These talk about the history of a kingdom, spouting the lines of succession through dozens of generations. Read enough epics and you’re sure to run into multipage literary meanderings. Epic Fantasy writers, military thriller writers, and hard sci-fi writers are prone to tangents and detailed digressions. On the surface, this seems obvious, but it would surprise you how often even skilled writers can miss the mark. A strict interpretation of this rule is: If you can remove an entire scene and the characters and reader would still have all of the information necessary to solve the mystery, overcome the obstacle, or defeat the foe, then the scene doesn’t need to be there. Every scene should contain elements that advance the plot. This might be the most important rule of thumb available to a writer. What makes a scene worthwhile? Let’s go through a few obvious reasons to include a scene, and then we’ll discuss one or two that don’t get quite so much attention. But comparatively rare is the answer to the obvious followup question. They all boil down to: if you don’t need to write a scene, don’t write it. Lessons that call for concise writing echo through the forums and across twitter threads. “Chekhov’s Gun” states that if there’s a gun hanging on the mantle in the first act, it should be fired by the third or it shouldn’t be hanging there. Even in screenplays and stage productions, efficient storytelling is key. If you write comics, pointless digressions can grow into filler arcs that lose readers.

Spend too much time talking about something that doesn’t matter to the plot and pretty soon your tight little short story is a sprawling novella.

In short fiction, you don’t have the words to spare. One of the first and most important lessons likely to come from any sort of writing instruction is this: Don’t waste words.

Short story rough draft example