Does Concision Matter Anymore?
I’ve noticed a paradox in our digitally-addled age. On the one hand, brevity is prized. Declining attention spans can only handle the soundbite, the TikTok clip, the tweet. The optimal length of a Substack post is said to be 500 words. Beyond that, engagement drops off.
On the other hand, the principles of concision — restraint, economy of language, nuance over exposition — are nowhere to be found. What we have instead is a revival of purple prose, just in miniature. The more extreme, excessively ornate, and emotionally charged the better. Best not to edit. Just let it rip.
So the old adage that less is more still holds. But the spirit of it has changed entirely. “Less” once meant more implied meaning, more trust in the reader. Now it means less duration, less substance, less seriousness.
I’ve been thinking about this because several of my clients are drafting manuscripts, which I review weekly or monthly, depending on our arrangement. I find myself making familiar corrections, striking adjectives and adverbs, culling redundancies, suggesting more evocative verbs. A good verb like “squirmed” can conjure more than five adjectives about humiliation. But I’m mindful that not everyone wants to keep writing variations on “Once More to the Lake.” Readers in digital spaces are looking for the hot take, not polished prose.
In fact, I recently recommended that a client switch from reading Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story, a high-minded craft book that pairs well with Phillip Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Essay, to David Sedaris’s When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Gornick’s book evolved from fifteen years of teaching in MFA programs, and it thoroughly probes the nuances of narrative persona and voice. In fact, Sedaris illustrates many of Gornick’s principles beautifully. He cut his teeth on Strunk & White like everyone else, and even though his voice comes off as slapdash, his sentences are lean and active.
Take, for instance, his opening to “That’s Amore”:
Beside our apartment building in New York, there was a narrow gangway, and every evening, just after dark, rats would emerge from it and flock to the trash cans lining the curb.
The first time I saw them, I started and screamed, but after that I made it a point to walk on the other side of the street, pausing and squinting to take them all in.
The strict grammarian will note that “there was” is passive voice, but sometimes exceptions are necessary for fluidity. “Beside our apartment building in New York stood a narrow gangway” lands a little too stiffly, doesn’t it? The goal is to reduce friction for the reader, and Sedaris carries us smoothly to the image that sticks — the rats – and does so with robust verbs that remove the need for adjectives. The rats flock to the trash cans, and he starts and screams at them, later squinting from the other side of the street. All of this would make E.B. White and Vivian Gornick proud.
Sedaris also cultivates a persona that seems careless, whimsical, off-the-cuff, and this resonates in a time when many viewers and readers perceive the unvarnished and unfiltered as authentic. It’s even becoming popular to brag about *not* editing your work, the way Jack Kerouac claimed to have written On the Road in a mere three weeks.
’s recent op-ed “Kill the Editor” takes this stance less because Caudell is indifferent to style and more because he thinks it pointless to keep genuflecting before vaunted outlets like The Paris Review that have a lower acceptance rate than Harvard or Yale. Why write for Strunk & White and a 1964 editor’s sensibility? Besides, the Big Five publishers keep churning out books with objectively low command of craft, even after all that high-powered editing. So why bother painstakingly revising your work in hopes of a pro bono publication somewhere prestigious? Why not try to build your own following on Substack and just stop worrying about what all the gatekeepers think?It really is curious to me how many writers express an open disdain for craft. I’m gathering bids from flooring contractors because one of my cats snuck into the bedroom and sprayed on the carpet, which has led to many futile attempts with baking soda, vinegar, and enzyme cleaners. If I’m going to rip all the carpeting out, I’d like to actually improve the space. The last thing I want to hear from a contractor is, “Oh, I don’t care about excellence, I just do what feels right and authentic to me.” There is a craft to hardwood flooring, and no one stays in that business long if they just dash off each job. Artistry is authenticity.
