Time compression is one of the most useful tools in writing.

Especially when we’re starting out, we tend to overwrite.

We think that everything that’s in our head must go on the page.

That the achievement of sitting down to write was so great that every word we write is invaluable, but…

This is what first drafts are for.

A first draft can be looked on as the “brain dump,” where we allow all of our tangled, unstructured, meandering thoughts to spatter the page.

The first draft, depending on how much research you’ve done, should be allowed to be messy.

Getting it all out is the important part.

The rewrite is where the organizing, structuring, and editing is done.

Even with experience, it can be difficult to decide what to leave out.

That’s where you must decide what the focus of your piece is.

Take a piece I wrote this week.

I described how I was packed and ready to set off on my dream trip to my Hemingway House writing residency on April 16, 2020…

But I didn’t actually leave until October 30, 2021.

So what happened in those 18 months?

Surely that’s worth exploring, right?

Well here’s what I wrote…

“And on the morning of April 16, 2020, my Mustang was packed and revving to go, and then…

Lockdown.

Eighteen months later I finally set off…”

I chose to describe a year and a half, eighteen months, 563 days, in one word…

Lockdown.

Why?

Because that wasn’t the focus of this piece.

Plus, I knew that one word was part of a global event that we each have a different experience of and attitude towards.

And I chose to allow the reader to do that mental work in this case.

So though it was important to acknowledge that the road trip meant that much more because of the restrictions of the previous year and a half, describing my personal experience of it was another story for another day.

Remember that although writing is a form of personal expression, it is fundamentally one of communication.

We must always bear our reader in mind.

We can tease, tantalize, and entertain, but we must not confuse, bore or drain our readers.

So if an event in your story can’t be cut out altogether, look for ways to compress time by trimming as many unnecessary details as possible.

This is one time your readers will thank you for delivering less rather than more.