What Over-Writing Actually Looks Like
Over-writing isn’t just using too many words. It’s using words that don’t earn their place—that repeat what the prose already established, explain what the reader already felt, or describe at length what a single specific detail would have done better.
The most common forms of over-writing are adjective stacking, emotional announcement, and lingering past the cut point. All three share the same root problem: the writer doesn’t trust the scene to do its job without additional support.
- Why it worksThe instinct to over-write comes from a real place. Writers want to make sure readers feel what they’re supposed to feel. They add more description to make the setting more vivid, more adjectives to make the emotion more clear, more explanation to make the meaning more accessible. The problem is that readers don’t need all of that. They need the one specific right thing, and everything added on top of it dilutes rather than amplifies.
In Elements of Style by Strunk and White, the instruction to omit needless words exists precisely because needless words don’t just fail to add—they actively subtract. They slow the prose, flatten the impact, and signal to the reader that the writer doesn’t trust them to arrive at the feeling themselves. - How to do itRead a scene you suspect is over-written and ask of every sentence: what is this doing that the sentence before it didn’t already do? If the answer is nothing—if the sentence is restating, reinforcing, or explaining something the prose already established—cut it. Not every sentence needs to do new work, but every sentence needs to do some work.
Do
Cut the sentence after the landing. The moment a scene lands emotionally, the instinct is to follow it with another sentence that confirms the landing. That sentence almost always needs to go. Trust the landing.
Avoid
Adjective stacking as a substitute for the right noun. “The cold, dark, empty room” is doing less work than “the room smelled like nobody had opened a window in months.” One specific sensory detail beats three modifiers every time.
From My Work
The original Rabid manuscript has passages that over-write what Salt & Bone later handled in a fraction of the words. Jack’s introduction in The Rabid comes with more description, more context, more explanation of who he is and what he’s doing and why. The Salt & Bone version gives the reader his voice and lets that do everything the description was trying to do. “Your engine’s two knocks away from hospice” tells the reader more about Jack than a paragraph of physical description would, because it gives them his specific consciousness rather than his appearance.
What Under-Writing Actually Looks Like
Under-writing is the opposite problem and in some ways the harder one to diagnose, because fast-moving prose can look like confidence when it’s actually avoidance.
Under-writing happens when a scene moves through its emotional beat so quickly that the reader never gets inside it. The event happens. The character reacts. The story moves on. And the reader has processed the information without feeling it, because the prose never gave them time to be in the moment with the character.
- Why it worksUnder-writing often comes from the same fear that produces bad pacing—the fear that slowing down will bore the reader, that lingering will feel indulgent, that the emotional beat isn’t interesting enough to deserve space on the page. Writers who under-write are often trying to respect the reader’s time. What they’re actually doing is denying the reader the experience they came for.
In The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass, the argument is that readers will follow a story anywhere if they’re emotionally engaged, and they’ll disengage from even the most plot-driven story if the emotional beats aren’t landing. Under-writing is what happens when plot replaces emotion rather than carrying it. - How to do itFind the scenes in your manuscript where the most significant emotional moments happen and count how many words you gave them. If a character finds out something devastating and the scene moves on in the next paragraph, the moment is under-written. Give it more space. Not more adjectives—more time. Let the character be in the moment before the story moves on.
Do
Use the sequel beat. After a significant scene, give the character a moment of reaction before the next event starts. Not a long one. Sometimes three sentences is enough. But the reaction needs to exist or the event doesn’t land.
Avoid
Confusing compression with under-writing. A scene can be short and still give the emotional beat its due. The question isn’t word count—it’s whether the reader was inside the moment or just watching it happen from outside.
From My Work
Lisa’s Wing 3A sections in Salt & Bone: Reckoning are compressed but not under-written. The prose moves fast and clinical because that’s Lisa’s voice, and the clinical compression is itself the emotional content—it’s showing the reader what Lisa is doing to her own feelings in real time. The under-writing would be if those sections moved fast because I was avoiding the weight of what she’s discovering. The compression works because it’s intentional and character-specific, not because it’s rushed.