I approach my sentences like a flooring pro who wants his work to hold up. I do it for my own self-respect, but also in service to readers like you. Why should you have to listen to my throat clearing if I can get right to the point? This principle carries particular urgency for my college essay clients and students applying to graduate school, because they have a length limit and can’t afford to strain their reader’s patience. But it’s also true for fiction and memoir. The story is a framed photograph, and every wasted word is a thumbprint on the glass.
Anyone can develop a feel for concision with enough practice. A good place to start is Richard Johnson-Sheehan’s Paramedic Method. If prepositional phrases keep piling up in your sentences, that’s a simple fix.
Here’s a sample from a student essay. How much could you cut from this excerpt? What other smudges on the narrative glass do you see?
“Dad!” I holler, as he collapses onto his bedroom floor.
“911 emergency.”
After a brief pause the operator comes back on the line. “Hello, 911 emergency.” The calm voice speaks to me again.
In a rushed voice I say “Hey my dad has too much carbon he needs an ambulance I think.” My body began to stiffen as I realize my dad is toeing the line with death.
Without hesitation the operator replied, “Okay at what address?”
Hastily I reply, “1505 W. Jackson.”
“1505 W. Jackson?” replies the operator.
“Yeah” I say with a steady voice. “Dad are you ok?” Tension builds as my dad struggled for a breath.
With a strained voice he says “Yeah I just, too much carbon.”
“Do you want the ambulance to come or not?” I ask my semi-responsive dad.
“Uh…I just ..need….. air” my father’s voice responds with little coherence.
I immediately talk to the operator again, “He says he just needs air.”
The operator’s calm voice is steady on the line again, “Okay he’s having shortness of breath and chest pain?”In addition to the shifting verb tense, it seems that the writer isn’t trusting me enough to participate imaginatively. For instance, when dialogue involves just two speakers, there’s no need to endlessly modify each segment until a new speaker enters the exchange. Often the spoken words can, well, speak for themselves. There’s no need to describe a strained voice if ellipses can convey the struggle.
Here’s my revision.
“Dad!” I watch as my father collapses on his bedroom floor.
“Hello, 911 emergency.”
“Hey, my dad needs an ambulance!” My chest stiffens as I realize my dad is toeing the line with death.
“Okay. What’s your address?”
“1505 W. Jackson.” I ask my dad if he’s okay.
He coughs. “Uh…I just...need…air.”
“Got it,” the operator says. “He’s having shortness of breath and chest pain?”An exchange like this can’t go on indefinitely. We need to squeeze the accordion of time to speed over the tedious parts of the play-by-play. Each of these choices is a gift to the reader.
Sedaris is an excellent example of how concision can amplify, not diminish, authenticity. The same principle holds in lyrical writing, where the temptations to excess are strong, but where care at the sentence-level adds resonance.
My favorite of Brian Doyle’s lyric essays, “Joyas Voladoras,” seems to break many of the rules of concision, yet Doyle says it all in 1,000 words. Take ten minutes to read this masterpiece and let me know in the comments what you notice at the sentence level.
Where does Doyle follow the “less is more” principle? Where does he break it artfully?
What do you see Doyle doing with sentence variety, and to what effect(s)?
Most of my content in 2025 is free, but I appreciate the support of readers who make my weekly essays possible. Upgrading your subscription unlocks my monthly essays from a memoir-in-progress, as well as the entire archive. I’m also proud to be a Give Back Stack. 5% of my earnings in Q2 will go to Centre Volunteers in Medicine, a free clinic for those with no health insurance and annual income under $38K (individual) or $78K (family of four).
If you have a manuscript and are looking for guidance with selecting and querying agents, check out this upcoming course at Reedsy.
"Best not to edit. Just let it rip." Oh goodness, we want concision!
Hooray for concision. Everything can be boiled down. Better for the reader and better for the writer. I taught my son, age 12 (now 43), to write by giving him paragraphs and seeing how many words he could eliminate without losing any meaning. Now, he writes better than I do and certainly in more prestigious places.