I recently review
Michael Kechula's new book, “Writing 100-Word Stories (Drabbles)
for Magazines and Contests – A Self Study Tutorial.” Reading this
book reminded me of the importance of words. In Drabbles, word count
is key, but to keep withing the 100 word limit, each word
must count. There is no spare space to use adjectives or adverbs to
modify a noun or verb that is almost but not quite perfect.
In novels and short
stories, word count is less important, but finding the right word to
enhance the story is still desirable. When you're writing longer fiction,
it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking a long paragraph of
description does the job a single perfect word would accomplish in
less space.
While many writers
don't want to write short fiction of 100 words or less. It's still
important to realize that the perfect word
can enhance the reader's appreciation of the description. Many readers are not interested in plowing
through pages of description when a few well chosen words would do
the job.
Another aspect of
finding the right word is eliminating unnecessary words. Unnecessary
words include the adjectives and adverbs used to modify nouns and
verbs that are almost perfect. An example is using 'really' to modify
what you're proposing. It's a word that may make you feel better
because you're trying to communicate the way you 'really' feel, but
the strong words in the sentence should accomplish that without help.
Even if you're not
interested in writing short fiction, I recommend Michael's book. The
165 exercises at the end will give you practice in eliminating
unnecessary words and make you think about what you are trying to
say.
Michael's book is
available at Amazon.
(http://www.amazon.com/Micro-Fiction-100-Word-Drabbles-Magazines-ebook/dp/B00R6WHL3O/)
