Wordiness is Weak Writing But How Little is Too Little?

I tell my students to eliminate words that don’t add anything to their subject. Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) gives reasons and examples here: Conciseness in Writing

I buy into the concept, but also expect communication–whether written or oral–to be vivid and clear, and so I must ask if there is a realistic minimum when too few words are as bad or worse than too many. Today, for the first time, I tried to tell a story in just 55 words (the flash fiction assignment I found at http://austinbriggs.com/category/Flash-Fiction-Contest/)

Are these few words–reduced from a scene in my book, Pieces of You, –enough to cause you to imagine the scene and discern the message imbedded in the story’s title, What if heaven is fun and fulfilling? Or would it benefit from more detail?

The news as usual is of carnage.

Disgusted, Mark turned to the mystifying peephole. His deceased mother, gloriously happy, was there teaching wide-eyed scholars, the scent of flowers and the notes of masters on the breeze. She took his father’s hand and faced Mark, saying, “We will help you teach them to love each other.”

The Power (captured in the words of Kahlil Gibran)

I just read The Crucified by Kahlil Gibran, and then found it published in this blog entry  by Dave Feucht. I offer it to you with this introduction and prayer:

In the words of Gibran:

On this one day of each year, the philosophers leave their dark caves, and the thinkers their cold cells, and the poets their imaginary arbors, and all stand reverently upon that silent mountain, listening to the voice of a young man saying of his killers, “Oh Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.”

But as dark silences chokes the voices of the light, the philosophers and the thinkers and the poets return to their narrow crevices and shroud their souls with meaningless pages of parchment.

Please, dear friends, don’t let it be this way for us this Easter season. Let us use the power in our words to tell our readers something they need to know! Something that may bring them more joy or understanding or even a greater capacity and desire to love one another.  Amen.

The Power of Words–and Words to Prove It!

I have been teaching my Public Speaking students about language, especially the  great power of our words to create or destroy.  Writers  are always influencing  by the words  we choose to describe something or someone.  I wonder if we are constantly conscious of what we are doing…. Do we always choose the word that is the clearest and most descriptive, and not a judgment? After all, readers are limited to the world we create, with its values and visions of what is–or could be–in it. Are we painting brave new worlds with our word pictures or are we prescribing a life that only gratifies or glorifies our self-centered natures? And are we conscious of the beauty and precision of the grammatical context of our words, or do our fingers go tripping and tumbling along a path, throwing commas and other punctuation wherever we please with no thought to scooping up the excess?

Here are some possible answers, quotes I found on Goodreads:

“Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.” ― C.S. Lewis

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Words are like eggs dropped from great heights; you can no more call them back than ignore the mess they leave when they fall.” ― Jodi Picoult, Salem Falls

“There exists, for everyone, a sentence – a series of words – that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. If you’re lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first.” ― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“We live and breathe words. …. It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt–I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted–and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.” ― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

How have you been changed by the words you’ve read?

I Review, too! Here’s my Critique of “The Fountains of Paradise”

The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I bought the book to learn more about space elevators and Arthur C. Clarke didn’t disappoint me there. Thirty-five years ago Clark imagined a time when Earthlings would find space travel available to the masses. How? By replacing rockets with an elevator moving straight up and down along hyperfilament thread held taught by an orbital anchor 31,000 miles up and a counterweight anchored in the ground on the equator.

The magnificent part of this story is that his vision may become a reality by the middle of the twenty-first century–and using some of the same materials and procedures so descriptively laid out in The Fountains. Clarke doesn’t weave a story of magic; he shows just how difficult it will be. But it will be worth the cost and effort when humans need to escape from our planet.

Yes, Clarke does include a peek far into the future where the Starholme return to Earth at the site of the Elevator (they’re not evil aliens, though). What makes this novel mind-boggling was the other end of the time traveling. Clarke also lets us look way back to the time this same site was the home of Kalidasa, a doomed king who created astounding engineering feats as his legacy.

One astounding feat was enough for me! Including both the far past and very distant future seemed to distract from the focal point, the amazing science in fiction called a Space Elevator.

View all my reviews

Do You Review? Micki Does!

I do a lot of my purchasing online these days, primarily because I can read other customers’ experiences. When people take the time to not just “like” something but to explain why,  I’m more confident that it will (or won’t) interest me. I bet you feel the same way. But do you reciprocate?

Micki does!

Writing reviews of books or any product can be time-consuming, forcing us to draw on our creative side which already is overworked or may have been dormant so long we’re not sure it still works. So why not just let others do it; after all, there are people who get paid to do this.

But do we always believe or agree with the professional reviewers? Think about the movie reviews you’ve read recently… Most of us would rather access reviews of people who are similar to us, people we can identify with. But those people are busy doing some of the same thing we do, like my colleague, Micki.

Micki on Pinterest  Micki Peluso is a published author who still does all the things a wife, mother, grandmother, student and instructor (without the formal titles), friend and  involved citizen does. Yet she has written 56 book reviews–her most recent being a review of my novel (for which I’m extremely grateful!) Her gift to readers, freely given to those of us who rely on reviews for our own buying decisions, has become a personal call to action.  Taking the time to write a review of my own purchases–whether books or any other necessary object–is a gift to people I may never meet, whether creators or potential buyers. Yet it’s proof that, like Micki, I am interested in others!

I’m concluding my plea for all of us to post more reviews with this link to examples of Micki’s reviews: Micki Peluso’s book reviews (including mine!)  To entice you to go there, here’s the final lines from her review of Pieces of You.

A Book That Speaks to the Soul, February 8, 2013

This review is from: Pieces of You (Paperback)

Author J. F. Elferdink writes a remarkable compelling story which will linger in the minds of the reader, perhaps forever. It might entice or scare readers, helping to redefine their lives, examine their actions and the motives behind them. It is not a work that one can just read and put down without in-depth personal contemplation. This is a book that speaks to the soul.

When and where is the last review you’ve written?

Don’t We All Love Recognition!

On January 16, I’m in the Author Spotlight here!

If you click on the underlined statement, read the “spotlight”

written by Morgen Bailey and give me feedback,

I will grant you one request (one that isn’t illegal or immoral and one I can fill…)

AND ask you to consider giving recognition to someone who needs to hear it.