Stay on Message

Waffle kills interest and detracts from the key message. It’s empty writing. It doesn’t take the topic forward or engage the reader. Too many words of little significance. In writing Storm Force, I was, at one point, ninety thousand words and counting. I deviated because I was trying to replicate the modern day thriller which is often four to six hundred pages but I was writing empty noise and, eventually, I cut twelve thousand words. The message I learned was this – if you can write five hundred pages and keep people tuned in, all well and good. If you write two hundred and fifty to three hundred pages, that’s equally fine. Either way, don’t beat around the bush.

I waffled in school exams, going off track, probably costing myself up to twenty-five per cent in grades. Too often I scraped through when I could have scored higher. On several occasions teachers advised me to focus on the question but I don’t have the ‘corporate incisive’ mind and I couldn’t line up the specific information with the equivalent question. I think this was symptomatic of my dislike for these tests and the pressure that came with them.

In developing my sequel, I’m leveraging waffle, writing more than I need to and often badly but for a purpose. I’m using trial and error to build the framework. It’s the final cut that matters. A filmmaker shoots many thousands of feet before editing down to what they want the movie to say to the audience, often cutting out whole scenes. Leave out the adverbs, the superlatives and the fluff and capture what’s driving the story.

Alistair McLean wrote best sellers in approximately two hundred and twenty to two hundred and fifty pages. F Scott Fitzgerald’s literary classic, The Great Gatsby, is one hundred and eighty to two hundred and forty pages depending on the edition. Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child, a chilling family horror, is one hundred and sixty pages.

These were authors with a top command of English and who stayed on message.

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