How to Say More in Fewer Words

I enjoy a minimalist’s writing style. Anyone who ever read my novels probably noticed. I admit that such a style proves anything but normal for fantasy stories. That might serve as one of the reasons I enjoy this style so much.

I live in fear of one thing other than zombie clowns. I fear a bored reader will set aside my work and “get back to it eventually.” A greased pace to my novels helps avoid such disaster.

I withhold nothing when I write the “vomit draft” of a novel. I usually end up with a book that runs close to a thousand pages. I afterwards sharpen the hatchet and slaughter my child, until nothing remains but the heart of my story.

A man sees Michelangelo’s recently completed masterpiece, David.

The man asks Michelangelo, “How did you craft that statue from a pillar of marble?”

Michelangelo replies, “Easy. I chipped away all the pieces that were not David.”

I would like, today, to discuss methods that help me trim the fat from my sentences, find more concise ways to tell the same story.

1)   Write the film script.

If you don’t own the script-writing software Final Draft, you can always download a program called Celtx for free.

You, armed with either software package plus a draft of your current novel, can write the film script version of your story.

Don’t fret if you don’t know how to write a script. Tutorials exist on Youtube. You can also study preexisting scripts.

You now face the goal of a one hundred-paged script. No more. No fewer.

Why one hundred pages? A professor at film school once told me that this leaves the wiggle room to remove or add a scene without a final product that runs too long or short for the big screen.

Remember that every page of your script equals about a minute of screen time.

You'll likely discover that your novel results in more than one hundred pages of script.

You can combine or remove characters.

Shorten dialogue or replace it with action.

Remove scenes or pool them together in a montage.

You shall discover, while you struggle to squeeze your story into one hundred pages, which scenes and characters your story can survive without.

You ought to remember that your favorite scenes and characters serve as your most dangerous. They represent the ones you will fight tooth-and-nail to keep, whether they need to exist in your story or not.

Trust me. I know this well from experience.

2)   Three lines per paragraph.

A film professor (not the same as previously mentioned) told me to keep all my paragraphs, may they serve as blocks of dialogue, setting, or action, to three lines or fewer apiece.

Why? Actors and set designers find it easier to keep their place on the page this way. Seriously.

People find it easier to recall—should something sidetrack them for an instant—whether they read the top, middle, or bottom line in a paragraph.

The craziest thing happened while I labored to shorten all my paragraphs to three lines apiece. I discovered more succinct ways to tell the reader the same thing.

Necessity. Invention.

I use the three-line method in my novels (though a single line on Microsoft Word will not always equal a line on Kindle). It works wonders. If a rule forces you to chop away fat, fat you will find.

Go sharpen your hatchet.

(Thanks for reading. You might notice below that I changed the schedule for my blogs. I will, because of the number of projects on my plate, only produce a short story for this blog on Mondays. Fiction Formula will switch from Fridays to Thursdays. I apologize for any inconvenience, though I . . . doubt this will rock anyone's existence. Thanks again!)

I publish my blogs as follows:

Sundays: Movie reviews at moviesmartinwolt.blogspot.com

Mondays: Short stories at martinwolt.blogspot.com

Tuesdays: A look at the politics of the entertainment world at EntertainmentMicroscope.blogspot.com.

Wednesdays: An inside look at my novels (such as Daughters of Darkwana, which you can now find on Kindle) at Darkwana.blogspot.com

Thursdays: Tips to improve your fiction at FictionFormula.blogspot.com

New Ways to Edit your Fiction with Fresh Eyes

Many confused writers rest under the delusion that an editor at Whichever Publishing Inc. will wave a magic wand and fix all their mistakes.

No so.

Editors exist, but each faces a massive workload (unless you hire a private editor, which proves expensive—I charge sixty an hour). You, the author, face the responsibility of a polished piece.

Authors, unfortunately, represent the worse people to edit their own work. An author knows what she meant to write and—funny trick of the mind—she will often see those exact words regardless of what she actually wrote.

I can’t begin to recall how many times I discovered a horrible typo in my work that I somehow passed over and over again but never noticed.

Many writers experience this problem. I find it one of countless reasons why a writer needs a writer’s workshop.

Other authors possess the knowledge of proper writing, but they can review you work without familiarity to it. They serve as fresh eyes.

I learned, in many books, classes, and workshops, different methods to filter your eyes so that you read the words you wrote, not the words you meant to write.

1) Read backwards.

I don’t personally use this one (it gives me a headache), but many other writers swear by it. If you wrote the following, glorious piece of literature:

“Puberto remained suspicious of cats ever since one framed his dog for vehicular homicide. Puberto worked as an exotic dancer and, when the weather permitted, a dentist. Christmas carolers made his gladiator pit hum annoyingly.”

—you would, while you edited, read the sentences backwards.

“Christmas carolers made his gladiator pit hum annoyingly. Puberto worked as an exotic dancer and, when the weather permitted, a dentist. Puberto remained suspicious of cats ever since one framed his dog for vehicular homicide.”

This keeps you less involved in the story and more concerned with the actual words. You thus stand more likely to notice spelling or grammatical errors.

This strategy offers a downside. It removes you from the story, itself. You will likely miss opportunities in character and plot development while you use this method.

