Guest Post: Superfluous Writing or When Simple is Better

By Melyssa Van Lydegraf

Imagine entering a bookstore, with the goal of finding your next engrossing read. You find the shelf with your favorite genre and start browsing through the selection. An intriguing cover catches your eye, and you open to the first page to get a sample of the story.

After a couple sentences, you realize that you have no idea what’s going on. The author clearly has a vast vocabulary but attempting to piece together the narrative leaves you thinking it will be a chore to get through this book. You place it down and decide to go for another book instead.

This scenario happens more often than expected. You could have the most interesting story, the best characters, or the twist ending to beat M. Night Shyamalan, but a portion of your potential readers will never know because your opening chapter is a struggle to get…