The Line Between Them
The line between over-writing and under-writing isn’t a fixed point. It moves based on three things: the character’s voice, the emotional weight of the moment, and the pace the scene has established.
A character like Lisa calls for more compression than a character like Katie, because their voices operate differently. Lisa files her feelings before she has them. Katie talks past hers while she’s having them. The same scene written in Lisa’s voice and Katie’s voice would have different right lengths, and neither would be wrong.
- Why it worksWriters who understand this stop looking for a universal rule and start asking what this specific character in this specific moment needs. The answer changes every time, which is why finding the line is a craft skill rather than a formula.
In Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin, the exercises on sentence length and rhythm exist to develop the writer’s ear for what a scene needs—not to impose a rule about how long sentences should be. The ear is the tool. The rule is just a starting point for developing it. - How to do itRead the scene out loud. Out loud is the most reliable diagnostic tool for both over-writing and under-writing. Over-written prose sounds exhausting—you run out of breath, you hear yourself restating, you feel the prose working too hard. Under-written prose sounds rushed—you finish the sentence and realize you didn’t feel anything, that the moment went past before you could get inside it.
Do
Trust your ear over your eye. The eye reads quickly and fills in gaps. The ear hears exactly what’s there and what isn’t.
Avoid
Fixing over-writing by adding compression and fixing under-writing by adding description without asking whether the additions are the right ones. More words don’t fix under-writing. The right words do. Fewer words don’t fix over-writing. The right cuts do.
The Specific Detail as the Solution to Both
The most reliable fix for both over-writing and under-writing is the same: the specific concrete detail that does the work of ten vague ones.
Over-writing often happens because the writer doesn’t have the specific detail and is using volume to compensate. Under-writing often happens because the writer skipped past the moment without finding the specific detail that would have made it land. In both cases, the specific detail is the answer.
- Why it worksSpecific concrete details bypass the reader’s analytical brain and land in something more instinctive. The smell of something that doesn’t belong. The weight of a thing in the hand. The particular quality of a silence. These details put readers somewhere real before their brain has processed the information, which is exactly what both over-writing and under-writing fail to do.
In The Art of Fiction by John Gardner, the concept of the fictional dream—the state where readers are fully inside the story rather than watching it—depends almost entirely on specific concrete detail. Vague description breaks the dream. Over-explanation breaks the dream. The specific detail sustains it. - How to do itWhen a scene isn’t working, ask what the one most specific sensory detail in this moment would be. Not the most beautiful. The most precise. The detail that could only belong to this character in this moment and no other. Find that detail and build the scene around it rather than around the general situation.
Do
Let one specific detail carry what multiple vague ones can’t. “The coffee was cold” is vague. “She wrapped both hands around the mug anyway” is specific and tells the reader something about the character’s state that the vague version never could.
Avoid
Using specific details decoratively. A specific detail that doesn’t do emotional or character work is just a vivid detail. The specific detail that earns its place is the one that tells the reader something about who this person is and what this moment costs them.
From My Work
In Salt & Bone: Ashes, the panic attack scene in the therapy pool works because of specific detail rather than volume. The slap of water against tiles that sounds too much like whispers. The chlorine scratching at the back of his throat. The lights that don’t work. Each detail is precise and specific to Jack’s experience in that moment, and together they do more than a page of generalized description would have. The scene is neither over-written nor under-written because every detail is earning its place.
Final Thoughts
Finding the line between over-writing and under-writing isn’t about landing on the correct word count or following a rule about adjectives. It’s about asking what this specific scene needs and whether the prose is giving it that—nothing more and nothing less.
Read it out loud. Find the specific detail. Trust the landing. Cut what the scene already showed. Give the emotional beat the space it needs.
The line moves every time. The ear is how you find it.
Extras
- Read about Salt & Bone
- Read about The Death of Me
- Sign up for the newsletter to get weekly tips
- Elements of Style by Strunk and White
- The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass
- Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Art of Fiction by John Gardner