The other day, I was reading through the online pages of Concis, where short and sweet is king when it comes to writing. It's when you read writing like this that you really appreciate the mantra that where the written word is concerned it is invariably true that less is more.

For one thing, excess can quickly become wearing or, worse still, even boring for the reader. I know when I read a section of my writing I've just completed that any hint of excess means only one thing. It's like pruning a rose; if you want a strong, healthy plant covered in flowers then you absolutely must be bold.

The second underlying reason I believe you have to be economical is because you need to leave room, lots of it, for the reader to use their own imagination. Just think of those times where you encountered a meticulously detailed description of every nuance of a character and ask yourself how you felt at the time.

As an example of just how economical I am willing to be, when we meet one of David Good's client's for the first time in 'Good Investigations', my total expenditure of words in describing him is thus, “a tall, bald bloke wearing trainers, dirty jeans and a tatty leather jacket strode in with something on his mind.”

It is a real challenge for writers to say enough with as few words as possible, but there is no getting away from the fact that less is invariably more.

What are your own thoughts on what constitutes enough? What is too much? Can there be too little? If there are authors who for you get this right time and time again then it would be great to hear who they are.

For more see http://www.benwesterham.com/a-writers...