Writing tighter

I was just review­ing a new man­u­script with an edi­tor. Her pri­ma­ry com­ment was, “It needs to be tighter.” 

It would be easy to say that she meant, “the text needs to be cut.” How­ev­er, to me, tighter means pace, dri­ve, tempo—overall, the for­ward mov­ing ener­gy of the sto­ry. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly nec­es­sary for today’s books for young peo­ple. They have grown up with film, tele­vi­sion, and video games, all of which seek to main­tain a fero­cious ener­gy from moment one. When my son Jack was young, and he was some­one who devoured fast media, I once described his ide­al sto­ry as “Three explo­sions con­nect­ed by a chase.” 

It is impor­tant to note that nar­ra­tive struc­ture is an evolv­ing form. You can see it for your­self. Look at some books for young peo­ple and com­pare the open­ing pages of, say, nov­els, decade by decade—going back in time—and you will see that writ­ers in ye olde days opened their books at a much more leisure­ly pace. 

Years ago, I read a mem­oir by some­what who was a con­tract writer for series books—like the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift (which meant his name was not on the book). He recount­ed the for­mu­lae by which he was meant to write—quite specific—and he was able to turn such books out quick­ly. Except—he explained—for that first page. The hook. The grab­ber. It had to be strong and tight. That he labored on. It made a big impres­sion on me.

 In short, for writ­ers to grab read­ers, they real­ly need to get … well, up tight.