How do you pare a story down?

If I might add to this discussion, it's perfectly possible to write seat of the pants and do a good job of it, but really, you need to be highly aware of where (and how) you intend to take your story. Excess irrelevant details are - and Major Tom, you've linked only visual media and pulp fiction, which is hardly the paragon of quality literature - in writing cumbersome and distracting for the reader. It takes one hell of a writer to keep a reader interested if the writer waxes poetical about arbitrary gun specs in the middle of an intense, character heavy scene. I don't claim to be a brilliant writer or anything along those lines, but I do find that some of the best writing I've ever read was crisp, clear and most importantly, said a lot using very little. Also, a million words out of which 600,000 is just fat is not a good story. A reader can see that you, as a writer, are wasting time and words, and they will not invest themselves into your story.

Also, editing is the best thing. Go back and look at each sentence. Are you saying the right things? Do your words flow together and sound good? Can what you've written be made shorter?

Really, what sounds better?

1) He raised his long sinewy arms, blocking out the sunlight from hitting his retinas, and stretched into a long gradual yawn, noting suddenly the large, bulky vehicle parked near him, which was a rare 1957 Ferrari Testa Rosa, with the number 1452 on the licence plate. Indeed, he noted that the car was perhaps the rarest with its 250BHP engine powered by petroleum oil and giving staggering speeds for the era.

2) He stretched, yawning heavily, as he looked out the window. What greeted him there was the startling sight of a rare, antique car, possibly one of those 1957 Ferraris he'd heard his enthusiast father rave about. He blinked in surprise when he noticed the large truck outside the empty house next door, parked next to the red car.

"So, someone finally bought that old house, eh?"

I understand this isn't the best example ever, rather that it's terrible and without coffee, but the second one is just so much easier on the reader, and doesn't contain the (completely unresearched in my case) specs because you just don't need them. In approximately the same amount of space, I've made far more happen in the story by going for only the important stuff, and I've managed to add a little more information about the character himself.

Edit: Oops, formatting.

edited 9th Feb '12 6:21:33 PM by SCBracer

Very well demonstrated, Bracer. "Brevity is the soul of wit" and all that.

^^ Some truth to that. That's why you use Narrative Filigree intelligently not just throwing it in every sentence. You can have a lot, a huge lot in fact but throwing it into the middle of something inappropriate like is not good even if the content in question is likeable and/or interesting.

Conversely, making every little detail brief or otherwise relate to the plot can very much make for some boring and cliche stories. (Truth be told, only short stories can get away with that mainly due to lack of time.)

See, I'm going to disagree with you here because your so-called Narrative Filigree is always important in some way.

Any writer, even in a novel, will not add details absolutely irrelevant to the novel. Plot isn't the only thing that a writer has to managed. Equally important as that would be the characterisation, the use of imagery, narrative technique etc.

Those little extra details that don't add to the plot? They tell us about your characters. They tell us about the world around them. Let me draw your attention to this short story by Hemingway called Hills Like White Elephants, which is one of my favourite examples of brief but meaningful writing. Just look at the amount of information you receive about the characters and their world through what appears to be a simple, banal conversation. I won't spoil the "meaning" of the story for you, but you should try to analyse it sometime. It's the most amazing moment when you actually get the intended meaning.

Why does this forum not have a preview button?

I disagree about Hills With White Elephants; it was too obtuse for me to get at first and it's so pared down it doesn't have any beauty for me. Then again I'm not generally a 'serious literature' guy.

If you include this in your definition of "relevant to a work", then yes, Narrative Filigree - at least the kind I use - is relevant to a work. And really, I never argued it wasn't - what it's not relevant to is the plot.

For the record, I never really enjoyed "Hills Like White Elephants" either, but in large part that's more because I don't like Hemingway then anything else.

edited 9th Feb '12 6:48:00 PM by nrjxll

I totally agree with you about "Hills Like White Elephants", it's also some nice writing.

I agree that Hemingway is a bit obtuse at first. You need a very strong cultural context, and knowledge of Modernism to appreciate his stuff properly, so I can see why he doesn't appeal to the average reader (On that note: Firebert, you are ).

