We writers are so focused on meeting our daily word counts and piling up the pages it can seem counterintuitive to do the opposite. Strip words from a sentence? Why? Remove sentences from a scene? Ridiculous. Cut out a whole character? Absolute madness. But we’ll explore how doing all that and more can make your remaining words shine – something well known to the 17th century poet and critic Nicolas Boileau when he advised:
“Polish, repolish, every Colour lay,
And sometimes add, but oft’ner take away.”
