KimElliott.net

One of the first things a Copywriter will learn about is the art of reducing a complicated message to a few words. I’ve heard this is the same principle used by stand up comedians. In order to get the message across you have to cut out the white noise.

When it comes to Direct Mail in the charity industry, there is a whole science behind the number of words used in a sentence and the number of sentences used in a paragraph. There are even debates over the layout of text and how it influence the public to part with their money. The rules are more rigid than a Speed Haiku contest.

In the world of fiction, this issue isn’t often discussed. Perhaps because fiction is seen as art where copy writing is a science and it is generally accepted that you can get away with sloppiness and a host of other issues in the name of art. I thought I was pretty balanced in this field then my agent sent me an amazing talk he’d written on pleonasm and I realised that my fiction writing was stuffed with the kind of examples that would make my copy writing self blush.

While I’m fine tuning my novel I keep thinking about the rules of language and when to break them. It’s sending me a little loopy, but I’d rather analyse all day than settle for the art excuse of “it’s supposed to be like that”. I know that sometimes in fiction it can work to break these rules, to create realism or simply because it enhances the story, my question is when should I do this and how often?

For now, I’m happy to work through my novel line by line, word by word and decide as I go, after all, I’m trying to paint a picture, not sell a window.