McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

When is wordy just too wordy?

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arianne:
We've all read those books where the sun takes fifty pages or so to rise (and then fifty more pages about how the hero and heroine felt when watching this wonderful sunrise).

However, I sometimes found myself writing long sentences, not flowery description actually, but kind of longish anyway.

Example I have used when talking to people about this, is where one of the characters smashes a pane of glass with his fist, and the subsequent description goes “...the slivers [of glass] showered down to disappear into the dark of the pavement”.

I personally like this, but I'm wondering if maybe it's too wordy? Should the glass just shower down? In a few simple words? Or just have the glass fall down instead?

Thoughts?

Snowleopard:
I'd suggest getting it down first and then going back and looking to see if it's too wordy.
You want your words to evoke the scene and to flow - and there's no right or wrong amount of words.
Please note that I come from a background of trying to write scripts so I'm used to trying to keep the word count down
and when I'm writing prose I have to remember that I have room to be more descriptive.

Starbeam:
Do what Snow suggested--first get everything written down.  Then you can go back through.  I wouldn't worry too much on being too wordy until you've gotten through several revisions and tightened the story.  Then you can worry about whether or not it's too wordy.  And sometimes, all you need is a slight little tweak.  My take on that would be "the slivers showered down and disappeared into the dark of the pavement."

So basically--get it written and worry about it later.  Also, there are times where it might be preferable to keep it simple, and other times you want that little bit extra to keep people interested.  One way to look at that is along the lines of "Will this keep people reading?" and "Does this keep the story going forward and keep the tension?"

Oh, and the type of story you're writing can also make a difference in the way things are done.  An epic fantasy is usually written in a completely different style than an urban fantasy.

Paynesgrey:
I'd say something is "too wordy" when the prose goes beyond setting the atmosphere and begins to obsure the story you're trying to tell.  When your Average Intended Reader starts to have trouble tracking what's going on amidst the descriptive artwork. 

Try feeding a several pages to your friends/betas/writing group associates and say "what's it about?"  If they have trouble telling you, then you might want to strengthen the central narrative and ease up on the atmospherics.  Personally, I like the bit you gave us.  Just have to make sure you've got enough solid carpentry beneath the varnish to hold things together.   ;)

Paynesgrey:
Example of "too wordy with no good point". 

Stephen King. 

There's a chair in a room where something happens.  Or doesn't happen.  The main character(s) aren't even in the room.  Rather, a minor character who serves the main character a hamburger is in the room with the chair at some point during his childhood.

Author then spools off a page or two describing said chair, then 50 pages of an anecdote regarding an old woman who had a similar chair 60 years ago, and how she really liked to eat soup with a certain brand of crackers when sitting in that chair, and how the cracker company was owned by a fellow who didn't have a chair anything like the one the old lady is eating soup and crackers in, and there was a nephew of hers who found the chair kind of creepy, and mentioned it to the minor character who's hamburger serving function is or is delayed by .12 seconds as he briefly brainfarted and thought about the chair instead of promptly saying "do you want fries with that?"

Application of Starbeam's "will it keep people reading" and "does it advance the story" screams a big howling "nope, not really."

As Snowleapord and Starbeam both suggested, get the framework laid out first.  You can then wander around adding atmosphere and prose to flesh things out without being as likely to meander too far away from your intended path.

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