Writing Practice - Another Writing Battle

The most recent writing battle I participated in (last weekend!) was a fun challenge. It's still being judged currently but I'm really excited to see how the judges feel about my scene. If you can even call it quite that. More like a moment. The challenge this time had a 100 word limit! Yeah, only 100!

I've never even attempted to write something that short and still include a genre theme, and 2 item/character prompts to include. I can tell that it's helping me learn how to say more in my fiction writing while keeping things concise and avoiding those filler words that I tend to use. I've noticed a ton of phrases I use that are repetitive which has helped me cut down on my word count. And that's not to say you should never be wordy, verbose, or talk and talk and talk, but it's best if you have control so you can choose pacing and syntax more intentionally.

Do you have any tricks you use to keep your writing tight and purposeful? Or is that all just needless hogwash? Let me know in the comments and I'll talk to y'all soon with some updates about New Roots Spokane and plans for the next 6 months.