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Update: my writers group in Columbus made me cut my flash piece to 300 words and it got worse, not better
Two Mondays ago at the library branch on High Street, six of us sat around a folding table and the guy running it said my 900 word flash piece was bloated, so I cut it to 300 for the next meeting. Here is the thing. The short version got picked apart for having no room to breathe, and the same people who told me to trim it said the ending felt rushed, which, yes, because I deleted half of it. I get that the common advice is to kill your darlings and tighten every sentence, but 300 words is not a story, it is a shrug with a period on it. My original draft had a bit about the narrator's mom clipping coupons out of the Sunday paper, and cutting it saved 40 words and cost the whole reason anybody would care about the guy. So now I have two drafts on my desk and I keep going back to the long one. Anyone here actually had better luck adding to a piece after a workshop told you to trim it down? I want to know if I am just being stubborn about this.
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rayy839d ago
Tried adding back the parts a group told me to cut once and the story actually got better, so no, you're not just being stubborn. It's like when a recipe says "season to taste" and everyone in the kitchen keeps dumping in salt until it's ruined. The coupon bit sounds like the heart of the thing, keep it.
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