WEB EDITOR'S NOTE: For the next several weeks, topics in the Academic Advisor will focus on writing skills. Weekly excerpts from William Brohaugh's Write Tight (ISI Books) will advise the novice and the novelist on writing with precision and style. This is the second of a four part series.

"The Four Levels of Wordiness and How to Tackle Them"
Chapter 1 from William Brohaugh's Write Tight.

One of my hobbies is cultivating bonsai, the miniature trees that, full-grown, rarely stand higher than a foot. Bonsai don't provide as much shade as their sixty-foot counterparts, but they are lovely, and in their grace and compact sweep, even more majestic.

          Bonsai are grown carefully and lovingly. They are shaped exactingly and aesthetically. They are pruned regularly and systematically.

          So it should be with writing.

          Bonsai look and are delicate. But they are not frail. Yes, they require constant tending and shaping and pruning, but the results are hardy, long-living.

          So it is with writing.

          In this book I will speak of bonsai now and again, not to invoke Eastern mysticism, but to correlate the living art of the bonsai and the living art of a well-shaped, well-pruned manuscript.

          With pencil and trowel, then, let's take the bonsai gardener's approaches to attacking wordiness at four levels. We grow graceful bonsai and graceful writing by selecting what to grow in the first place, trimming the roots, shaping the stem and the branches, and pruning the leaves and shoots.

Level 2: We grow graceful writing by trimming its roots.

The bonsai gardener knows that the larger the root system of a plant, the larger the plant grows. A smaller root system limits the nutrients available to the plant, and stunts the tree's growth. (If we could only teach the trees to smoke cigarettes, all this would be so much simpler....) The bonsai's roots are limited by the size of its planter, and the gardener removes the tree from its soil every two years or so to cut away additional root growth.

         The roots of your writing lie in the range of what that writing covers. Trim the roots, narrow the range of coverage, and limit the manuscript's "nutrients"—the ideas, concepts and source material that feed into it. Do so, and you limit the size of the resulting manuscript itself.

         This isn't a matter of starving either bonsai or reader, of holding out on the reader, or of doing limited research so you'll have less to deliver. It's a matter of defining very clearly from the beginning exactly what you want the manuscript to accomplish. It's a matter of focus. What are you going to focus on?

         Many writers err by trying to cover too much territory. They query a baseball magazine and say, "I'd like to write about changes in baseball over the years." They propose a novel to a publisher and say, "I'd like to write a novel about evangelism." Those are some huge roots. You can write forever on those topics. Snip away at them. Focus them—by asking, What about ... ? Ask it again and again.

         What about changes in baseball over the years? How about the fact that strike zones are different these days? What about the strike zones being different? How about "Umpires Are Demolishing the Legal Strike Zone," an article that appeared in Baseball Digest?

         What about evangelism? How about how it can be misused? What about how it can be misused? How about the people who misuse it? What about the people who misuse evangelism? How about Elmer Gantry?

         Two wildly different examples, but you see how focused ideas have led to focused manuscripts. Focus is also known in the world of freelance writing as angle or slant. In other worlds, such as the world of business writing, it's known more simply as your point, what you're trying to say.

         Identify exactly what you're trying to say. Then, identify who you're trying to say it to. The combination of these elements (which feeds back to the whole matter of value in a manuscript) dictates your focus.

         For example, I have written several articles about another of my hobbies: pinball. Pinball is a pretty big root system. So, What about pinball? For the Cincinnati Enquirer Sunday magazine and its southwestern Ohio readers, the fact that the first patented pinball machine was created by a Cincinnati resident around the time of the Civil War. For Collectibles Illustrated and its audience interested in the nostalgic side of collecting, the growth of the pinball-collecting hobby. For Questar and its science fiction-oriented readers, the science fiction themes depicted on pinball machines. And so on.

         Define the manuscript's focus before you begin writing it (and definitely before you query any editors about it). Decide what should and should not be covered.

         Decide, too, the range of coverage within your focus. Take "Umpires Are Demolishing the Legal Strike Zone." The article itself, over two brief pages, theorizes that some baseball greats would have had lackluster careers if they were playing today: Many of pitcher Jim Palmer's strikes would be called balls today; notorious high-ball hitter Ted Williams would have struck out more and hit fewer home runs had today's low strike zone been in force during his day. Had the writer then brought in the point that many fans are upset with the strike zone, he would have had to convince us of that point. He couldn't just say it. He'd have to cite fan polls or quote some season ticket holders, and in doing so he'd have to convince us that the polls were valid, and that the quoted fans had enough knowledge of the sport for the reader to give them credence.

         So, by introducing the fans into the article—which certainly would have been appropriate, and within the bounds of the article's focus—the article gets longer. For every new idea, concept or topic you inject into your manuscript, you must devote additional space to its introduction and explication. If you introduce a new character into a short story, you must describe her, tell who she is and how she relates to the character and the plot. That takes words. If you quote another source in your nonfiction article, you must explain who he is, what makes him credible, and how what he says relates to everything else you're discussing.