Three Myths About Short Writing
I love short writing. Many people don’t. In fact, I’ve heard a lot of folks (both writers and readers, alike) deride short writing, almost like it’s highly inconsequential compared to its wordier counterparts. That attitude, of course, couldn’t be more wrong.
Myth #1: Short writing can never be complete.
Being short doesn’t mean a piece is lacking something. Actually, being short simply means that the writer chose to narrow the focus of the material. A well-written short piece offers up complete information for that particular subset of the subject, rather than try to cover everything within its limited confines.
Myth #2: Short writing is never as good as longer pieces.
That’s just misinformed. Many of the best writing you will find are actually short pieces and for good reason: they’ve been edited, proofread and fine-tuned by grammar improvement software to death. That’s right, short pieces are usually ruthlessly gone over and fixed, with the goal of making sure every word that stays in matters. With the limited length, there’s just no space for fillers, so all you get are killers.
Myth #3: Short writing takes less time.
While you may spend less time during the actual writing, short writing actually requires a lot more time be invested in learning about a subject and a whole lot of time during the revision process. Unless you know a heck of a lot about a topic, you can’t have the authority to know which information to leave out. Similarly, it takes a lot of editing chops to cut down a piece of work into a small slice.