by wild_quinine on Sun Jul 03, 2011 2:39 am
There are no rules to great writing. Great writers know enough about rules to know where breaking them is divine. If there ever was any universal rule, it would probably be 'practice'. That or 'finish'. But some of the greats seem to have happily ignored those two as well.
Anyway, there are some good discussion points in Orwell's rules. Whilst I wouldn't recommend literally reducing pieces to the bare minimum, learning how to prune your own writing is really vital. A major part of writing is learning how to drop something that doesn't quite work. And it's hard to do that. At first it genuinely feels like you're getting rid of everything except the barebones, and it feels like your work will be worse for that. And most people resist, and pull against that feeling, and leave the bits they were proud of in, and work text around them to make sure they fit in. And it's usually obvious when that has happened - almost like a bad comedian reaching to get a joke in.
And, actually, your work will usually be better, not worse, for a bit of intelligent pruning. But learning to be objective is incredibly difficult, and requires experience, and a willingness to accept both your flaws, and the loss of some or all of what might seem to be your best work.