Redundancy goes back to concise writing. Writing should be athletically trim, not obese or emaciated. Most writing is grotesquely fat. It bothers me, because there is simply no need for it. "The writer who breeds more words than he needs makes a chore for the reader who reads." –Dr. Seuss.
There are several ways to trim your writing:
Simple active verbs
Logical progression
Importance of description
Clearly imaging a scene
It really comes down to choosing only what is important. This should be done AFTER your first draft. You cannot know what is important if you haven't written it. However, that doesn't mean you should put in everything. Some stuff you will never use and if you've actually outlined your plot, you know it.
Verbs: See my other article on TBV and passive verbs. Verb phrases are among the easiest things to reduce. Just make them simpler.
Logical Progression: This surprises some people because they don't think about it when writing a scene. You want your narrative, especially your action scenes, to progress logically. People do not flail around like wounded chickens. They think about their actions. They also notice things before other things. Describe either from the out in or from in out.
Example: A ninja is trying to infiltrate a castle and you want to describe the castle as he's getting in. Logically, a ninja would first examine the defenses, the stationary and the active. Then he would think how he could get through them to his target (let's say the tip of the tallest tower.) However, before all of this, he would look for the tower. He ranks things in matter of importance.
He would not run around like a chicken. The eye travels in a definite path. If you put yourself in the character's place, you will be able to know what he would see first. Even then, he doesn't necessarily care about everything, which leads me into the next section.
Importance of Description: Some stuff the character doesn't care about no matter how hard you want them to, or no matter how much you want to describe something. You must keep this in mind. If a woman is fleeing from a ninja in a castle, she won't bloody care how beautiful and ancient the tapestries on the walls are, or that the statue she's running past is over a relative from two hundred years ago. She more worried about getting away and will only notice what can help her do that.
Writers have to restrain themselves. They may have painted in their mind a beautiful place, even what type of landscaping and where a coterie of bunnies happens to be grazing. It's idyllic. Then you bring in a beast of a character who hates rabbits, rosemary hedges, and anything to do with architecture. He won't care.
He will do something like this: Richard stood in front of the Parliament building, sniffed, and stomped through the front door.
Now, an English nobleman would rave about the place, wouldn't he? He would describe in odious detail everything to do with it. Then he would point to various other landmarks, completely not noticing how his companions abandoned him ages ago, and wax eloquent for the pigeons.
The charm of this is that readers like to fill in the blanks. Say "Parliament building" and even if (like me) they have no idea what it looks like, they will create a grand place in their mind. They assume such a place is ornate and impressive. Use this fact to your advantage. Supply the necessities to create a scene and the reader will freely and gladly provide the rest. Say a noble's butler brought a silver pitcher and the reader will imagine the filigree and elegance of the thing.
This brings me to Anton Chekhov again. Chekhov's Gun. Don't describe something if you're not going to use it later. Don't tell me about the gun hanging over the mantel if a character isn't going to later shoot something with it.
Clearly Imagining a Scene: The more clearly you imagine a scene, the easier it is to choose what is important. Become a scriptwriter. Jot down a little floor plan of a room and use colored dots for characters. Write the bare action. Richard stepped towards Mary. Mary moved away and tripped over a table, etc. If Mary trips over a table, you may want to describe how she's standing by a little table topped with a cute wooden box. The table is important because it's part of the action. If Richard goes berserk and stabs a painting a lá Dorian Gray, describe the painting.
Once you have the bare movement, you can add dialogue, expressions, and the rest. This is particularly helpful for action and fight scenes. For someone who doesn't know martial arts, fights can be quite difficult to write. R.A. Salvatore can write such realistic fight scenes because he used to be a bouncer. He knows. Most of us don't know. This is where videos and friends are so useful. Go see competitions. Ask to sit in at a boxing club and watch, or go on Youtube. Youtube has a video for almost everything.
Do the same with the video. Write down the basic action. Richard punched at Jerry's chin. Jerry blocked with his left arm and stepped forward. Richard sidestepped, etc. Most people do not know enough about a particular skill to clearly and realistically imagine it. If you don't know about guns, watch Equilibrium. You'll have fun.
That's why as a writer, just like as an artist, you must stare at everything. Catalogue everything in your mind. If you know it, you can reproduce it.
However, I will warn you about over emphasizing action. Unless a particular action is so strange it cannot be easily imagined, it is best to leave out exactly how it was done. "Richard punched John in the face" You don't have to say, "Richard used his left hand to deliver a swinging hook to John's face." A friend of mine made a good point about this. The idea is to know what is happening so you can describe it concisely and accurately without sounding like you're a boxing manual. There is a big difference between a significant and meaningful amount of detail and an irrational amount. No one cares he used his left hand (unless it matters for some reason). All the reader cares about is that he punched John in the face.
One exception would probably be a near-death experience where the person sees everything so clearly and takes everything in. Otherwise, lean towards the discretionary side. I wouldn't use a near-death narrative more than once in an entire novel.
All of these tools are just that, tools. They are used with the aim of producing a concise body of work with little extra information and no confusion. Writing is work. It is a mental game. If you don't exercise your mind, it'll get fat. Work too hard and you'll burn yourself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Do you have trouble imaging a scene? Do you describe things as they come to you instead of running the scene in your mind first? What methods do you use to trim your writing?
