The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1911-05-11
Boil It Down
Charles Stuart Moody,
In The Editor.

In The Editor.
Somebody said, Breyity is the
soul of wit. .
Verbosity is the bane of the
young writer. Hundreds Of ambiti-
GUS writer's find their Mss. coming
back to them with painful regularity,
stuff that has some really excellent
ideas, too, and they wonder why.
Too much adjectivosity," It may
be, as Bill Nye said about facts, that
ideas are born naked and it is the
duty of the literary nurse to place
upon them neat and appropriate
garments, but the nurse should be
extremely CAREFUL not to oyerclothe
them; an overclothed idea is very
liable to die Of suffocation in the hui
mid atmosphere of the editors sane
tum.
Two little incidents will serve to
illustrate my meaning. Several years
ago, / became head "deyip' and
cub reporter on a Western week
" newspaper, whose editor was an
irascible gentleman suffering from
dyspepsia and afflicted with insom-
MIA. He was, at the same time, mas
ter of terse expression. He could
concentrate more thought in ten
words than the average newspaper
man can in one hundred.
One day FIRE destroyed the prin-
cipal meat market in the town. The
proprietor was one of our best ad-
vertisers, and the boss sent me out
to write up the confiagration. In due
time / returned triumphantly and
laid my literary effort on his desk.
1t would have made about three
quarters of a column Of solid BREWER.
The boss glanced over it, scowled
at me for an instant, then roared:
What in ii do you think that
was, an eruption Of Vesuvius? Take
that ID thing back and cut it
down..
Cut it down how much?''
1 don't give a hang how mueh n
Cut it down.,
fancy that even the boss was
satisfied with the cutting The
next issue contained this item, stuck
about midway of the local column:
8
mark Jones meat market burned down last
Friday. Total loss. No insurance.
This incident did much to teach
me relative values. The second in
cident was even more pregnant with
suggestions.
In one Of my rare literary flights
/ had occasion to describe bit of
scenery. The landscape in no wise
was essential to the development Of
the plot, but as it appealed to my
love of the beautiful, i reeled off
some three closely typewriter pages
of description. One of my kindest,
but most severe critics, is quite
famous artist in New York. 70
him Issent the story for his opinion.
The opinion might be called Song
without Words. After some weeks
| got my Mss. back and eagerly un-
folded it to profit by my friends
criticism. Imagine my surprise
when I found no word of either CEN
sure or praise, only charcoal
sketch, drawn on the margin of one
page opposite the fowery description
of the landscape, of face which /
had no difficulty in recognizing as
that of my friend, but with the most
sardonic grin, grin SO expressive
of ridicule that it penetrated even
my understanding. When that yarn
finally went to the publishers. even
my artist friend would have expert
enced difficulty in painting picture
of that particular landscape, after
reading my description.
Coherency of expression is as far
removed from the jerky style of the
modern newspaper as it is from the
rambling platitudes Of most early
novellsts There is such thing as
being too compact. Adjectiyes are
created to enliyen thought, not to
smother it. The writer VINO pro-
ceeds to his adi iective bin with coal
shovel and scoops out a shoyelful and
spreads them over his sentences
4