Today we had the importance of brevity instilled with in us. While any one who has ever read Hamlet would probably look upon the word brevity with an ironic sneer and a laugh about how Polonius and how he had to many long speeches others will look upon those speeches and see where they could have been shortened. Am I saying to actually go and change Shakespeare's speeches? No, that would probably make it quite terrible.
What I am saying is that the ability to shorten what one has written and what others have written is a skill that one needs if one wishes to analyze any work of literature. For example a five year old can restate the plot of a movie (and often times my eleven year old sister will speak at length about every minor plot point in any film she watches) but it takes some one who knows what they are doing to take a lengthy movie and shorten the plot to all of two sentences. It also takes a good writer to shorten longer than necessary scenes to keep there play or film interesting. That is also the reason you cannot trust inexperienced people with improv; they will drag it on longer than the scene needs to be for their own screen time.
Kind of got a little off point at the end there,
Mike Hand
Talk less generally and write more of your specific experience. How was it for you? Nothing interests me more than what you think about what you did.
ReplyDeleteIt was a bit challenging but overall I found it a fun and interesting challenge. It is one of those challenges that I am going to follow through on my own time and have people give me topics so I can write in depth on them and figure out which parts I value the most in my writing.
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