Does your book suffer from a flabby middle? Well, then it’s time to take it to the gym. Make it do some stretches and lose that extra fat – can you tell what my New Year’s resolution is? Yeah.
Most of the time, the flab in the middle of the book is like the flab in your middle – stuff you don’t need but are storing because your body thinks it should be a certain weight. If you know you’re contracted to deliver eighty thousand words and you find yourself suffering from premature ending (hey, it happens to the best of us) it might suddenly seem very tempting to just start describing everything ad nauseam and with relish. You may suddenly feel a need to explain the fashions of your world or give us a lecture on alien textiles.
Do try to resist it.
—Sarah A. Hoyt, ‘May You Write Interesting Books’ (part 5)
The weight of the story
24 June 2014 by Leave a Comment
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