When less is more

A friend of mine had their birthday this week so I sent her a “Happy Birthday!!!” message. Their reply was “one year wiser.” My first thought on hearing this was “are you really?” In her case I would say yes, but it isn’t always the case especially in writing. More is not always better.

My main job at the moment is teaching and there is a saying: Some teachers teach for twenty years, some teachers teach one year twenty times. This ties in with what I referenced in a previous post, about becoming a master after doing something for ten thousand times or after ten thousand hours. The thing is though, this doesn’t mean you are mindlessly doing something ten thousand times. You only make progress if you are analyzing and changing your technique as you go so that you improve.

 

If we apply this principle to writing, not the act of writing, which also benefits from this principle, but to the actual content you are writing, we get the rule that anything you write for your novel should either push forward the plot or develop the character, ideally both at the same time. Everything in your novel should be making it a better novel.

 

So, for example, let’s say in your story Jack is meant to go out on a date with Jill and he is at home waiting for Jill.

 

Example scene:

 

Jack relaxed on the sofa in his living room and glanced at the clock for the second time in what seemed to be forever. Ten past eight. The last time he had checked it had been five past eight so only five minutes had passed but for Jack each minute seemed like an hour.

 

BZZZZZ!BZZZZZ!

 

Jack jumped up at the sound of the doorbell and rushed to the door, banging his right knee on the coffee table. He hopped towards the door on his left foot while trying to rub his wounded knee at the same time.

 

He opened the door to see his neighbor Tom standing there.

“Hey Jack, how’s it going?”

“Can’t complain, waiting for my date to arrive.”

“Good luck with that,” Tom replied, “I just wanted to give you this package. The security guy asked me to bring it up to you.”

“Cheers, I’ve been waiting for that. Talk to you later.”

 

Jack hobbled back to his sofa and sat down. He read the notice on the package then glanced at the clock again. The clock now read eight fifteen. Jill’s fifteen minutes late already, he thought to himself. I wonder where she is.

 

BRNNNG! BRNNNG! Jack’s musings were interrupted by the sound of his iphone ringing. He fished around in his pants pocket for a few seconds, finally coming up with the offending machine.

 

“Hello”

“Hey Jack, I can’t make it tonight,” Jill said, her voice sounding tinny through phone. “Can we postpone our date to tomorrow night?”

“Sure Jill, tomorrow night is fine for me,” Jack agreed, “I hope nothing is wrong.”

“Oh it’s nothing serious,” Jill reassured him. “I just realized there were a few time sensitive things I had to get done tonight. I’ll see you next week.”

“Sure see you then,” Jack replied, hanging up and placing his phone on the sofa table.

 

As you can see from this scene, unless the package has significance in your story so you have to establish its arrival, there is nothing happening in this scene. No character development and no plot development. There is nothing that cannot be summed up in the scene where Jack and Jill finally go out on a date with a simple comment along the lines of :

 

“Sorry I had to postpone our date last night,” Jill said, sitting down at the coffee table in the seat across from Jack.

“No problem,” Jack replied, taking a sip from his cappuccino. “My new router arrived so I spent the evening setting it up.

 

So how am I going to apply this to my novel? Well as I am writing I am trying to make sure that every scene contributes something but I already have some scenes on my list which need to get chopped or remixed or chopped with a little bit going into another scene if there is something essential.

 

Chapter 17 of “The elements of style” by E.B. White, states the most important principle that every writer should hold dear, “Omit needless words.” These needless words can be one, five, a paragraph, a scene, a chapter and in many cases even a whole book is needless if nothing really happens in it. How many times have you read a book in the middle of a series and at the end you think “so basically we are still back to where we started and nothing really changed for the story.”

 

Let me know if you can think of any useless books or scenes that you read that could have benefited from omitting needless words.