tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-375534752008-10-26T00:11:40.803-04:00<i>Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.</i><br />---<br />William Strunk, Jr.<br /><i>The Elements of Style</i>Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-54909686549027115142008-06-23T15:37:00.003-04:002008-06-23T15:41:02.900-04:00

In the FlashForum there's a section for registered users called "Critique My Flash". In it, an author provided a story about a Messenger of Death that contained the following passage:His job at the midpoint had been about as thankless as the administrative one he’d had on Earth. On Earth, he had to direct hordes of people to counters at the Health Card office; at the midpoint, he had to split up

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-19805962003890349572008-05-13T09:54:00.003-04:002008-05-13T12:22:50.914-04:00

Many thanks to Bruce McAllister for being a really easy person to work with on the edits for "Game". The story he sent me was around 1050 words long. After we went through a brief round of editorial changes -- points of clarity, use of the serial comma, all that kind of stuff -- we hadn't saved any words. That's when we started to cut. If you look through my archives, You'll see that I usually

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-83356687967533804152007-12-27T23:19:00.000-05:002007-12-27T23:21:41.726-05:00

The site has gone live, and I intend to get back to some of the cutting work I had done in the past. If you click on the archive links, you'll be brought back to my personal Web site, where I used to host the blog. Please always remember to come back to Flash Fiction Online to get the content you're looking for. Regards, Jake

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-78755724367746202652007-10-16T21:44:00.000-04:002007-10-16T23:10:20.391-04:00

The cutting blog has been dormant for longer than I'd like, and it will remain so for a little while longer. I'm starting a professional flash fiction market, and I'm in development mode. I promise to start cutting again once that's off the ground. Give me a month or so. Thanks, Jake

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-14172876366249476592007-09-28T10:01:00.000-04:002007-09-28T10:05:17.998-04:00

This is from Meg. She tells me that it probably has too much flashback. I'm willing to agree -- I make the point with a few metrics later on -- but I've mostly stuck to cutting this piece. Here's the original. The air lay stagnant on Kate's exposed skin, viscous with sweat. Outside the heat was oppressive, and inside... and she could not bare her legs to take advantage of even the cool of

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-23929310142284464292007-09-06T09:24:00.000-04:002007-09-06T11:48:30.090-04:00

I reserve the right to modify this post a little bit. I'm in a hurry right now. :) This is the opening of a novel by Jeanne. The original, below, is 728 words. A scream echoed through the valley. Jessup stood in the copse of trees, barely breathing. Below the camp of the Faragund army teemed with movement. He pressed back against the tree behind him knowing that in the shadows of the dense

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-65419478182237760282007-09-04T17:37:00.000-04:002007-09-04T21:26:31.188-04:00

Writer's Digest has just hired a "Grammar Guru" -- a copy editor named Bonnie Trenga -- to write a column called "The Sentence Sleuth". Her inaugural column talks very clearly about "nominalizations", which I often point out when I'm cutting (in vaguer terms than she uses here). Well worth checking out, and I hope she produces many more columns to come!

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-76464031309086009402007-08-18T00:19:00.000-04:002007-08-19T00:02:56.243-04:00

This is from Deb Hoag, and unlike the other recent fiction cuts, it comes from the middle of a story. She tells me, "The section that my first reader thought was loooooonnnnnnnggg (that's a direct quote) I have set off in the text with a line of asterisks....[It] is, oddly enough, exactly 1,000 words." She also says that she's not sure everyone will get the in jokes -- and I'm not sure that I

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-62119292343978980152007-08-15T09:48:00.000-04:002007-08-15T09:55:25.774-04:00

This 983-word novel excerpt is a solid piece of prose from J over at Hatrack River. (Did I mention that I solicited blog entries from Hatrack? :) ) It's relatively transparent: there's nothing standing between the reader and the story, no poetic language, no high diction. There's maybe a touch of country flavor to it, which, as you'll see, fits his setting and characters. My goal, as usual, is

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-80366803523477309622007-07-24T19:26:00.000-04:002007-07-24T21:14:43.957-04:00