You also won’t know how the sentences sound when read in proper order.

If you use this method, also edit your work in correct order to get the best of both worlds.

2) Develop multiple personality disorder.

Read your work through the persona of other people. Use their voices and facial expressions. Remember that you, as this other person, never before set eyes on your work.

Read your work aloud as your mother, your grandfather, that college professor who hated everything you ever wrote, that bubbly girlfriend (or boyfriend) who gushed over everything you did.

Read your work as a disappointed father, a barely literate person, a person unfamiliar with American phrases, a critic, a drunk, a little girl who worships unicorns, a person who sarcastically reads your work in an effort to publically embarrass you.

Read your work in a southern accent, a French accent, Japanese, Wookie.

Read your work as someone who just suffered a severe heartache, a person whose lifelong dream recently came to pass, a depressed person, an overly excited person who downed a lot of espresso, Mister Ed, someone who violently disagrees with your moral premise.

Read your story as the characters in it, each of which never before knew the details of the scenes that didn’t include them (this one's my favorite).

3) Final Draft

I consider Final Draft one of the best programs for people who want to write scripts (though you can download a really good, free program called Celtx).

Final Draft offers a lot of cool features. You can even assign voices to the characters in your script and allow Final Draft to act out your script (though most of the “actors” sound like Charlie Brown’s mother).

Paste a questionable paragraph from your novel into an otherwise blank “script” on Final Draft. Request the program to perform it. You can sit back, listen, and let your ears catch everything your eyes missed.

Note: Final Draft wouldn’t make the Top Ten Cheapest Computer Programs list, so don’t buy it just to ear-edit to your novel. If you happen to already own a copy of Final Draft, or if you happen to also write scripts, then consider this option.

I publish my blogs as follows:

Mondays and Thursdays: Short stories at martinwolt.blogspot.com

Tuesdays: A look at the politics of the entertainment world at EntertainmentMicroscope.blogspot.com.

Wednesdays: An inside look at my novels (such as Daughters of Darkwana, which you can now find on Kindle) at Darkwana.blogspot.com

Fridays: Tips to improve your fiction at FictionFormula.blogspot.com

Sundays: Movie reviews at moviesmartinwolt.blogspot.com

Character Creation via the Four Humors

This post offered, over the last few weeks, several ways to identify the personalities in your fictional characters and ensure that they each stay true to that personality type.

We discussed identification via elements. Water (people pleasers). Fire (passionate and reckless). Earth (logical). Air (in their own worlds, trapped in their own obsessions, oblivious to the events that surround them).

We discussed identification via animals. Horse (career motivated). Sheep (love motivated). Dragon (revenge and spite motivated). Tiger (seeker of power). Peacock (motivated by vanity).

Now, let’s examine one of the oldest personality classification systems: the four humors (a.k.a. the four temperaments).

People once believed that the amount of certain fluids in your body determined your personality, and thus the manipulation of these fluids could change your personality.

Blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile serve as these four fluids and go by the names of Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Melancholic, and Choleric.

The story line that best demonstrates these four humors? Remember Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Yep. Those guys. Not those lazy “characters” from the recent Michael Bay movie—we must never speak of those again.

Michelangelo represents the Sanguine, or Blood, given his fun-loving recklessness.

Raphael represents the Choleric, or Yellow Bile, given his short temper.

(Scholars of the subject will take issue with me in these last two personality types. They will insist that I labeled them backwards. I respectfully disagree.)

Leonardo represents the Melancholic, or Black Bile, given his seriousness and desire to help those around him.

Donatello represents the Phlegmatic, or Phlegm, for his introverted and introspective tendencies.

Now take the protagonist from your own fiction. Decide which element she or he represents. Decide which animal represents her or his motive. Remember that that motive might (and perhaps should) remain a mystery to your character. Decide which humor represents her or him.

Whenever you discover yourself unsure of your characters’ actions, ensure that they behave as their elemental, animal, and fluid personality dictate.

Remember also that your protagonist (plus, perhaps, a few more of your characters) ought to experience some form of change in their outlooks, and thus their personalities, by the time your story finishes with them.

Before I leave you today, I wanted to mention that I'll attend some training with an Army Reserve unit in Cape Coral, Florida, so most of my blogs next week will go hungry.

I plan to at least provide a movie review at moviesmartinwolt.blogspot.com, but I cannot make any promises beyond that.

I shall, at worst, see all of you on the 22^nd at martinwolt.blogspot.com with a new short story (we ought to see the conclusion of “Between a Grizzly and Her Cub” in another three chapters).

Thanks for reading!

You can catch my novels, such as Daughters of Darkwana, on Kindle.

I publish my blogs as follows:

Short stories on Mondays and Thursdays at martinwolt.blogspot.com

A look at entertainment industries via feminist and queer theory, as well as other political filters on Tuesdays at Entertainmentmicroscope.blogspot.com

An inside look at my novel series, its creation, and the e-publishing process on Wednesdays at Darkwana.blogspot.com

Tips on improving your fiction writing Fridays at FictionFormula.blogspot.com

 Movie reviews on Sundays at moviesmartinwolt.blogspot.com