Ours is a weird world.
Most of the times we either have too much of a thing, or too little. We hardly ever have the right amount of anything, even words.
A writer’s job is to write. But, how many words are needed to describe an emotion, a scene, or an event is arbitrary. I may do it in a thousand, you may do it in a hundred.
A piece of advice given to all writers is, “Omit Needless Words”. But, every word that you have written, is there for a purpose. So, where do you find these “needless” words?
Needs, anyway, are relative and arbitrary. One man’s needs may be another man’s luxury.
As a writer, it is your job to find the balance between too many words or too little. If there are too many words, the reader may get bored; if there are too few words, the reader may feel cheated. Like most things in life, therefore, you have to find a balance where the reader feels that the time and effort spent in reading your piece was worth every bit of it.
Are you able to strike this balance?
Image: Colin Harris
What do you think?