When it comes to writing, there’s almost nothing that I love more than to create new worlds, filled with interesting characters and locations in them.
I also love to create beautiful prose, that flows well on the tongue.
I say all this because I just sent out a short story. It was a story I first finished and sent out in December, but it wasn’t quite ready then — it was one of those situations where I would have liked to spend some more time with it, but had a deadline to hit.
I didn’t really know what was quite wrong with it in my head, but I figured out those problems this past week, prepping it for a new outlet.
There were a few points in the story — just a few — where I was trying to do a little too much. I loved the character details I had, but they were bogging the prose down, making the writing feel clunky.
I didn’t want to lose those details, though. They really did add a dynamic to my main character that otherwise doesn’t quite show.
I tried rewording the writing, I tried to move things around… but nothing worked.
Ultimately, I had to let the writing win, and so I made the cuts.
At the end of the day, no matter how many wonderful ideas you want to try to incorporate in your story, you can’t have clunky prose. Some of them will almost certainly have to be cut.
Be merciless, my friends.
ryan p adams 