And yes, I do believe that world-building details that are cleverly integrated into the narrative, as opposed to dumped on the reader in a big blob of text, is relevant to a story. Of course, there is no point, in my opinion, in mentioning the "Great Two Headed Rock of El-Alazhum, in which the invincible warrior Moru-Uddin tarried" unless either one of those details has some relevance to the characters. What I'm trying to get at, I guess, is that the characters in a story are far more important than any other element that doesn't relate to technique.

I'd love to see a sample of your writing, nrjxll, if you really can integrate "narrative filigree" into your work. It's something that I've been working on for some time on.

Honestly, my problem with Hemingway is more his philosophy (and to a certain degree personality) then his style.

Well, it depends on how you define "relevant". I'm not just going to randomly throw this out there, but if the characters visit the Great Two Headed Rock, then I'll likely mention Moru-Uddin even if he has nothing whatsoever to do with the story (even from a thematic viewpoint) otherwise.

Generally, as far as narrative filigree related to the background goes, I work it in through references more then anything else.

edited 9th Feb '12 7:08:05 PM by nrjxll

It totally makes sense to mention Moru-Uddin in that case to add some quick in-story history, such things bring the work to life. Just look at some of Tolkien's work with it.

Quite. Tolkien is amazing at making his lore relevant to the narrative as a whole. The thing about him though is that he draws heavily from the style of poetry like Beowulf, spoken in mead halls by bards, and he knows his craft. He wasn't a random teenager/twenty-something writing. He was a well-read, highly-educated linguist working in a field he specialised in.

People like me on the other hand just don't have the academic background, skill or knowledge to pull something like that off without a hitch. And it took Tolkien years to write his books - a testament to the level of editing and reviewing he did in order to get things just right.

The other thing about Tolkien is that he was really good at his descriptions having evocative language and really setting the scene. Unless you're able to do so really well, you don't really need to spend much time on setting detail or trying to do stuff like Scenery Porn in literature since many readers are pretty good at imagining how a scene would look without having to be told much specific detail, and unless the language is up to a level like Tolkien's, attempts at going into detail are rarely going to live up to what the reader would picture in his mind without it.

Yeah, Tolkien being a linguist really prevents me from coming close to him in writing in such a way.

Wait, are you saying that Tolkein was good at evocative language because he was a linguist? I somehow doubt that was the case.

No, that's not what I was trying to say, though that did help him create realistic languages that enhanced his stories' universe. Such things can't really be duplicated by someone without the know-how and work too well.

edited 9th Feb '12 8:15:29 PM by Firebert

I think we're trying to say he had technical mastery of his craft.

Well, I do know that language isn't the kind of thing I'd focus on when making a story's background. I'm a historian.

Well, sure. But Tolkien was a writer.

Yeah that.

Well that could certainly help. My field of study isn't really much use for it.

edited 9th Feb '12 8:18:52 PM by Firebert

What I mean is that while Tolkien was certainly a technical master, I think his success at creating a background stems largely from the positive side of Write What You Know. I would never try to do what he did because I'm not a linguist - my attempts to build background come from another direction.

I think the part about being a linguist helping Tolkien write his descriptions is mostly about how his life experiences gave him inspiration and let him see what many beautiful places looked like, but his mastery of language is what allowed him to paint such vivid images in his writing through the words he used describing them.

Yep, going out and experiencing the world can help you gain more perspective and inspiration, which are crucial when writing about similar (and even dissimilar) things. But if you're not a linguist, you'd better expect a lot of trial and error in evoking those same feelings in your writing.

And people actually took this silly little gem seriously, and argued against it? Look at the context again...

Thank you, Triple. No one ever said that outlining before writing is a must, but it certainly helps you improve your writing and organization and get an idea of your story before your first rough draft.

Most media does this pretty often though outside some of the more drawn out novels. Everything either relates to plot, theme, or character development, that relation is just more subtle for some moments than others. An exception sometimes is a comedic work saying something seemingly off-topic purely for the sake of a joke, but even then in some works the joke has a secondary purpose of revealing something about the character or setting something up for later. Many great works have very little "fat" because nearly everything is meaningful to the story in some way.

edited 10th Feb '12 5:20:42 PM by Culex3