Compression: Susan Rukeyser
Recipe: Compressed Fiction
Ingredients:
¼ lb. lean story (revised).
Insight.
Courage. Do not over season.
Steps:
- Pat story into usual shape.
- Apply meat press.
- Squeeze. Good. More.
- Observe, oozing from beneath cast iron: Tedious explanation. Bland dialogue. Extraneous detail. Fat.
- Press harder.
- Story may no longer resemble usual shape. That’s good. That’s better.
- Observe, released: What the author didn’t trust the reader to know. (She knows. She brings her own story to this.)
- When the space around and between the meat matters just as much as words, your story is done.
- Serve hot. Swallow. Savor.
