Why small word counts are good
Posted By Inflate123 on October 24, 2010
As we get closer to the deadline for the latest Prose that Blows contest, the comments about the 750-word limit are surfacing. “I can’t do it,” said one person recently. “I need at least 5 pages.”
Nonsense. It can be done; it’s been done before, and everyone has the ability to tell a story. So it’s not “I can’t”; this is, at best, “I don’t know how,” and at worst, “I won’t.”
Let’s start with not knowing how. When it comes to writing under a word count, it’s truly a question of aligning your thinking. If you come up with a story idea and sincerely believe it cannot be told in less than 3000 words…write it that way. That’s the wrong story idea for this event, so write it down and think of a different scenario, one that can be told in less words. Alternately, you can choose a completely different form of storytelling and use that to restrain yourself — a journal, a newspaper article, a poem. Bottom line, there is no reason to feel like your first idea is your Prose That Blows idea — match your intent to your inspiration.
Then there’s the “won’t” option, which, in my experience, comes from arrogance — the “I am too brilliant and detailed a writer to be constrained by mere word counts — every word I write is sacrosanct.”
I call bullshit based on personal experience. When I started writing professionally, I made the same complaint to my editor over an assignment — “I just have too much to say.” And he made it clear: “If I’m paying you to write it in 200 words, you’ll write it in 200 words, because there are five other people who will do it if you can’t.” And he was right.
But more importantly, when I did focus on word counts, I found something amazing happened — my writing got better. I was able to say more in less words by simply focusing on choosing the right ones. It forced me to carefully consider every sentence, then every word in every sentence. Every pass, I found something that could be reworded more efficiently, or a detail that wasn’t critical. I just had to put my ego aside and think about what was best for the story.
It’s no different with inflatable fiction; I use the same process when writing dirty stories. It’s the difference between a story suitable for masturbation, and a story that’s masturbation itself. Guess which one is more shameful.
To say 750 words are not enough to write an inflation story is to deny — or perhaps compliment? — all the people who did it last year in 500. Shakespeare said “Brevity is the soul of wit” and he’s got backup: according to some of the greatest fiction writers of our generation — none of which, I’m guessing, are writing inflation fiction under a different name — you’ve got approximately 744 more words than you actually need. Check out this inspirational six-word short story collection.
It takes effort to write efficiently; the Prose That Blows competitions are challenges. But efficient writing also takes a healthy dose of honesty about your own abilities and motivations for writing in the first place.
So whether you didn’t know how to write to a word count or you were simply unwilling to write to a word count, you have what you need to do it now.
And it only took me 584 words to give it to you.
