Something to think about:

“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.” John Gould to Stephen King, quoted from On Writing

One more quote from Stephen King:

“In the Spring of my senior year at Lisbon High—1966, this would’ve been—I got a scribbled generated signature of the editor that was this mot: ‘Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2^nd Draft = 1^st Draft – 10%. Good luck.’” Stephen King, On Writing

While PUFFY pastry sounds delicious, PUFFY prose sounds soft and squishy, uncertain. What does the story want to be? To find out, we sharpen our prose and shed the excess pounds that weigh our stories down. I am a big believer in the power of showing vs telling. To highlight the concept…