since it was probably about number seventy-three on his list of questions in terms of priority, he didn't immediately press the issue." In a short, this sentence would be immediately excised. Maybe in the final novel it will be, as well. But for this month, it represents thirty-one valuable, hard-won words, and it stays.
And thus do we continue in the month of November, the time of my verbosity, the days that reward words piled upon words which, though they may have some flow and poetry in places, will most likely be discarded in the next draft.
Come December, I'll be brief again.
In order to reach 50,000 words in one month, most people who write for NaNoWriMo have to engage in a little bit of "padding." Not necessarily every day, and not necessarily every chapter, but it does happen. One stares at the blinking cursor and realizes there's no more plot coming out of that part of the brain tonight, but there are still 500 words to go to meet quota. What to do? Why not have the protagonist review in his mind what's happened so far and how he feels about it? That'll eat up a good couple of pages.
The bonus exposition and needless dialogue I sometimes insert in these situations is not completely useless. It often helps me refine a characterization in my mind, collect my plot thoughts, or think harder about setting and tone. But I've spent a great deal of time over the last year trying to be shorter and more to the point in my writing, and this process is the antithesis of that one.
Granted, most of my writing since NaNoWriMo 2007 has been short stories. In novels, some verbosity is tolerated, or even expected. But in a short, one has to be much more efficient. I wrote what I consider my best story to date, called "The Price of Paradise," and put it up on Critters at something like 10,000 words. I received some good comments, but many of them were of the "it's too long" variety. Point taken, and I put it in the queue a second time at just over 7,000 words. Still "too long," they say, but I feel I've already cut it to the bone; any more editing for length and I start taking away what I believe is essential structure. That one's wandering in the wilderness right now, waiting for me to have at it again. I think it'll get published one day. I hope so, after I've poured so much into it.
Yet here I am writing my 2008 novel, and patting myself on the back for saying things like, "He wanted to ask Srrmhr about it, but since it was probably about number seventy-three on his list of questions in terms of priority, he didn't immediately press the issue." In a short, this sentence would be immediately excised. Maybe in the final novel it will be, as well. But for this month, it represents thirty-one valuable, hard-won words, and it stays.
And thus do we continue in the month of November, the time of my verbosity, the days that reward words piled upon words which, though they may have some flow and poetry in places, will most likely be discarded in the next draft.
Come December, I'll be brief again.
Craig on :
Ha, 72 words - no now there are 83 words.
Brent on :