It often seems like every other writer needs to cut out paragraphs and scale back on superfluous prose during their editing process, and I have seen quite a few blog posts on the internet that make me wonder how someone can take so long to say so little. When I was in college, one of my classes required a 400-word essay, and all the other students complained about how hard it was to write something so short. Most people naturally write long.
Me? I’m the exact opposite. I adore being concise.
In fact, my first draft tends to be a little too bare-bones, and the second draft is all about putting in details to improve the pace — I don’t want to leave my readers feeling like they got swept up in a whirlwind of events flying by too quickly to process. My second draft tends to be twice as long as the first, yet still comparatively terse. After all, if *I* get bored of slogging through countless words, then I can’t imagine my readers enjoying it either.
By Autumn Rain 