Writing Shorter to Keep Going Longer
An urban legend about the publishing industry: some publishers gauge a book’s chapter length by what can be finished during an hour’s commuter train ride into Manhattan. I don’t know where I heard this, or whether it is true, but it does speak to the growing trend towards “short is better.” To think about what readers can absorb these days.
When my writing buddy sold her amazing new novella to a Big Five publisher—a deal I might not have imagined possible five years ago—I wasn’t surprised. The short form really appeals to readers today, her editor said, and this is highlighted in this Esquire article about “thin books” and Lit Hub’s comments on our “age of distraction” and why shorter books are now welcome.
Some writers can’t write short. Even if the trend is there, it’s not their gig. They need plenty of page time to develop a character, backstory, an essay topic. Maybe they are drawn to epic novels, which can run into the many hundreds of pages.
But what if there’s something educational, skill-building, for all of us in the idea writing short? What if deliberately thinning out a story could be a useful approach to strengthening our writing skills?
Condensing as a useful skill
I remember a wonderful post by writer
where she shared a quick revision technique of copying a big block of text into a new document then deleting every third sentence. It lets her see it completely differently, and it works very well at shaking up the stasis and revealing bloat.
To me, it’s a form of condensing, too. My version of it is to read each paragraph in a chapter or scene that feels bloated then try to condense that paragraph into one sentence.
I print the chapter or scene out (as a editor I was trained to read hard copy and I feel happier than onscreen, but you can do it however it works for you). In the margin of each paragraph, I’d test my skill at condensing the meaning into a single sentence. Not as easy as it sounds! Sometimes, I floundered: I couldn’t actually write a sentence that encapsulated that paragraph in much fewer words. That taught me a lot, just in itself.
But here’s what I learned, most importantly: bloat comes from two areas. One is vagueness, where I haven’t actually gotten to any point at all. The other is repetition. When my one-sentence results repeat each other.
In either case, the paragraph just went on and on but didn’t actually move the story. Such a valuable clue! Knowing this, I could revise intelligently and with purpose.
What if I had a chain of paragraphs that were descriptions or backstory but they essentially delivered the same information? Or several examples, for instance, of why the character is ambitious based on her history? Or a town or community’s reticence to change? Not all are needed, usually, but I wrote them because I wasn’t sure if my point was coming across (more is better, right? Not always.).
Of course, some repetition is good in story—it does sometimes take a few repeats for a point to be demonstrated. But this one-sentence condensing exercise proved quite helpful to tell me exactly where I’d crossed the line into bloat. Nobody wants bloat.
Once I knew the problem areas, I reworked the paragraph to send it in a different direction.
Writing short as a break from long
Another value of writing short is when you need to revive your exhausted creative self after too much writing long.
Having just released two novels this past year, I signed up for a break by reading and studying (and writing, too, of course) flash fiction. Flash is short form, to the max. It is brilliant when it works, and one of my favorite flash authors is
who writes a marvelous newsletter here on Substack, if you haven’t found her work yet.
I also looked at slightly long shorts, in both fiction and memoir, and I highly recommend Beth Ann Fennelly, who wrote the micro-memoir collection, Heating & Cooling, as someone to study. Especially if you are interested in limited focus, limited environments, and how they enhance people and place.
Reading Fish and Fennelly is, to me, like having a great snack—satisfying yet not full-meal-consuming. I get just the right amount of literary nourishment. I’m left a little hungry, which is how short form should leave the reader, in my view. Hungry to read more. Or take the encouragement of a story into my own writing.
Like visiting a really fine art museum, I want to paint when I get home.
What really counts
Short focuses as it condenses. It gets to the point. But, truthfully, it’s more difficult for many of us to write well compared to going on for an unlimited number of pages. Ask any children’s book writer or experienced poet whether they work less hard because they have fewer words—the answer will likely be no.
Writing short teaches a writer to be selective. Each word, each image, counts.
I also greatly respect authors who take time to really carry us along. I grew up studying the classics, I majored in Russian language and literature in college and grad school, I read many in the original. I’m a fan of big books that sweep me away for days.
But there is the reader in me who needs the exercise and break of shorter pieces. I learn so much from writers who limit not only their story’s page length but condense its environment as well.
Condensing a story’s environment
I’ve been catching up on my very neglected TBR pile, stalled from a year of promoting my own books. Recently, I chose The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue as my next book and I loved its condensed feel. The story takes place in a couple of days and nights, it’s set in early 1900s Dublin, in the maternity ward of a hospital during the flu epidemic and it’s centered on the relationship between three very different women: Julia Powers, the narrator who is a midwife/nurse; her helper, Bridie Sweeney; and Kathleen Lynn, a doctor wanted by the police for her involvement in the Irish rebellion.
I’m not new in admiration for Donoghue’s writing; that started with her novel, Room, and I loved her skill in presenting characters in limited environments. From reading her latest this past week, I grew in appreciation of how condensing the story’s environment can bring the characters alive in a unique way. It’s as if there are fewer setting distractions, perhaps? Or not as many people to interact with?
Marriage or a date?
Writing long form is a marriage; writing short form is a date. Not just for the writer but also for the reader.
Condensing your writing, whether for an exercise in reducing bloat, like the one given above, or because you want to focus in and test a character’s strength in limited circumstances, often requires more stamina, I find. Yes, a book requires much fortitude, your ability to hold 300 pages and multiple people and places in your heart and mind for a year or two or five. It can exhaust most writers, so writing short can be a lovely alternative.
If your writing has become so long, you’ve almost forgotten the point and purpose, or you are starting to lose track of your characters (I once left a young man, Chad, behind in chapter 8; luckily, my editor noticed and retrieved him), or you are repeating yourself (in my case, in the same book, three blueberry pancake breakfast scenes), you might benefit from a short break.
Short is simpler. Not easier, not by a long shot. But simpler because there’s less to track. And a skill in condensing can benefit your writing, when it goes back to long.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
Locate a section of your writing that might suffer from bloat. Try one of the reduction exercises above—either
’s third sentence deletion or my one-sentence paragraph synopsis—and see what you learn.
Leave comments below. And share your thoughts about writing short or long—what do you prefer and why?
Are you a fan of reading short form in your genre? Or do you prefer long?