The truth of the story cannot be verified, but its meaning is true. The writer has a deep concern-the shorter the story, the more it needs to be carefully carved. Therefore, we need to subtract the article. Subtraction makes your writing more accurate, your article more concise and your article more valuable. There is also the actual needs, such as the situation that the superior unit has a clear word limit for the application materials.
Now the supply of content exceeds demand, and the information explodes. Many people don't want to spend too much time reading an article, let alone reading a low-value article. Articles with low value density may even make people feel that they are wasting their lives.
What is value density? Zhou Zuoluo gave an explanation in his "Learning to Write: An Efficient Method of Self-improvement". Value density refers to how much value you can provide per unit time and unit space, such as one screen per minute on a mobile phone.
The first step is to focus on the core theme and delete irrelevant or irrelevant content. In the process of writing, we will search a lot of relevant materials, and if there are good materials, we will try our best to use them. This will lead to a lot of information in the written article, but it may lead to no focus or redundant information. Therefore, we should make a big cut and look at the article as a whole: first make clear the core theme of the article, and then think about it while reading the article, but if we encounter arguments and arguments that are not helpful to the theme, we will definitely delete them, even if they are wonderful.
Some repetitive expressions, such as similar cases and similar views, should also be deleted. No one likes to see the smelly and long "foot-binding cloth". I think I have no patience to face my mean old mother, and even spit directly: "Didn't you just say that?" How embarrassing! "For the repeated expression of articles written by strangers, the heart must be collapsed and abandoned directly.
The second step is to simplify every sentence from beginning to end, and simplify every sentence into dry silence. In other words, reading word for word can simplify words and delete redundant words, such as redundant pronouns, keywords, "de", "yes" and "le".
I received an urgent task from the leader at work today, and I want to compress a 5000-word material to less than 2500 before I get off work. How did I do it? Read it through first, then comb its frame structure and cut it directly, which has nothing to do with the theme. Mark it as dispensable and let the superior decide whether to cut it or not. After a wave of operations, the number of words changed from 5000 to 3000. Then intensive reading, optimized expression, optimized deletion of words, words and sentences. If you delete the tedious and useless words, you can also delete three or five hundred words. But the whole process took me a whole afternoon. I felt very painful and needed patience and care.
Subtracting the article will immediately take your article to a higher level. So after writing an article, don't rush to publish or hand it in. Do subtraction for it, "slim down" and improve its value density. Reduce the big ones first, and then reduce them; Start from the whole, focus on the theme, delete irrelevant content, optimize repetitive expression, and then start from the nuances and streamline every sentence, even every word, from beginning to end.