Make Everything Succinct In Your Writing
Encapsulated by a million voices, without a window to breathe clarity to the room, words are bereft of meaning and singed outrageously to the eardrum. A polluted mind, likeness to a polluted paper is merely a stream of consciousness. Throwing a dart blindly, well, has its risks; but it’s a long shot for your message to be received.
Throughout my writing journey, the process and my methods have changed drastically. When I was a child writing, all I idealized was getting any words I could muster onto the seemingly endless perfectly white paper. Hence writing how you talk, or stream of conscious. (How you think) Great exercise! But makes for a terrible read, mind you there is a difference from writing for a reader and writing for yourself.
As I got older, enamored by all the enigmatic books, my 9.9ml records would play through my mind transforming any book into a live movie of my own creation. Eager to emulate and articulate my own masterpieces, I wrote as elegantly as I could, replaying my films moment for moment on paper for the reader to assimilate into a transcending experience. It was amazing to me, all the literary elements, beautiful words to enhance the flavor of every sentence. That my friends is typically known at best as a writing dump or at worst as pompous.
Using few tools sparingly, often gives you the most prominent effects. It wasn’t until later, reading my writing books, doing workshops and taking more classes did I realize that. Not everything is important, and most importantly not everything should be said. A key distinction between film and literature is the amount of information given to your audience. Yes, film still limits some of the information given, but not to the degree of any published book you will find. It’s conveying all the visual data at once, versus having the audience mold the scene themselves. And with this understanding – copyright is an amazing source to analyze.
How to convey information in its simplistic form? Always remember less is more. The human mind can only retain so much information before words are ignored, skimmed, and the message starts to recede within the maze of subconsciousness. It’s the rhythmic dance between showing and telling where your film churns with vitality, giving just enough to know what’s important and leaving your audience with the freedom to imaging in accordance to their own will. In a movie, everyone sees the same thing, but within the spaces of a novel’s words there’s a certain magic, perspective, that each reader uses to imagine a scene, just slightly different and unique.
I leave you with two notes. Everything has purpose, and the power of words are profound. These very reasons are why mesmerizing speeches spark goosebumps, making every hair raise upright. When a piece of literature spoken or read douses you with emotion and you feel an overflow validating about you. There is a time to elongate, and there is a time to let simplicity shine. It’s your method, or formula that makes your writing unique.