Maybe I'm Onto Something...

Photo by Creative Hina By.Quileen on Unsplash

Last night was the most productive writing session that I've had for months. By the time I was done last night, I had more than 1,500 new words to my credit, not counting some words I added and decided to take out again.

At the start of the night, I was about to try and spruce up or revise something I had written previously. I knew that I had to do it, but I wasn't all that excited about that prospect, even though I knew the scene I was thinking about would be vital to the story. What had stuck in my mind that day were two scenes I knew were vital, that I had to have in there - my main character saying goodbye to his brother, and convincing a friend to visit him over the phone.

For this book, I decided to put into play a saying I had heard a year or so ago from Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing. #10 is:

Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

For me and my past work, it's been difficult to determine what is good to skip, especi…