simplyty in life

A simple plot is ideal. It is the convoluted plot that allows a soap opera to go on endlessly for 30 years.

A simple plot, with simple motivations, will always be easier for you to write and a reader to follow. A simple plot can be deceptively complex, depending upon how you tell the story. Unique and conflicting points of view, jumping back and forth in time–these all make a simple plot compelling and deep. Can you sum up the plot in a sentence or two?

Simple language that is clear and concise is also best.

2. Boring words don’t work.

Cliches don’t work.

Phrases that have become common don’t work. Our brain skips over phrases it is used to seeing without registering them as anything special. Common phrases (“tough as nails”) don’t light up our brain.

This isn’t a license to write purple prose that is extravagant and excessive. In his 10 Rules Of Writing, author Elmore Leonard ended his list with this: Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Leonard understood how people read books, whizzing by solid paragraphs of purple prose to get to the dialogue. The dialogue, after all, is where the characters develop, where they interact, where the action happens. Avoid cliches, but don’t turn to purple prose to do so. Look for concise and unusual word pairings that readers’ brains haven’t become accustomed