What not to write
I try to leave out the parts that people skip.
—Elmore Leonard
This has been one of my more treasured quotes, and very fitting. Writers tend to be indulgent creatures (especially during NaNo, where superfluous words are practically essential to writing). Sometimes I’ll spend three pages describing the city my story takes place in, because it’s so fascinating for me, as a writer, to work out all the details and explain miscellaneous things (like how the Starbucks the protagonist regularly visits has a chair in the corner permanently occupied by a cat).
However, no one who reads my story is really going to care; they’re more concerned with how often the protagonist goes to Starbucks, who she meets there, and how it’s relevant to the plot. Personally, if I were reading my stories, I’d just skip to the middle.
So as interesting as it is for me to get bogged down in minutiae, I’ve had to strike a compromise. These days, my rough drafts indulge in over-description. When I make my first editing pass, I strike out all the unnecessary passages.
I get to indulge myself and still write something that isn’t tedious to read. Bliss.
