The Sin of Overwriting

3 Ways Writers Overwrite—and What Drives the Impulse To Do So

I finally watched Oppenheimer this weekend, which I’d put off after overhearing a comment made by a 13-year-old girl standing in front of me while I waited in line to see Barbie. Dressed to the nines in a pink dress and sparkly kitten heels, she said to her friend (cue exaggerated vocal fry), “You should see it if you’re, like, into men having existential crises.” The comment cracked me up, and made me consider whether I really wanted to spend three hours of my life immersed in male existential crises. But I finally succumbed—to discover she was right. But there’s more. It’s also hard to follow with its too-fast timeline switches, mumbling dialogue sequences, and hollow relationship development. Oppenheimer, I concluded, suffers from the sin of overwriting.  

Overwriting is not just the act of including too much, or making the work too long or repetitive; it’s also the act of excessiveness, of indulgence, of not being discerning. There are reasons people overwrite—because they’re in love with their subject, or their words; because they don’t engage or listen to editors; or because they’re grandiose or insecure (two sides of the same coin that produce similar outcomes when it comes to works of art). To curb overwriting, you first have to be able to recognize how it shows up and what drives it.

Here are three ways writers overwrite—and why:

1. LENGTH—Too Many Words
Yes, there are genres that merit long, long books—and writers will give me examples all the time of these tomes whenever I suggest to writer with a book inching up and over 100,000 words that we need to cut. Today, and especially for debut writers, 100,000 words is the limit, and that’s high. For most writers of fiction and memoir and self-help, 70,000-80,000 is a better target. There are many reasons to keep your book on the shorter side, but reader patience and tolerance is the biggest. I haven’t read Barbra Streisand’s My Name Is Barbra yet, in part because I’m struggling to figure out when I’ll have the time. It’s 970 pages, which means it clocked in around 350,000 words. No matter what kind of amazing life she’s had, this is too long. The New York Times review of her memoir stressed an important takeaway for any writer: “Streisand maybe could have used a trusted collaborator, a J.R. Moehringer or even a J.J. Hunsecker, to rein in some indulgences, like long lists of boldface friends at later-career concerts.” I’m sure she could have reined in a bit more than that.

Reasons writers write too long:
1. They don’t trust or listen to editors. The old adage is true: Less is more.
2. They lack discernment and can’t step outside of themselves to consider what the reader needs, or what the essence of the story is.
3. They’re so in love with their subjects (Christopher Nolan with Oppenheimer, Barbra with Babs) that they struggle to believe that any scene can be cut (they’re all too important!).

2. OVERWRITING—Trying Too Hard
In the nascent days of a person’s writing journey, it can and will be a struggle to know or to trust their own voice. This can take time. Writers might not recognize trying too hard, but readers do. Overwriting is flashy vocabulary words and overwrought sentences. It’s also flowery, overdone prose that centers language choices over a good story.

Reasons writers try too hard:
1. They lack experience, period. This kind of writing can be greatly curbed when a writer gets feedback that they’re overwriting—and they practice other ways of showing up on the page.  
2. They don’t trust their own voice. In the genres I work within and publish—memoir, fiction, self-help—the narration should be easy to follow. And for writers who aren’t particularly literary, trust that how you “do language,” as Toni Morrison said, is right for your reader.
3. They want to show off. It may feel impressive to deploy the SAT vocabulary words and showcase complex sentence structures, and I’m not saying don’t do this ever. Just keep in mind, language is the supporting actor, and the story is always the star.  

Some examples:
Fiction: He looked at her with narrow eyes, desiring with every fiber of his being that she establish the eye contact she was earnestly resisting.

Memoir: After I made my way across the sand-colored patio bricks to the sliding glass door, I threw myself onto the beige couch facing its equal in my large living room. My overtired body crumbled into its soft cushions, my arms finding an erstwhile pillow to wrap themselves around. My head followed, landing in a divot for me to cry into, a container for the orchestra of sobs that originated from my broken heart.

ChatGPT-generated when prompted to write a “flowery sentence” (not bad): Amidst the ethereal embrace of twilight's tender caress, the celestial stars, those twinkling jewels of the night, adorned the velvety expanse of the heavens, casting their effulgent glow upon the tranquil, whispering meadows, painting a portrait of serene beauty that enraptured the soul with its ineffable magnificence.

And too many adjectives: The large, old, creaky, wooden door stood imposingly at the entrance of the ancient, abandoned, eerie, dilapidated mansion.

3. PRECIOUS WRITING—being too attached
It’s hard to get distance from your story, which is why memoirists are among the most guilty of precious writing. This happens when a writer is too invested in some part of their story, or they mistakenly believe that their story will exist to set the record straight somehow. (A beautiful case in point was made in this must-read New Yorker piece by J.R. Moehringer, where he says about working with Prince Harry, “Harry couldn’t escape the wish that Spare might be a rebuttal to every lie ever published about him.” Luckily, Moehringer saved him from his worst impulses and the result is a very fine book indeed.) Writers can also easily fall into the trap of precious writing when they try to memorialize, or celebrate, or demonize someone rather than just letting those characters’ actions do the heavy-lifting.

Reasons writers fall into precious writing:  
1. They have it in their mind that their books will settle scores, or achieve certain and specific outcomes.  
2. They want to control the narrative—to protect someone, demand their reader’s attention be drawn a particular way, make themselves or others (partners, kids, friends, parents) “look good,” all of which should be resisted (or edited out).  
3. They’re overly attached to including something because it happened, or because they have a point to make, or because they can’t let go of an idea.

Example:
When I opened that door, I opened it to a new future with Scott, to a place of hope and belief that together we would take on the world. I opened that door to a love that had landed in my lap long after I stopped believing I could ever have a love like that again. Scott accepted me for all of my scars, loved me because and despite of them. He and I rarely bickered, but if we did, we’d always hug, and end every single evening nestled in the joy of knowing we were each other’s person. We’d made a commitment early on to never go to bed angry or upset with each other, and he was the reason we didn’t. He would never let me wallow in my upset. He always knew the right thing to say. Knowing I would end every night of the rest of my life with him was solace, relief, the definition of happiness. When I opened that door, I said yes to him, yes to us, yes to myself. When I opened that door, I finally unlocked the cage of my heart.

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If any of these are literary sins you’ve committed, don’t worry. You’re not condemned and they’re forgivable. You always have an opportunity to do better next time, to practice that discernment, to evaluate if and when you might fall into one of these traps. And, none of us is immune from these moments on the page.

You might argue with me—what about all the very long books worth reading? There are lists of them! I’ve read—and loved—some very long books. Some authors are notably celebrated for writing long—Karl Ove Knausgård, Jonathan Franzen, Stephen King, Haruki Murakami, and many others. But remember that they’re not debut writers. And the rules are not applied equally. Barbra Streisand wrote a 970-page memoir because she’s Barbra Streisand. There are very few Elena Ferrantes out there for whom a publisher would agree to package four novels in one at a whopping 1,682 pages. For us mere mortals, the more self-awareness we cultivate, the better our chances are of writing a book that readers want to read and recommend.