Short and succinct.
Like a haiku poem. That is how I prefer to write sometimes.
Except, not really. There’s nothing haiku about this.
Haiku can be abstract and hard to understand without proper context. Or purely sensational. I try to provide all the context needed to reach the reader.
Except I don’t clutter. I don’t like clutter. I try to avoid clutter.
I strive to be succinct. Provide the bare essentials. Minimal.
But don’t call it minimalism. Minimal writers and artists alike will come after you, decrying it isn’t truly minimalism. Not if you lead the the reader to follow a narrative, which I do.
Which is really a shame. Because the word describes my writing style well. And “succinct” doesn’t have the same catch. Not to mention less people use or understand the word.
Maybe it would be okay to call it Japanese minimalism. It inspired my writing style after all. That and my simple mindedness.
Except that is tough because I’m extrapolating. Japanese language is by nature not as descriptive as English. It is highly contextual. By comparison, it appears to be more minimal. And translations aren’t perfect, either.
Succinct it is then. Succinctism.
Don’t call it that, actually. That’s a silly name.
Is my style unique? As an extrapolation of one language’s characteristics into a completely different language?
I would not think I’m the first to do so. Not with seven billion other people in the world, and all the others before them.
Children’s stories strip down their writing as well. To make them accessible to developing minds. Not to mention they reach a wider audience.
That mantra does have relevance to why I write the way I do. But accessibility isn’t my primary reason. I still use big words if they help me describe more with less.
A primary reason is I enjoy how it looks. I am a visual artist by training, after all. Seeing nicely spaced lines of writing feels great. Just like seeing a cleaned-off desk. Or organized clutter.
Reasonable or not, the matter of the fact is it has influential power. It works for me, and it has so far worked for the peers who have read and critiqued my work.
If executed well, I also enjoy how it allows me to quickly flow from one idea to the next, never lingering too long. Some of the paragraphization may be redundant in terms of the context discussed.
But it doesn’t miff me too much. Simply a side effect of me controlling how the narrative should feel. Poems do it all the time, sometimes splitting apart sentences.
Details will be lost, of course. Reducing clutter the writing to bare essentials will require higher context to understand. It’s a tight balance, deciding what is essential and what isn’t.
But the denial of information is a literary construct I enjoy employing the most. Deny the reader immediate details, then trickle them in as they read. Almost like a mystery novel, except I don’t intend the narrative to fit within the mystery genre.
And that is perhaps what cemented my style. I disliked introducing the reader to every detail they need at the beginning. It felt manufactured. Trickling details felt more natural. And even more satisfying is the sensation of all the details coming together near the end.
Of course, this isn’t necessarily my dogma. I don’t follow it strictly all the time. Just as with anything, it has its advantages and disadvantages, and sometimes I find myself needing to break away from the style to accomplish the narrative I intend. Especially in more formal forms of writing.
It is nevertheless one style I take pride in participating. It is how I am.
Short and succinct.