It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
…when a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Thus, brevity is a by-product of vigor.
Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating.
The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.
Rather, very, little, pretty – these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words. The constant use of the adjective little (except to indicate size) is particularly debilitating; we should all try to do a little better, we should all be very watchful of this rule, for it is a rather important one, and we are pretty sure to violate it now and then.
If you use a colloquialism or a slang word or phrase, simply use it; do not draw attention to it by enclosing it in quotation marks. To do so is to put on airs, as though you were inviting the reader to join you in a select society of those who know better.
A dash is a mark of separation stronger than a comma, less formal than a colon, and more relaxed than parentheses.
______________
My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.
Check out some of my writing guidebooks:
Discover more from Inventing Reality Editing Service
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.