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'Tighten up your work' - anyone know the meaning of?
I am getting a little tired of hearing this term as though everyone knows what it means.
I recently read 'after you have tightened it up' in an article and have myself been victim to the expression 'could be tighter' when getting feedback.
Could anyone please define what this is suppose to mean, in technical terms?
Personally I think it would be a good idea if Writers News/Magazine did a series on the meaning of such terms.
Any help gratefully received.
Comments
i)Remove extraneous words (adverbs/adjectives/repetitions)
ii)Simplify and clarify
Adverbs can be an issue if overdone, especially on speech tags. Although I'm not a great fan of paring everything down as I think adjectives have a place especially in kids books, they can have more impact if not overused.
Also, scenes - sometimes condensing scenes and focus can tighten the work and emphasis could be placed on other important issues.
Hope that helps - though I too am a novice but reviewing on Youwriteon helps to see these points because you're looking at other people's work and are therefore removed from the extract.
I dunno sometimes stuff I read is so stripped down it might as well be a black and white picture.
Personally King doesn't need to do any tightening, he is my No.1 author, love him and his characters - although he is successful enough to beable to go meandering into his characters and his constant readers will lap it up.
Tolkien had me struggling by the middle of the 2nd novel - very yawning, far too much description.
So tightening means sort of cut out the crap, nothing too rich, less is better - much like dieting!! ( ; >
I am a naturally nosey person, who likes to know as much detail as I can about people, their background, who they are, what they feel about life, and I am a big people watcher and like to 'speculate' on who they are and what they do when watching. So maybe that is why I love SK and his digressions into characters and intimate details and listening to them tell their individual stories.
I find descriptions of landscapes boring, I would rather see it in the flesh. It just doesn't move me, I find it tedious. So although I have total respect for Tolkien's descriptive imagery and the scale of work that Lord of the Rings took to write, I would rather watch the movie than read the book! (although I know that some of the story is not quite right, but was HUGELY impressed with how it was interpreted - but then the detail of description allowed that to happen).
I never watch movies of SK books, very few have been done well. I can only think of The Green Mile and and Stand.
Anyway, I digressed into an analysis then. Interesting.