"Omit needless words": a 15-minute edit for any chapter

Writers in every language struggle with the same thing: the first draft says everything twice. That is normal. First drafts are for finding out what you mean. Second drafts are for saying it once.

What Strunk said

In 1918 William Strunk Jr., a professor at Cornell University, printed a small book for his students. Rule 13 became the most quoted line in writing advice:

"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts."

And then the line people forget:

"This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell."

That second sentence matters. "Omit needless words" does not mean "write short." Long, rich sentences are allowed. What is not allowed is words that do no work.

What "needless" usually looks like

These are the words that most often do no work, in English at least. Every language has its own versions — look for the ones you lean on.

• Throat-clearing: "It is important to note that…", "The fact that…", "In order to…" — usually you can start with the real point.
• Double words: "each and every", "first and foremost", "small in size".
• Softeners: very, really, quite, just, a bit, somewhat — one or two are voice; ten on a page are noise.
• Telling after showing: "She slammed the door. She was angry." The slam already told us.
• Stage directions nobody needed: "He stood up from his chair and walked across the room to the door and opened it." → "He went to the door."

Try it: the 15-minute edit

Pick one chapter (or one page of your comic script) and do three short passes:

1. 5 minutes — first sentences. Read only the first sentence of each paragraph. Can any of them start later, at the real point?
2. 5 minutes — your words. Search the chapter for your favourite softener (just, really, very…). Remove half. Read the result aloud.
3. 5 minutes — the double tell. Find one place where you show a feeling and then name it. Delete the naming.

Most writers cut 5–10% of a chapter this way — and it almost always reads better.

Keep your voice

A warning: if you cut everything, you will cut your voice too. A character who rambles should ramble. A dreamy narrator can take the long way round. The rule is not "fewer words". The rule is every word tells. If a word tells us something about the character, the mood or the world, it stays.

A good place to use a beta reader

You can't always see your own needless words — you know what you meant. A trusted reader can. When you invite someone to read a chapter, ask them one specific question: "Where did you start skimming?" The answer is usually where the needless words are.

A note on credit

The quotations are from William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style (privately printed, Ithaca, 1918), now in the public domain. Project Gutenberg has Strunk's own text in the 1920 Harcourt printing — not the later editions revised by E. B. White, which are still under copyright. The explanation and exercises on this page are Inkly's own.