When Less Is (Not) More

Early on in my blog, I wrote an entry encouraging readers to be concise and considerate of their readers' time when writing reviews and other opinion pieces. This still holds true, but it's possible to be a bit too concise, and say too little to get your point across.

TV Tropes allows users to submit reviews of works of fiction, but limits them to 3,000 characters. Some reviewers complain about the limit, and may try to get around it, rather than trim down their reviews to make their point within the rules. Mark Twain's remark about writing a friend a long letter because he didn't have time to write a short one comes to mind.

Some reviewers, however, have the opposite problem. They may only write a single paragraph or even a sentence to say why the work in question is good or bad, but make little effort to explain why. For example, one review of a certain series consists of a single paragraph complaining about one (admittedly troubling) flaw, while one review of a video game merely says, "good. 10/10," without explaining why the game deserves such high praise.

Think of the word limit for reviews and other writing pieces as a bit like being given a budget to buy groceries and other supplies for yourself for the week. If, for example, you waste your money by going out to a restaurant to eat, or buy an expensive bottle of wine, you'll be hard-pressed to feed yourself for the rest of the week without going over budget. When it comes to writing, you shouldn't waste space writing about things that aren't important, or by writing about the important things in a less than efficient manner.

Of course, while it's important not to waste what you've been given, it's also important to use it well. You can't simply go to the store, buy a $2 box of pasta and expect it to last you until the next time you go shopping, nor can you simply write a sentence or two to adequately express your opinion on whatever you're reviewing. When writing an opinion piece, you not only have to state your opinion, but also explain why you feel that way and support that position with evidence. Putting all this in a relatively short 3,000-character review may seem like a daunting task, but it's a more manageable one if you plan carefully and choose your words wisely.

In professional writing, it's generally best to aim to be as close to the word quota as possible when you write, since that's how long the people publishing your work want it to be. If, for example, you are assigned a 700-word piece, it's easier to trim down a 750-word piece than to stretch a 500-word piece by another 40 percent. Obviously, writing well is also important, but editors can tell whenever you're adding material that doesn't make the work any stronger.

Back to TV Tropes. Some people have proposed a word minimum for reviews, which would potentially prevent the worst cases. However, reviewers can artificially make their review longer in order to meet the quota, often with the same kind of padding that result from writers who are unable to trim the fat from their writing. This, the more qualitative aspect of writing, cannot be regulated with a program that counts the number of words and checks whether it is within a certain limit.

When it comes to writing well, there may not be clear-cut right choices and wrong choices, but there are ways writers use words well and ways in which writers use words poorly. Like with the grocery analogy, writing well is a matter of knowing your goal and how best to accomplish it with the resources you have been given. It isn't possible to force writers to make the right choices any more than it's possible to require grocery shoppers to spend their money well; instead, it's a matter of teaching those people good habits and the people in question making the best choices for themselves.