: Re: Cutting down the length of a short story I'm writing a short story for an assignment at school - but I'm having trouble keep it short. I have a habit to go off on a tangent quite a bit,

@Turnbaugh521

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Writing a story in 800 or fewer words can be very difficult, but in a less time-constrained writing environment you have the luxury of extensive editing. Good editing often must be ruthless; each small piece of expression, even a single word, can seem like one of your children which you must cast out of your family. Even an especially powerful phrase may need to be kept from the story. (Of course, you can save any removed content for later use.)

Often one must allow the readers to insert details from their imaginations even if these details conflict with your imagination. Allowing the readers to more extensively use their imaginations has the benefit of increasing the readers involvement in the story.

Writing a short short (500 to 1,000 words) is not about world building or even extensive characterization, so details can often be left out.

You might also note that specific, concrete nouns and verbs can often eliminate the need for additional modifying words and phrases (particularly adjectives and adverbs; e.g., "hurried" rather than "walked quickly" or "raced" rather than "ran as fast as he could"). Similarly using active voice versus passive voice and using inanimate objects as sentence subjects can tighten sentence structure (e.g., "her Corvette growled to the curb" rather than "she drove her Corvette to the curb" [one word longer and not even including the 'growling' aspect] or the awful "her Corvette was driven to the curb by her").

If you have a complete story that is too long, not only can you remove small portions that do not add to the main point of the story but you may also choose a subplot within the story to become the plot of the shortened version.

The following exercise that just came to mind might be helpful in motivating harsh reductions in word count: At the word count limit, insert an abrupt unsatisfactory ending (e.g., the characters are incinerated in a nuclear blast). The point is not to end the story in that way but to force the writer to end the story properly before that possible ending can come. (Once the story is properly ended, alternative futures are possible, almost as if the story was a fixed-length, door-lined passage ending in a doorway you do not want to use.)

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