There are several ways to trim your writing:
Simple active verbs
Logical progression
Importance of description
Clearly imaging a scene
It really comes down to choosing only what is important. This should be done AFTER your first draft. You cannot know what is important if you haven't written it. However, that doesn't mean you should put in everything. Some stuff you will never use and if you've actually outlined your plot, you know it.
Verbs: See my other article on TBV and passive verbs. Verb phrases are among the easiest things to reduce. Just make them simpler.
Logical Progression: This surprises some people because they don't think about it when writing a scene. You want your narrative, especially your action scenes, to progress logically. People do not flail around like wounded chickens. They think about their actions. They also notice things before other things. Describe either from the out in or from in out.
Example: A ninja is trying to infiltrate a castle and you want to describe the castle as he's getting in. Logically, a ninja would first examine the defenses, the stationary and the active. Then he would think how he could get through them to his target (let's say the tip of the tallest tower.) However, before all of this, he would look for the tower. He ranks things in matter of importance.
He would not run around like a chicken. The eye travels in a definite path. If you put yourself in the character's place, you will be able to know what he would see first. Even then, he doesn't necessarily care about everything, which leads me into the next section.
Importance of Description: Some stuff the character doesn't care about no matter how hard you want them to, or no matter how much you want to describe something. You must keep this in mind. If a woman is fleeing from a ninja in a castle, she won't bloody care how beautiful and ancient the tapestries on the walls are, or that the statue she's running past is over a relative from two hundred years ago. She more worried about getting away and will only notice what can help her do that.
Writers have to restrain themselves. They may have painted in their mind a beautiful place, even what type of landscaping and where a coterie of bunnies happens to be grazing. It's idyllic. Then you bring in a beast of a character who hates rabbits, rosemary hedges, and anything to do with architecture. He won't care.
He will do something like this: Richard stood in front of the Parliament building, sniffed, and stomped through the front door.
Now, an English nobleman would rave about the place, wouldn't he? He would describe in odious detail everything to do with it. Then he would point to various other landmarks, completely not noticing how his companions abandoned him ages ago, and wax eloquent for the pigeons.
The charm of this is that readers like to fill in the blanks. Say "Parliament building" and even if (like me) they have no idea what it looks like, they will create a grand place in their mind. They assume such a place is ornate and impressive. Use this fact to your advantage. Supply the necessities to create a scene and the reader will freely and gladly provide the rest. Say a noble's butler brought a silver pitcher and the reader will imagine the filigree and elegance of the thing.
This brings me to Anton Chekhov again. Chekhov's Gun. Don't describe something if you're not going to use it later. Don't tell me about the gun hanging over the mantel if a character isn't going to later shoot something with it.
Clearly Imagining a Scene: The more clearly you imagine a scene, the easier it is to choose what is important. Become a scriptwriter. Jot down a little floor plan of a room and use colored dots for characters. Write the bare action. Richard stepped towards Mary. Mary moved away and tripped over a table, etc. If Mary trips over a table, you may want to describe how she's standing by a little table topped with a cute wooden box. The table is important because it's part of the action. If Richard goes berserk and stabs a painting a lá Dorian Gray, describe the painting.
Once you have the bare movement, you can add dialogue, expressions, and the rest. This is particularly helpful for action and fight scenes. For someone who doesn't know martial arts, fights can be quite difficult to write. R.A. Salvatore can write such realistic fight scenes because he used to be a bouncer. He knows. Most of us don't know. This is where videos and friends are so useful. Go see competitions. Ask to sit in at a boxing club and watch, or go on Youtube. Youtube has a video for almost everything.
Do the same with the video. Write down the basic action. Richard punched at Jerry's chin. Jerry blocked with his left arm and stepped forward. Richard sidestepped, etc. Most people do not know enough about a particular skill to clearly and realistically imagine it. If you don't know about guns, watch Equilibrium. You'll have fun.
That's why as a writer, just like as an artist, you must stare at everything. Catalogue everything in your mind. If you know it, you can reproduce it.
However, I will warn you about over emphasizing action. Unless a particular action is so strange it cannot be easily imagined, it is best to leave out exactly how it was done. "Richard punched John in the face" You don't have to say, "Richard used his left hand to deliver a swinging hook to John's face." A friend of mine made a good point about this. The idea is to know what is happening so you can describe it concisely and accurately without sounding like you're a boxing manual. There is a big difference between a significant and meaningful amount of detail and an irrational amount. No one cares he used his left hand (unless it matters for some reason). All the reader cares about is that he punched John in the face.
One exception would probably be a near-death experience where the person sees everything so clearly and takes everything in. Otherwise, lean towards the discretionary side. I wouldn't use a near-death narrative more than once in an entire novel.
All of these tools are just that, tools. They are used with the aim of producing a concise body of work with little extra information and no confusion. Writing is work. It is a mental game. If you don't exercise your mind, it'll get fat. Work too hard and you'll burn yourself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Do you have trouble imaging a scene? Do you describe things as they come to you instead of running the scene in your mind first? What methods do you use to trim your writing?