day macha
There is a place for the adjective and for the descriptive passage, but these must be carefully handled. A piece of prose that had no adjectives would very quickly become sterile; so it really is a question of restraint. There is a psychological reason for this: If somebody sets out in great detail what is before us, we very quickly become bored. That is not the way we see the world; we look for salience, we look for the feature that will engage our interest… The trouble with overwritten prose is that it takes away from the reader the opportunity to imagine a scene. We do not want to be told everything; we want a few brushstrokes, a few carefully chosen adjectives, and then we can do the rest ourselves.
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— Alexander McCall Smith on Writing Concisely WSJ.com (via somethingchanged)
Reblogged 1 year ago from somethingchanged
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Source: The Wall Street Journal
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