Murder your darlings

Week three, we explored ten tips for trimming. Some further tricks are detailed below.

A good pruning trick is to eliminate all the "ing" verbs ('I swam', rather than 'I was swimming'). Condense possessives as well ('the cat's bed', rather than 'the bed of the cat')."If" clauses are notorious padding. For example:

BEFORE: If you want a really relaxed holiday in the United Kingdom, you should rent a narrowboat. (16 words)
AFTER: English narrowboats inspire relaxed holidays. (5 words)

The content is the same, but the sentence is more than 66% smaller (perhaps even too small!).

BEFORE: When you get to Seattle, make sure you visit Pike Place Market, a great shopping center where the famous Levi's commercial with the men throwing fish was filmed. (28 words)
AFTER: Don't miss Seattle's Pike Place Market, home of the fish-flingers made famous by the Levi's commercial (16 words).

Switching from a wordy second-person viewpoint to the imperative made this example more crisp.

BEFORE: The florist gave me a huge, dazzling smile, resting her shears on the table under the window, covered with a checkered cloth and heaps of roses. (26 words)
AFTER: The florist's smile was bigger and brighter than the rose heap overflowing the checkered tablecloth. (15 words)

Condensing – or eliminating – prepositional clauses often gets a sentence down to fighting trim. Take a step back: what do you need to say (big smile, flowers)? What's color (checkered cloth)? What's just plain in the way (the shear, the table being specifically under the window)?

BEFORE: I was chased across the piazza by a grandmother, who was very angry. (13 words)
AFTER: The irate grandmother chased me across the piazza. (8 words)

Here, the active version (where the subject "does" the verb) is shorter than the passive sentence – and easier to understand, according to linguistic experts. An adjective replaced the 'who' clause, which shaves off a few more words.

Gradually, concise writing becomes a habit (news reporting is great practice). In the meantime, don't let journalistic conventions tie your tongue. You're a blogger. You're the boss. Do as you like. When you like.

Burble away, take a break (a few hours or, preferably, days), then return with fresh eyes. Try reading the piece aloud. Need to stop for breath mid-sentence? Time to cut! Notice a budding alliteration? Plump it up. Repeating the same word ad nauseam? Search the thesaurus. But don't confuse your "writer's hat" with your editor's visor. Someday the two may mesh together. Until that happens, don't dam your creative flow with grammatical tweaking and rule paranoia. Take your time – and do both well.