Shorter Writing is Not Better Writing: An Argumentative Treatise

short length, mid wit

I reject the ubiquitous notion that writing shorter is necessarily better than writing longer, that less is always more. The sclerotic fixation on minimalism, which arose largely in imitation of Hemingway and Orwell, has crippled American writing for a century. Like all tools, concision is only as good as its use. Sometimes, shorter is better; often, the dictate to write less is misguided, misapplied, results in needlessly abrupt work that fails to capture the nuance and complexity inherent to any topic of human interest. Yes, time and attention are limited, but a short piece that does not adequately explain itself wastes all time and attention spent on writing and reading it. Stylistically, the brevity-above-all orthodoxy has inspired generations of writers who sound exactly the same, their voices defined by a clipped, artificial tenor, the tell-tale signs of writing in fear of peer opinion. Good writing does not emerge from insecurity that itself emerges from aesthetic conformity.

“Concision is the transcendent goal of all writing” is a good example of a borrowed belief. Most who advance that belief don’t hold it organically but rather absorbed it as a default wisdom, writers who aren’t confident in their opinions about writing, marinated in a drab professional culture inspired by the fear of looking like an amateur.

I read pieces by young writers and think, “There’s promise here, but it’s been sacrificed at the altar of concision; if they weren’t so invested in being a serious writer, they could become a good writer instead.”