When Less is More

By Joni M. Fisher @authorjonimfisher

Shakespeare said it best in Hamlet, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Suggest, don’t tell all. Let the reader connect the dots. Great fiction is more like impressionist artwork than still photography.

Beginning writers underestimate their ability to convey meaning, so they repeat a concept, explain it, or otherwise beat the reader over the head with it. While it is true that readers are most comfortable reading at a comprehension level three years below their last year of education, writers need not dumb down their writing for clarity. Write the way you talk to your best friend.

Talk down to the readers you don’t want to keep. Bore them with redundancy. How much can you cut from this line of dialogue?

“Yes, of course, I will. Indeed.” She nodded her head up and down.

I have a pet peeve about body parts mentioned in descriptions—waved with his hand, stood to his feet, nodded his head. Can we all agree that, unless the character is waving a flag or a baby, we can infer that a hand is being waved?

The place for explanation is when using a foreign language or terminology specific to a particular industry or hobby. Then say or hint at (usually in the narrative) what the terms mean the first time they are presented. For example:

Standing near the huddle around the bodies, an old woman pointed a crooked finger at the killer. She shouted in Portuguese, “O Deus puni-lo-a.”

Snorting at the threat of God’s punishment, Damiano turned and stepped into the cool shadows.

The reader is informed of the meaning of the foreign phrase immediately after it appears, not a word-by-word translation, just the meaning.

Beware of the temptation to put in all the cool stuff you learned while researching your story. Authenticity is one thing, but showing off can undermine the story’s magic by reminding the reader that the author is at
work.

Do readers of your genre want to know everything, or do they want to know the coolest, little-known facts? Whenever a character picked up a rifle or mentioned a weapon in a Tom Clancy novel, the history of the thing came with it. For his readership and military topics, he appealed to the reader’s curiosity and built his credibility, but it got heavy-handed at times. Too much description slows the story’s pace.

One time when it is necessary to BRIEFLY explain something is with an acronym. Clarify what the acronym represents the first time you use it. Don’t make the reader guess. For example, all these organizations refer to themselves as the ABA: American Bankers Association, American Bar
Association, American Booksellers Association, American Basketball Association, American Board of Anesthesiology, Association for Behavioral Analysis, American Bus Association, American Bass Anglers, and the American Bicycle Association.

When describing anything, prioritize the most specific, unique details rather than lengthy descriptions. I highly recommend studying Word Painting Revised Edition: The Fine Art of Writing Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan. Below is a brief description of a couple’s relationship.

When this happened, they fought. Stinging flames of words blistered
their tongues. Silence was worse. Beneath its slow-burning weight,
their black looks singed. After a few days, their minds shriveled into
dead coals. Some speechless nights, they lay together like logs turned
completely to ash.

Brevity can elevate and energize your prose through the figures of speech. Become familiar with them and practice them the way musicians practice scales. Do you know how to create an image through alliteration, analogy, anaphora, assonance, antithesis, chiasmus, epistrophe, hyperbole, irony, meiosis, metaphor, metonymy, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, paradox, parallelism, personification, repetition, rhythm, rhyme, simile, synecdoche, synesthesia, and zeugma?

Are you using all these tools? If not, why not?

Joni M. Fisher writes contemporary stories featuring friendship, family, faith, and crime. A member of the American Christian Fiction Writers and the Florida Writers Association, she also served on the Southeastern University Arts and Humanities Advisory Board. Her fingerprints are on file with the FBI.