To Write Well, Cut Like Crazy
By: Peter Darling
Many years ago, in an Evidence class, one of my professors leaned over his podium and said something I’ve never forgotten: “All adverbs conceal looseness of thought.” Although I think his position was a little extreme, he was onto something: the secret to really effective writing isn’t the words you use. It’s the words you don’t use. To make your writing as strong as possible, the first step (and the last one) is to cut every single word you possibly can.
Over eighty years ago, in his classic book The Elements of Style, William Strunk put it this way: “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”
Seems simple, right? It is. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. No matter what you’re attacking when you edit, the key is to always, always ask yourself ‘Is there a simpler way to put this”? Surprisingly often, the answer will be “yes”.
I have been a professional writer for decades. In that time, I’ve produced millions of words, and edited millions more. And regardless of the writer, the topic, the length of the piece or anything else, anyone who writes always has a tendency to write too much. It’s human nature. Writing well means waging a constant guerilla war against this tendency, and always looking for ways to cut out words.
Think of unnecessary words like kelp stuck on the hull of a sailboat. They slow everything down. They make your sentences more complex and harder to read, and obscure your points. Good writing, above all, is immediately clear to the reader. Wordy writing obscures that clarity, and forces the reader to wade through verbiage to get to the point. And by the time your reader understands what you’re trying to say, the impact is often lost. The only solution is to ruthlessly prune out words you don’t need.
Unnecessary words can hide anywhere. One of the most common is in the first paragraph of a piece. Next time you finish a piece of writing, try this – cut the entire first paragraph. Often, you’ll find that you don’t need it. Writers tend to use the first paragraph to set the scene, or put things in context, and don’t really get going until the second, or even the third one.
Another common source of wordy writing is using complex phrases when something much simpler will get the job done. Here are a few examples:
- Instead of “despite the fact that” write “although”.
- Instead of “due to the fact that” write “because”.
- Instead of writing “I am in the process of” write “I am”.
- Instead of writing “With the possible exception of” write “except”.
In some cases, you can eliminate phrases altogether. Things like:
“For all intents and purposes”
“Needless to say” – if saying it is needless, then why say it?
“At the end of the day”
“It is important to note that”
None of these phrases really do anything except consume space. They, and other phrases like them, should be eliminated whenever possible.
In addition to hunting down these words and phrases, the final step in eliminating wordiness from your writing is simply to identify and eliminate unnecessary words one by one. The old-fashioned approach is the only way to do this – you literally have to read through your work, and word by word, sentence by sentence, and look for words you can cut. You hold each sentence up to the light, as it were, look at it from different angles, and see if there’s a shorter alternative. You will be amazed by how often there is.
As a writer, your job is to require as little effort from your reader as possible. Great writing is effortless to read. It flows. It makes sense. Even if the topic is extremely complicated, it needs to be easy to read and understand. This quality doesn’t arise by accident. It comes from excising every word that doesn’t absolutely have to be there.
Peter Darling is a freelance writer in Northern California who specializes in creating content for law firms. To learn more, visit his website at www.peterdarlingwriter.com