Write Tight

Words can imply or define time.

Look words up, but don’t stop there. Hunt words. As you read dictionary definitions, dig into their origins, their evolution, and their present scope.

Learn not just what words mean, but what they imply, what they embrace.

Reducing multiple coverage of information, concepts or topics gives you two benefits. The obvious is concision and attendant clarity. The other, credibility and authority. Repetition, especially in the form of backtracking and revisiting points, signals disorganization at best. At worst, it signals that you’re floundering, that you don’t know where you’re going next.

A quicker bit of advice: Just strip away all that’s unessential

Now, in a single word, define what you’re delivering within the form you have chosen. Does your manuscript deliver, for example:

Information
Atmosphere, mood
Entertainment

Consider, then, the dictates of your goals, not only what they demand you include, but also what they demand you exclude.

A simplistic way of looking at this exercise is to say that the primary goal defines your content; the secondary goals define your form, how you present the content. You must synchronize the primary and the secondary. Form must complement style and vice versa.

To reveal your writing’s inner shape, use the following exercise: In a couple of sentences, define the goal of your writing. Categorize it. Answer these questions: What drives your writing? What is its central purpose? What do readers expect from it? What, once more, is its real and/or its perceived value?

Next, list two secondary goals. What gives the piece added value? What gives it texture? What makes it interesting? fun to read? something the reader will enjoy as well as benefit from?

There is but one direction—toward the range of coverage you determined when trimming the roots. This shape and direction are the angle and focus of the manuscript; anything that doesn’t contribute to the inner shape—the angle and focus—is superfluous.