“Concision – thrilling! Prolixity – killing!” I scribbled into a recent margin, then wondered at my exclamation points. Why so emphatic? Was I turning into a grouchy oldster? So what if an author – or speaker – or composer – bloviates?
Longwindedness used to rile me less. Does the depletion of my store of minutes make each matter more? I feel the clock like a stalker’s footsteps. Get to the point, can’t you!
Optimal length is a Goldilocks calculus: neither too long, nor too short, but just right. Easily said. But how are we to judge? Dog Henry hasn’t a clue about this. He barks like I sneeze – interminably. Drives me nuts. “Shut the f--- up!” I shout, as if the expletive enforced my command.
Optimal length is enough to be understood – and no more. A concise communicator honors me by not wasting my time. Windbags insult by squandering my most precious resource. How do we know when we’ve said enough? By eyeing our listener for marks of impatience. If you’re rolling your eyes or sighing or eying your watch just now, that’s not a good sign, I’d better get a move on.
Essential to a maker’s talent is knowing when enough is enough. Beethoven made his third symphony, the Eroica, half again as long as any symphony before. More than a few early listeners were miffed by his boorishness. But Beethoven sensed his material demanded this amplitude. Posterity agrees (though I still think it’s a little long). Stravinsky said of Schubert, “No matter if you fall asleep, you wake up in heaven.” Schubert extruded melodies so beautiful he fell in love with them. We do too – but enough already, Franz.
Concision persuades me a maker has me so vividly in mind they know if I’m getting antsy. Prolixity, garrulity, verbosity, loquaciousness, etc. – using several words where one will do – insult by disrespecting. No one likes being treated as stupid. The familiar instruction to end a school paper by repeating the thesis stated at the start may be the worst advice ever. Never repeat. Make every instant additive. When King Lear pronounces over his beloved daughter’s body, “Never, never, never, never, never,” he only seems to repeat, for every iteration enlarges his loss. (Dr. Johnson rated this the greatest line of poetry in English.) Robert Frost plays the same amazing trick with “And miles to go before I sleep” – a dazzling instance of literary prestidigitation.
I hate being told anything repeatedly – yet do it myself all the time. My first drafts bloat like doctored hams, using more words than required. I loathe blowhards who carry on this way, so full of themselves! I clap my prose in the sweatbox and turn up the heat. Seven hundred words become six hundred, svelter for having sweltered.
One on one, optimal length is easy to assess: check if your auditor’s yawning. But how does a maker sense the right length for invisible futurity? What persuaded Shakespeare his five never’s weren’t overdoing it?
Few relations are more intimate than between speaker and hearer. Every word, pitch, pause, cesura contributes to our effect. Communicators are supplicants begging for attention, seducers inveigling with our charms. No manual instructs how to woo: one learns by trial and error.
Concision is an act of love. The concise communicator cares about me – my preferences, interests, tolerance. The gasbag doesn’t notice me, smitten with self-love. When Trump blathers endlessly at his rallies, he exhibits contempt for his listeners. Why they fall for it is beyond me.
It’s thrilling feeling loved, killing feeling ignored. That’s what those exclamation points were striving to convey (albeit too concisely).