Back in high school, our teachers often directed us to write papers of a specific length. “Give me 10 pages,” our humanities teacher might have said, “comparing and contrasting ‘The Three Musketeers’ to ‘The Three Stooges.’”
Unfortunately, this kind of assignment taught us exactly the wrong lesson: to fluff up our writing — to use excess words, languid sentences, sluggish ideas — just to stretch to the 10-page mark. Instead of learning to write short, we learned to lard.
It’s generally better to be short. Short is not the same as shallow. Writing high-quality short pieces often takes more time than writing long ones. You still must make your point; you just have to do it more efficiently. You may have to compose 10 meandering pages — then hack, trim and compress them down to size. You learn to shorten while also enhancing your message.
Professional writers do this every day. They all have word limits. For this column, mine is 350. I usually write a draft that runs 600-700 words, replete with bloated arguments and cliché-ridden descriptions.
After writing that first draft, I start the repeal-and-replace process, and the whittling. I might ask myself: Can I save my reader some time by deleting the word “process” in the previous sentence? Do I really need the reference to lard? Would this article still work without the whole detour into short versus shallow?
Gradually, revising multiple times, I sand away the excess prepositions, the distracting phrases and the torturous ramblings. I write short and get closer to the nub.