Wordiness Killers: How to Trim the Fluff and Keep Your Voice

Writers rarely set out to be wordy. The problem sneaks in through first drafts. We add scaffolding to get the thought down, stack adjectives to feel more descriptive, hedge with phrases like “it might be possible” so we don’t sound too blunt. The impulse is understandable — language feels safer padded.

But readers don’t come to the page for padding. They come for clarity, precision, and rhythm. Word economy isn’t about stripping your style down to Hemingway’s bare bones. It’s about knowing which words carry weight, and which are leaning on others for support.

Think of it as a diet for sentences: cut the empty calories, keep the nourishment. And some of the best teachers are writers who already showed us how much can be said with very little.

Ernest Hemingway: Brevity as Power

Hemingway’s prose is the classic example of economy. He came from journalism, where every word was space in a column — expensive and unforgiving. That urgency shaped his fiction.

In The Old Man and the Sea, the opening line sets the stage with no fuss:

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”

No adjectives piled on. No intensifiers like “very” or “truly.” The rhythm of the sentence does the work: old, alone, eighty-four days, without. We feel the weight of his situation because nothing distracts from it.

When you compare it to a padded version, the lesson is clear:

• Bloated: “The old, weary man, who had spent countless lonely days fishing all by himself in a small wooden boat, had now gone an excruciating eighty-four days without managing to catch even a single fish.”

• Hemingway’s version: 24 words, not 40. Strong nouns and verbs, not a string of descriptors.

Takeaway: Cut what the reader can already infer. Old man implies weary. Eighty-four days without a fish implies excruciating. Trust the reader to connect the dots.

George Orwell: Clarity as Honesty

Orwell believed political corruption and bloated prose were twins. If your language is sloppy, he argued, your thinking probably is too. In Politics and the English Language, he advised: “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”

In 1984, his opening line obeys his own rule:

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

Imagine if Orwell had padded it: “It was an unusually bright and bitterly cold day in April, and all of the clocks, in a strange and unnatural fashion, were loudly striking the number thirteen.”

The difference is not just aesthetic. The shorter version lands like a blow: ordinary April, extraordinary detail — thirteen. The longer version buries the strangeness under qualifiers.

Takeaway: Word economy isn’t about sounding clipped. It’s about making sure the word you choose actually matters. If cutting it strengthens the effect, cut it.

Joan Didion: Precision Without Excess

Joan Didion proves that concision doesn’t erase lyricism — it heightens it. She is a master of the sentence that balances clarity with cadence.

Her famous line from The White Album is only seven words:

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

It could have been: “Human beings constantly create and repeat narratives to provide meaning and comfort that allow us to continue surviving in an uncertain world.”

Same meaning, less force. Didion trusted her reader. The stripped line vibrates with rhythm, almost like a proverb.

Between her short declarative lines, she also uses longer sentences — but they’re long because they need to be, not because she lost track of her thought. Every clause adds something new.

Takeaway: Brevity doesn’t mean every sentence must be short. It means the words that remain are exact. Precision and rhythm — not padding — create voice.

James Baldwin: Emotional Punch in Fewer Words

James Baldwin’s prose shows that cutting words doesn’t cut feeling. His sentences carry anger, tenderness, grief — often all at once — but they’re rarely cluttered.

In Giovanni’s Room, he writes:

“People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, any more than they can invent their parents.”

There’s no hedging with “in some ways” or “perhaps”. No string of synonyms to explain what a mooring post is. The sentence lands because Baldwin states the truth cleanly, then leaves it with us.

Try adding fluff: “People unfortunately cannot, as much as they might like to, simply make up or choose their own mooring posts, or their friends or lovers, just as it is impossible for them to choose their parents.”

The expanded version dulls the force. Baldwin’s version is blunt and unforgettable.

Takeaway: Don’t soften emotional truths with qualifiers. Lean sentences often feel truer because they don’t give the reader an escape hatch.

Margaret Atwood: Worldbuilding Through Restraint

Speculative fiction tempts us toward wordiness. Strange worlds feel like they require heavy description. But Margaret Atwood shows that a single precise word can carry the weight of entire histories.

The opening of The Handmaid’s Tale gives us this:

“We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.”

She could have padded: “We were forced to sleep in a space that had originally been constructed for exercise and recreation, specifically serving as a gymnasium for schoolchildren.”

Her version is simple, but the word once does enormous work. It gestures at what has been lost, what society used to be, and what the characters endure now.

Takeaway: Economy is not about withholding detail — it’s about choosing the one detail that carries the most resonance. Sometimes a single word, carefully placed, evokes more than a paragraph.

Common Traps and How to Spot Them

Reading the masters makes word economy seem effortless, but when revising your own drafts, the culprits often hide in plain sight.

• Redundancies: Watch for paired words that say the same thing — “each and every,” “advance planning,” “completely finished.”

• Scaffolding: Sentences that start with “there is/there are” often get stronger when flipped. “There are many reasons people write” → “People write for many reasons.”

• Adverb padding: “He whispered softly.” A whisper is already soft. Cut the adverb or pick a sharper verb.

• Hedging: “In some ways it might be possible that…” Either it is or it isn’t. Say it cleanly.

• Pretentious synonyms: “Utilize” rarely beats “use.” Simpler isn’t dumber. It’s clearer.

Knowing When Not to Cut

Economy isn’t minimalism. Some writers thrive on abundance — Dickens, Nabokov, Faulkner. Their sentences sprawl intentionally, creating rhythm or excess that matches the mood of their worlds. Cutting them to the bone would ruin the effect.

The point is not to make every sentence short, but to make every word necessary.

Ask yourself: does this adjective add meaning, or is it propping up a weak noun? Does this clause bring new information, or does it circle the same idea? If the sentence sings because of its length, keep it. If it rambles because you weren’t ruthless, trim.

Conclusion

Word economy is not about silence; it’s about clarity. Hemingway stripped sentences to their essence. Orwell cut to keep thought honest. Didion distilled complexity into precision. Baldwin showed that fewer words can carry more emotion. Atwood proved that even worldbuilding thrives on restraint.

When you revise, don’t ask, “How much can I add?” Ask, “How much can I remove and still keep the meaning — or make it stronger?”

The best prose isn’t starved. It’s sharpened. And a sharpened sentence can cut through to the heart of the reader.