Thread: How tight is too tight?

We all know tight is good (minds out of the gutter now).
There must be a point when trimming and tightening becomes life threatening for a piece of writing. How do I distinguish, as a writer, how tight is too tight?

For example: This paragraph comes from my first draft, so I know it's loose.

The brush swept their legs as they navigated down the barely visible path. It looked as though it hadn’t been used in a long time. They came to the river bank. A gradual decline of fine, soft grey sand into pristine water. The clear water ran over the perfectly smooth oval and circle pebbles. They looked soft, blurred by the water and tickled with soft mossy greens. The treeline sheltered them from everything but a sweep of blue sky above the river.

I could tighten it down to this:

Brush swept their legs as they navigated the barely visible path. They came to the river bank, a gradual decline of fine grey sand into pristine water running over smooth pebbles blurred with soft mossy greens. The treeline sheltered them from everything but a sweep of blue sky above the river.

What would you have done?

I think it's a matter of writing style as well as intended audience. Your first example might be fine for romance, yet too much for a piece of fantasy. It also comes down to how you want your readers to engage in your story. Dune (Frank Herbert) is an example of a book that rarely explains scenery. The focus is on speech, intent, and motivation. The story could have been written to produce similar emotional states by using a different method, but the author chose one way over another.

Just ask yourself what your goal is. Have you chosen the style because it's similar to ones your favourite authors use? Or is it a style that's easiest for you to write? Some people fall into a rut attempting to mimic a style they like, yet are better with other styles. Weigh up your options and work out a best fit.

In all, I think it's a personal choice, and one that other people shouldn't have too much influence over you with. Not that asking for advice is bad. And to that end;

When I tighten things up, I do my best to avoid starting sentences with 'the' or 'they'. In most cases, you can simply remove 'the', but some rewording needs to be done with 'they'. For example rather than 'The clear water ran', it's just 'Clear water ran'. Rather than 'They came to the river', I may use 'Arriving at the river, they...'. My drafts are written mostly for characters and speech. I go in later and add scenery and other information that I visualised when writing but failed to come through in the re-read. I usually misuse commas as well, and have to harvest them[sic].

I'll also revise sentences to list items/objects in order of importance; ie, is it more important that they arrived at the river, or that they embraced each other once they got there. I'll try to remove superfluous details that can be included incidentally within character speech. "'This treeline looks great hanging over the water' said Ms X". This allows you to describe the scene without 'telling it', but it's also a nifty way to get your reader to engage with the character; as they imaging themselves as that character looking at the treeline, rather than imagining the treeline as a third person.

You make a change, leave it for a day or a week, and re-read it.
Did it produce in you the visual imagery you were looking for?
Did it make you feel the way you want your readers to feel?
Are you imagining more about the scene than what you've got on paper?

If it's an important part, have someone read it and describe to you what they saw and felt. If they don't give you the picture you want, or you have to correct them, it's time to revise. Pick someone else to read the revision. Also, reading on paper produces a different feel than reading from a screen. Try both if you're stuck.

Hope this helps.

It is a case of deciding which parts of the meaning are useful and which expendable, then whether the useful bits could be condensed.
For example
The brush swept their legs as they navigated down the barely visible path. It looked as though it hadn’t been used in a long time.,

Brush swept their legs as they navigated the barely visible path.

The loss of the second sentence loses the disuse of the path, it could be argued that this is implied by the overgrown state. However if it is important to the plot line in some way it is good to be explicit. Could it be condensed however? Try:-

Brush swept their legs as they navigated the path, barely visible from disuse.

Then there is the matter of 'poetic language', why use a fifty cent word if a five cent one will do the job? "Followed the path" would do if writing for one sort of audience, a thriller maybe, the barely visible ... shows it wasn't easy. However "navigated" adds something which would be more likely to be picked up by another sort of audience.

Another example, in the second piece the fact that the water blurs the stones is lost, it could now be the green doing it, does this worry you?

Thank you Kris and Ollie. This helps answer my question perfectly! Hopefully I can maintain an ideal balance between too tight and too lose that best suits my style. Now off I trot to find it.

I wouldn't have 'The brush swept..' because I'd be worrying about the reader thinking of sweeping brushes, though I suppose that's not what you're asking.

I'm not sure why you feel I need a vivid description of the river bank. Often I rely on the reader's imagination. If you say 'river bank' to me, I have preconceived notions about what this looks like. If I lived near an estuary, I'll imagine the tidal, sandy banks. If I live upstream I'll imagine grass and/or foliage covering the banks. Does it matter which? You need some description to set a scene, but at the same time you don't want the reader to have to labour his way through it. If you give me a few words I can imagine the rest, perhaps furnish the water with lilies, and the air with bird cries.

As a writer and reader, this comes down to judgement. It's not mathematics, and no right or wrongs. Styles and genres are different, as are readers preferences.

I'm partial to your second one. I generally think "less is more" is the way to go with writing, which isn't an original thought from me. I've seen it repeated in umpteen writing texts.

Hey, do me a favour.

Get rid of that awful picture that makes you look like a nutter.

Originally Posted by spider8

Hey, do me a favour.

Get rid of that awful picture that makes you look like a nutter.

Hey, do me a favour.
Get a picture that makes you look like a nutter, dare you!

Originally Posted by Katie D

Hey, do me a favour.
Get a picture that makes you look like a nutter, dare you!

At least I'm upside down in mine.(That dark semi-circle at the top is me).

Originally Posted by spider8

At least I'm upside down in mine.(That dark semi-circle at the top is me).

Wait.. that's not a tree?

(too obscure a connection to a 'nutter'..?)

I have shaved somewhere around 70 + pages at approximately 20,000 words leaving me with a novel that is 128,000 words at 453 pages. According to one of the publishing houses I am interested in, they don't accept anything over 120,000 words. Ideally they would like between 90 and 100. I don't know if I can pare it down that much without screwing up the story completely.

Is there a chance you're underestimating the imagination of your readers? I find that even with the barest of scene descriptions I can imagine a nice setting.

Mind, 8,000 words a lot to cull. The alternative is a change in publisher.

And you may not be screwing up the story so much as changing it (potentially for the better).

Originally Posted by KrisMunro

Is there a chance you're underestimating the imagination of your readers? I find that even with the barest of scene descriptions I can imagine a nice setting.

Mind, 8,000 words a lot to cull. The alternative is a change in publisher.

And you may not be screwing up the story so much as changing it (potentially for the better).

All things I'm considering still. I have asked two people to read the manuscript independent of each other and requested they be honest in their assessments. Hopefully, I may get some constructive feedback from that.

Originally Posted by MJ Preston

All things I'm considering still. I have asked two people to read the manuscript independent of each other and requested they be honest in their assessments. Hopefully, I may get some constructive feedback from that.

I hope you do and be sure to let us know what happens.