Wit (And Brevity, The Soul Thereof)

As promised yesterday, a consideration of the claim (made twice fairly recently regarding my writing) that less is more. I'm inclined to agree, generally speaking. A short is not more than a feature, for stories are of a size to demand one or the other. Once determined, however, the story must be cut down to the smallest size at which it can possibly have the hoped-for results. It comes down to the shocking and provocative axiom I once heard, and it goes as follows- Sometimes you have to kill your children.

Let me explain that.  When I write a story or an essay or a script, it is composed of numerous ideas, moments, lines, and jokes. I come to emotionally invest in them, and they become children whom I love dearly. In reality, what I'm doing is fabricating the framework of a sort of rocket, and and they are the cargo. I strive to launch it as high and far as I can, delivering as many of them to the destination- critical and popular acclaim- as I can.

Too many weigh down the rocket, and it will crash and burn. Too few, and it will reach the target but fail to strike it. There's always excess cargo, and if you can't find the nerve to cast them out onto the launch pad, the effort is doomed. It's kind of like the great George Pal film 'When Worlds Collide' (Or the Tyrone Power seafaring film 'Abandon Ship!').  The Earth is doomed, and countless wrenching choices must be made about who goes and who stays behind in order to preserve the most essential human capital to populate a desolate, alien planet.

That's how I see it. The written piece must be as stripped down and streamlined as the rocket's engine requires it to be. You can only have as many moving parts and as much weight as it takes to make the thing go. It's very hard to sacrifice anything, and often I can't do it myself without prodding. Such was the case with the sketches I'm developing and referred to in yesterday's post (and here). I love the 'children' I've made, or rather, the 'cargo' (as the more palatable metaphor would have it). You just have to always bear in mind the mission and the greater good.