Are you using too many words when you write?
Let's winnow it down.
Every writer has been there—you’ve poured your heart onto the page, and now you’re staring at a draft that reads like a Victorian novel dictated by an over-caffeinated parrot-hamster hybred. Bloated sentences. Unnecessary adjectives. Entire paragraphs that seem to say ... absolutely nothing.
It’s time for a trim. But how do you cut words without losing your voice? Let’s break it down.
Step 1: Identify the Fluffy Fluff
Some words sneak into our writing like uninvited party guests—polite but unnecessary. Look for these common offenders:
Adverbs: “She smiled happily.” (How else does one smile?)
Hedges: Words like “just,” “really,” “quite,” and “somewhat” soften your writing unnecessarily.
Redundant Phrases: “End result” (just say “result”), “close proximity” (just say “close”).
Excessive Prepositions: A lot of the time, “The book on the table in the corner of the room” can just be “The book in the corner.”
Long-Winded Constructions: “Due to the fact that” = “Because.”
Saying the same thing more than once in a row: I talk about this all the time, but here it is once more. :) “She nodded her head in agreement. ‘Yes.’” The nod, the dialogue, the agreement is all saying the same thing, right? Instead it can just be “she nodded.” Or “‘Yes,’ she said.”
Saying the same thing multiple times on the story level: You don’t want to keep repeating the same information in a chapter or scene. If we know her dog was born on September 1, we don’t need to keep learning it over and over again.
Distancing words: I talk about this a lot, too, but these are filtering words and they distance the reader from the immediacy of the action. It’s things like “I heard,” “She noticed,” “He saw,” “They spotted.” For example, “I saw the zombie hamsters lurch forward” is quite different and less exciting than “the zombie hamsters lurched forward.”
Step 2: Trim with Precision
Once you’ve spotted the excess, wield your editing shears like you’re a zombie gardener, maybe? I lost the metaphor, but ask yourself as you do that fine edit:
Is this word pulling its weight?
Can I say this in fewer words without losing meaning?
Am I repeating myself?
Is this sentence doing anything for my reader?
Am I distancing the reader from the immediacy of the action?
Does Carrie talk too much about zombie hamsters? Should I perhaps start a GoFundMe for Carrie’s therapy costs?
Your goal isn’t to strip your writing bare—it’s to make every word earn its place. Not that it’s a competition, but you get what I mean, right?
Step 3: Practice with a Word-Loss Challenge
Take a 100-word paragraph of your writing and cut it down to 50 words. Then, try to convey the same idea in just 25. It’s like weightlifting for your editing muscles—excruciating at first but powerful in the long run. Maybe?
Here’s the thing: Good writing isn’t about using the most words—it’s about using the right words. So the next time your story or blog or press release starts to look like it swallowed a thesaurus, grab those gardening sheers and cut.
PLACE TO SUBMIT
Narratively Call for Pitches & Submissions: The Personals
Enter The Personals. These first-person pieces still meet two of the main criteria for Narratively stories: They’re about something super unique and interesting, and they’re rooted in detailed and colorful scenes. BUT they instead focus on one moment, one day, one week, one summer, etc. (And consequently, they’re much shorter.) We want your best pieces about a surprising moment, a split-second, life-changing decision, an upside-down view of something that we, as a society, are used to looking at head-on.
What The Personals Is: You can tell us a story on a subject we’ve heard about before, but give us a unique way in.
What The Personals Isn’t: We love a good internal-based story like everyone else, a writer working out their opinion or recent revelation on the page, but that is not what we’re looking for here. We want active, exciting first-person stories that revolve around dramatic scenes and moments.