“I write, “Jane came into the room and sat down on the blue couch,” read that, wince, cross out “came into the room” and “down” and “blue” (Why does she have to come into the room? Can someone sit UP on a couch? Why do we care if it’s blue?) and the sentence becomes “Jane sat on the couch – ” and suddenly, it’s better (Hemingwayesque, even!), although… why is it meaningful for Jane to sit on a couch? Do we really need that? And soon we have arrived, simply, at “Jane”, which at least doesn’t suck, and has the virtue of brevity.”
George Saunders
“A man yelled from across the street. Florence jumped at the sound.”
“‘Don’t touch me.” He flinched as those words sank in.”‘
“A dragon landed right in front of them. Their blood ran cold at the sight of the huge beast.”
What’s the common denominator between all of these examples? Go back and read them again if you have to.
The answer is that all of these lines are in response to something that JUST happened, and all of them include explanation words, as if the reader has forgotten what has just happened.
Here’s the deal with explanation words: it makes sense to add them if the action and the reaction are separated by time or distance. Maybe at the beginning of a book someone hides a picture in their pocket. Then, several chapters later, the sentence reads, “Finally alone in his car, he reached down and took out the picture that he had hidden in his pocket.” Here, the words ‘in his pocket’ aren’t repetition, because time and several chapters have passed, and it’s possible that the reader has forgotten what picture it was and where he put it.
But when the explanatory words come straight after the action, they read like the author doesn’t trust the reader to understand what has just happened. (And as a writer, you always want to treat your readers like they are intelligent readers. They’ll appreciate you more for that!)
Here are the sentences cleaned up, trusting that the reader remembers what just happened:
“A man yelled from across the street. Florence jumped.”
“‘Don’t touch me.” He flinched.’
“A dragon landed right in front of them. Their blood ran cold.”
See, the reader doesn’t need to be told that Florence is jumping at the yell, because the writer just said what happened. It’s a clear action and reaction, and it doesn’t need more explanation than that. The reader doesn’t need to be told that the dragon is what made their blood run cold. They can put themselves in your character’s place and quite easily imagine that that would also make their blood run cold!
As an author, trust your readers to know what’s happening because you have just told them. And don’t weaken your book by including words that aren’t needed.