Words

A question I often see posed in forums is; “How long should my book be?”. Invariably the response is that it will be as long as it is. Some may say that the answer is more ambiguous than the question. Yet it is not. The is no set length for a sentence, paragraph or chapter. They are as long as they are, and they are as long as the writer wants or needs them to be.

I remember in one writer’s group that I used to attend that the term, ‘The economy of words’ was raised. The word economy itself often implies less rather than more. Things that are economical are usually cheaper than other things. However,with writing economy isn’t always as it seems. True, using less words can be good, but using more words can be just as good. just as in a society’s economy,sometimes the balances between less and more are evened out.

When writing a book, novella, short story, and to a lesser degree,poetry, the amount of words used varies greatly. When I write, I want to make sure I use the right amount of words so that my reader can paint the picture in their mind of the story I’m telling. There are times when I need to use many words to convey the image. At other times, it may only need to be a few. This may even happen within the same series of paragraphs. Sometimes one word is enough for the reader to get the idea. At other times, I may need to use a string of words,so the reader has a clear view of what’s happening.

As a writer, I need to engage all the senses of my reader. Their sight, sound,smell, taste and touch. How you might say? They don’t all have to be engaged at the same time. Sometimes it is easy to engage a sense. There are also times when it is extremely difficult.

I remember working on a piece for a writing and editing course I did some years ago. When I got the piece back from the instructor, she said that it lacked sound. I had to ask what she meant, and she said that with everything that I had included, I had not added any descriptive wording to convey the sounds that were taking place. The victim in the piece made no sound as the killing machine used on him ripped into his chest. Even the sound of the machine conveyed no sound. No grinding of wheels or parts; the swinging of the parts that eventually tore the victim’s chest to pieces and so on. The rest of the piece gave her a distinct image of what was happening, but it was as silent as the paper on which it was written.

The words we use have that sort of power. Whether we do it with one word or many, we need to make sure that the words we use successfully create the image we already have in our minds.

The words we eventually use shouldn’t make every piece we write as thick as a ream of paper. Neither should our hero’s epic quest be over in less than fifty pages. Let the story be as concise, clear and long as it is. As I said earlier, I try to give my readers enough information to know what’s going on in the story, but I don’t want to spoon feed them either. I like to give my readers some room to engage their own imaginations as the try to envisage the world I’ve created; the characters, the society, the locations, the sights, the sounds.