Writing Tip — 65

Advice given by a great editor or critiquer is not attempting to change your writing voice or writing style. They are helping you to strengthen your writing voice; helping you to remove the unneeded fluff and details from your story. The reader doesn’t need to know step by step how a character enters a house, or gets into a car and starts it. They don’t need to know every piece of furniture in the room or what items are found on a character’s desk or dresser. Readers have an imagination, so let them use it. When you load down your story with laundry lists of descriptions, routes taken by a character when driving, or what they do when they wake up each day, you bog the story down and risk losing the reader from boredom. Tighten the prose and let the story flow, writers. Don’t create a log jam with boring details.