This is 973 words of a first draft by InarticulateBabbler (IB) from the Hatrack River Writers Workshop. Since it's a first draft, I won't try to be as perfect as I might be on something that I'm trying to finalize. Instead, I'll focus the basics (because the basics always help) and structure. With IB's permission, I'll also be less particular about rewriting -- normally I avoid rewriting very

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-71137800904207568032007-07-21T14:02:00.000-04:002007-07-24T21:07:39.603-04:00

Watch what you ask for. I told the denizens of Hatrack River that I wanted some stuff to cut, and the first person who responded was Djvdakota, a mature writer with an economical style. This one will be tough. She sent me a flash piece, a haunting vignette in which a puppet describes his life. It's just under 800 words. I don't want there to be issues with publication rights, so I'm only

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-41599789593163807752007-05-23T16:15:00.000-04:002007-05-23T16:42:22.484-04:00

I work for a Business Intelligence software company named Information Builders. In preparing for Summit, our annual user conference, we created a letter from our CEO to the attendees. I think the process by which we shaped it provides a pretty good example of how cutting matters even for relatively small tasks. Our writer was playing off the Las Vegas venue and our "no barriers" theme, while

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-60224976266701535762007-05-13T09:12:00.000-04:002007-05-13T09:20:29.112-04:00

I was emailing my brother the other day, and I asked if he'd like me to take a crack at editing his manuscript. He said, "Sure. Why not? You should really charge an editor's fee, though. ;)" My response? Well, my ulterior motive is the writing of a book dedicated to cutting. There isn't one out there, and it's a skill people desperately need to hone. ("Well, I intend to write a book on

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-75884367883725125422007-04-06T19:30:00.000-04:002007-05-23T16:49:42.635-04:00

My brother is on the same writer's workshop that I participate in as Oliver House. He recently posted the first 13 lines of a short story he's writing (we only do 13 lines there to preserve copyright and because it's the first page of a properly formatted manuscript), and agreed that I could blog about the cuts that I suggested. Here's his original: Harvey Alvarez lost his nerve. Does that

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-42838560801044129572007-04-03T16:55:00.000-04:002007-05-23T16:50:25.912-04:00

This is my first marketing-oriented post, but I think it's a pretty good example of how important cutting principles can be in my day-to-day work. Press release text is notoriously dull. Cutting excess or redundant verbiage can help. Here's a boilerplate -- the stuff about the company that ends every press release -- suggested for my company's releases. It's 218 words. Information Builders, an

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-7949918480631776552007-01-22T23:52:00.000-05:002007-05-23T16:51:15.543-04:00

Here's an excerpt from a writer named Scott, a.k.a. Trailmix, on a thread at the Hatrack River Writers Workshop.* My name is Brodi. At last count I was 178 years old and as far as I can tell, I shall never die. I have been cast into the deepest, darkest oubliette in the Kingdom. I’ve been in here so long that I have taken to recounting stories of my past to the darkness. A better audience than

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-1163885196661939822006-11-18T16:16:00.000-05:002007-05-23T16:52:08.007-04:00

This is a disguised version of a novel excerpt that I got from a member of an online critique group. It's the end of chapter one and the beginning of chapter two. My initial cut took this section from 1003 words to 677, for a 33% cut. Then I took more liberties with the text -- changing the grammar to reflect time differently, using slightly different punctuation, things like that -- and

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-1163460935755286522006-11-13T17:07:00.000-05:002007-05-23T16:52:50.879-04:00

This excerpt is from "Old Oak", an unpublished story that was a finalist (though not in the top 25 and therefore not on the Web site) of the Glimmer Train Press's Fiction Open. Since I had already edited it pretty tightly, it should be tough to cut more. As a rule of thumb, cut deeply, more than you feel comfortable with; then, if you can, set the manuscript aside for a week. Come back and see

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37553475.post-1163445002442341342006-11-13T07:05:00.000-05:002006-11-13T19:11:26.893-05:00

On this blog, "Cutting" means "using fewer words to say the same thing." It's a tough skill, but it's critical: for marketing, fiction, journalism, and a lot of other fields. You can decide whether I'm doing a good job, and you can add your own comments, as I hack out gobbets of prose: my own efforts, published snippets, and stuff from volunteers. I'll avoid changing the tone or style of the

Jake Freivaldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01523638337057738776noreply@blogger.com0