Do You Cut Your Content?

By Susan Reichert, Editor-in-Chief, Southern Writers Magazine   

Over the years I have talked with authors who tell me the best thing they do is write down four or five ideas they want to communicate to their reader. They like to clarify what key points they want to bring home in the books they write.

Laughing they said, “We use to wind up with four or five ideas being more than five pages. But through the years we have honed this skill.”

One of the authors said, “I like to write a sentence about each idea and allow myself three minutes to write it.”

But all agreed they have pared it to a draft of a sentence per idea.

Then they take the sentence and edit by cutting out the fluff in each sentence.

For example, by the time they are through instead of their being twenty-five words they narrowed it to five or six. Especially if they find a phrase in the sentence. They all agreed the phrase most of the time can be cut to one word.

These authors are very serious about communicating their ideas to their readers. But they start by communicating their ideas to themselves and by pealing back layer after layer, they eventually find the perfect ideas to communicate. They have learned by cutting the fluff and focusing on nouns and verbs their writing is steps above an average writer.

What about you? What have you developed that helps you get your ideas succinctly written in your books causing your readers to come back again and again to buy your books?