Need help being concise

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I just can't do it. If I have a paper to write that's only supposed to be 1k words, mine always ends up being triple. Any tips?

Keep your sentence structure as simple as possible: subject, verb, object. Avoid multilayered subordinate phrases and clauses. Adjectives and adverbs are fine when used sparingly, but make the nouns and verbs carry most of the meaning. Use verbs in the active voice instead of the passive (e.g. rephrase a sentence like "It has been noted by many observers that...." into something simpler). Rote phrases such as "by and large," "as a matter of fact," and so on can be blue-penciled without much loss of meaning. And I notice I used the passive voice in that last sentence, woops.

Repeat after me: "Subject ... verb ... object. Subject ... verb ... object. Subject ... adverb ... verb ... object. Subject ... verb ... object."

I should have been less concise with the message (I was in a huge hurry).

I don't have a problem with sentences that go on and on. I have a problem with subjects that don't end. I can trim my sentences down to the bare bones but the meaning still won't come across unless I've gone to 10 pages on a paper that was only supposed to be 6.

Oh okay. Then think of your paper as an edited highlights package of everything you found out about the subject. Some aspects of the topic are bound to be more significant than others. It gets easier, with practice, to figure out what is central to your argument, and what can be omitted. Look for cues from your instructors about what sort of slant they are expecting.

I do better with concrete examples than generalized questions, and I think a lot of Aspies are the same way. Could you possibly post an example of your writing here for us to see? Or perhaps (since it would be so long) you could put it in your blog or post a link to it.

First, write down the basics:

"Who is directly involved?"
"Fnord, a local eccentric and man-about-town..."

"What happened?"
"... saved a stranger's life..."

"When did it happen?"
"... last week, sometime between Monday and Thursday..."

"Where did it occur?"
"... at Children's Hospital of Pantopia County..."

"How was the event accomplished?"
"... by donating bone marrow to a 12-year old leukemia victim..."

"Why did it occur?"
"... who would have died without it."

Do a Recap:

"Fnord, a local eccentric and man-about-town saved a stranger's life last week, sometime between Monday and Thursday, at Children's Hospital of Pantopia County, by donating bone marrow to a 12-year old leukemia victim who would have died without it."

Add a short Commentary:

"Local hospital officials were stunned by these developments. "We had no idea that Fnord had it in him!" said one hospital official, on the condition of anonymity. "He's well-known for being miserly and looking out for only himself, but when we notified him that he was a near-perfect match, he insisted on coming down right away."

At this point, one usually adds statistics about relevant items like leukemia, sick kids, donations, and odd-looking mutants coming through heroically for people they've never met.


Is this what you're looking for?

I'm really guarded about my writing, so I won't be doing that although I appreciate the offer to look it over.

The assignments I get are usually:

"Write a 6 page fiction story"

or

"Write an 800 word personal essay fit for publication in [and then a magazine I'm supposed to read to give me an idea of what they want. One time it was some stupid internet magazine that doesn't even pay]"

or

"Write a 12 page paper on any topic relating to historical linguistics" I ended up dropping that class

Just horribly broad topics that people like us struggle with, so I've been told.

The easiest way to deal with that is to draw up your own prompt that is as specific as you need (experiment with this) to keep it from ballooning into a giant paper.

On the other hand I want to know exactly what is meant by "analysis". Do they mean what it looks like, what it does, what happened to it, how it works, etc. etc.?

I never used the word analysis.

I meant those teachers who like getting prompts from... ehehe... outside sources.

@MizLiz: to write your 6 page fiction story, list:

*the basic description of the narrator/protagonist/both, up to 15 traits. Do not deviate from this list.
*a very simple plotline (what happens).

Write one paragraph for each plotpoint in the plotline.

I'll try that.

The way I do it, I always end up with closer to 8 pages and it's such a good story and the prof always admits that it's a good story... but too long and if I would have cut it off at 6, it would have been terrible.

This is why I quit school, basically.

It might help to learn a bit about journalistic writing. Journalists write for readers with limited attention spans in newspapers with limited space. Thus, journalistic writing is an excercise in concision. The whole style won't translate to creative writing, but the sentence structure will never fail you.

lol, I do the same thing Something that works is to do a brain storm first, and just put down jot notes of what you want to write. After a day, review it and see if anything can be crossed off. You'll still probably overdo it a bit though, and that's okay too.