#13 Writing exercise: Condense to clarify
Stephen King once said, “To write is human, to edit is divine.”
After writing a draft we naturally reduce our words when we edit.
Streamlining our work by culling unnecessary adverbs or cutting cumbersome sentences enhances the finished product for our readers.
One of the mantras I keep in mind when I edit is ‘Condense to clarify.’
I see my first draft as lumpen clay ready for moulding and trimming before I throw it into the kiln and then present it to the world.
A useful exercise I picked up in grad school was to write weekly reading summaries of the major historical texts in our seminars.
We had to provide a comprehensive but succinct overview of weighty tomes in a single page.
The summaries typically included:
- The book’s major thesis
- How the author used primary sources and related to other secondary sources
- Analyses of author’s the arguments
- Identifying the text’s relevance within the broad sweep of that class/seminar
Some weeks later we condensed these one-page overviews into single paragraph summaries.
Looping this back to writing and editing, the exercise made us think about the core elements of the subject matter and convey them quickly but effectively.
The academic aspects of the one-page to one-paragraph summaries don’t translate precisely to creative writing but the theory behind them does.
If we are working on a novel, long-form blog post or another piece of writing – can we talk about it in a page, a paragraph or a sentence?
When we condense down to these core components, the key themes and outcomes clarify, helping us edit and refine the work from its early drafts.
Give it a whirl if you find yourself stuck or suffering from writer's block.
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Benjamin Craske
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