Before going on Scribophile, the last people to read anything I put effort into writing were college professors. As a Computer Science major, every paper I wrote was for a general education course, and most of those professors didn’t bother reading papers thoroughly. One professor even shared, openly, that he grades entirely based on length. End result: I have a bad tendency to be overly verbose when I write. The professor who graded based on length got papers that included discussions on video games, dogs, and snack foods, despite teaching Anthropology.
Because of this, one of the best things I get out of critiques are places I can remove words and even entire paragraphs. Even when I think I have a great piece of writing (well, great for me, which is a low bar), there are things that can be removed. From a recent piece I posted:
Continue reading “Trimming the Fat”