WRTITING FEW WORDS

I’ve come across writing fiction manuals where the author boasts about writing 50,000 words in one go. So effortlessly they end up erasing scenes.

Is it bad to write a lot less than that?! When you think imposition (the way the paper is folded in order to get 4-8-12 pages), maybe. Since there is a fixed numbers of pages to be filled in into a quire. Editors need to think this. At least in case of offset printing. Authors who print digitally have a lot less to worry about imposition.

It doesn’t work for copyrighters who need 40,000 words just to justify their choice of a proposal/topic… Are there really people reading that much marketing proposal when nowadays we try to reduce the time we spend reading for we read a lot?

For me, it is almost impossible to write more. As soon as I try to fulfill the count frustration comes about. I doubt. It feels like something is wrong.

QUANTITY IS NOT THE SAME AS GOOD

And for that a title: The old man and the sea[1]. I don’t know in English but in Spanish, that’s a language a little less populated, this novel is small and thin. No more than 127 pages. Very little for those authors who write that many words only for a chapter.

In this one, superfluous has been eradicated.

Now, War and Peace. The concrete blog that could seriously hurt someone were we to smack someone with it. It is scuffle compared to the 6 tomes (so far since when I wrote this entry there were only 5) of a Song of ice and fire series. Not to say Mr. Martin writes at length.

So why is Hemingway’s novel regarded as important?

SIMPLE

«the trembling sound as flying fish left the water»

The descriptions are kept simple. Do you need more to feel the boat under your behind, the waves, the jumping fish[2]?

TOPIC

The second thing that made it go into immortal hall was the topic. Nonetheless, that’s something for the next entry.

TO BE CONTINUED

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[1] Novel I don’t like but since it was mentioned as one of the ones with the best 100 incipits and it really is short compared to the concrete blocks of some writers I took as a model to write about.

[2] Read this somewhere…

The presumption that sheep are unintelligent can be found as far back as Aristotle, who asserted in about 350 bce that the sheep is said to be naturally dull and stupid. Of all quadrupeds it is the most foolish: it will saunter away to lonely places with no object in view; oftentimes in stormy weather it will stray from shelter.

Yet just a couple of paragraphs later, he remarks that ‘shep-herds train sheep to close in together at a clap of their hands’, so that ‘when a thunderstorm comes on’, they can summon their flocks back to the sheepfold. The contradictions here resound throughout history: sheep are stupid because they follow obediently, but also because they stray disobediently; they are too dull to know what they are doing, but they can learn to come on command (like dogs, in whom we consider this to be evidence of human-like cleverness).

Sheep. Philip Armstrong. Reaction books

I find the story familiar. It’s like saying women are horrid but praising men for getting two or three. Saying women are stupid but counting on them to manage the house ( sometimes one big enough to count as a company). Fiction is used to convenience when the ones below the story allow it.

Are you to use this feature in your stories? Do it wisely. Pasto kalo.