Conveying a lot with a little

[Dabs]

This was something that came up while I was in my writing class today. I was having a piece work-shopped, and the professor remarked that I often oversimplify my sentences, when in fact I could be conveying a lot more with less room, and I could do this without losing a sense of clarity.

So, I'd like to know just how I can go about doing that. I don't want to feel like I'm cramming a lot of information into one sentence, obviously, but I need to figure out a seamless way of answering a few basic questions with just a few words.

[Carraka]

I'm not absolutely certain what your professor means. Could you give an example of what your professor thought was an oversimplified sentence?

Meanwhile, I can assume that he might be saying something about word choice. That is, you might be writing something like. "Tom walked into the room," when you could say, "Tom staggered into the room," and convey much more with the same amount of words. Then you only have to fear things like, "Tom staggered drunkenly into the room," mostly because adverbs suck.

Or he might be saying less obvious stuff about what you can imply with your descriptions. I ... damn, I can't remember where this example comes from, so I can't attribute it, but if you were to describe someone's living room bookshelf, for instance, and note that it contains medical dictionaries with their pages still uncut, that would tell us that the person who habits that living room cares more about an appearance of intelligence than the actual acquisition of intelligence.

I don't think I can help more without understanding exactly what your problem is.

[Dabs]

I think he was talking about both of those things, really.

I'll give you an example of a sentence he highlighted in particular:

Jerry made his way into a dense city crowd and navigated through a mass of dark suits and suitcases.

[lalodragon]

I think he was talking about both of those things, really.

I'll give you an example of a sentence he highlighted in particular:

Jerry made his way into a dense city crowd and navigated through a mass of dark suits and suitcases.

Well, "made his way" can be something like "shouldered" or "pushed"-- or "eased", depending on how he's doing it. And that's more information.
"dense city crowd" could be "mob" or even "crowd". After all, we probably know he's in the city.
"dark suits and suitcases" can be "businessmen" or somesuch.
It could be condensed to, "Jerry pushed through the mob of businessmen", with various verbs. It might not be exactly what you want, of course.

And no, my sentences aren't clean cut like that, unless I catch it on the rewrite. I'm a total hypocrite. :vanish: