Minimization

For the writer, there were far too many words.

He was miserably considering the unalterable fact that there were times when reducing something down to the smallest possible amount, by means of minimization, just doesn’t work. There had been other occasions when this had been a problem. He would have the story in his mind, but as it was being captured on the screen of his computer he would soon realise that it was going to need a lot of words for the telling of it. It was at times like these, the writer knew that he was in for a long slog. He could see that he wasn’t going to get the usual enjoyment and satisfaction from writing it. Right now, he was confronted with the worst of these situations. It was for this reason that he had called his friend.

They were both in armchairs, in the living room for comfort, when his friend said, “On the phone, you said you had a problem.”

The writer said, “I do.”

“The old imagination drying up is it?”

“No, the opposite.”

“Go on.”

“Thanks, you always were a good sounding board.”

His friend smiled and nodded for him to go on.

The writer relaxed a little. “I thought I had a great idea for a story, but it’s just too big! I’ve tried drafting it out, but its running into thousands of words already and I haven’t told the half of it yet!”

“Really… thousands?”

“Yes, really. You know I don’t do thousands, I do hundreds. Preferably around three hundred or so.”

His friend folded his arms and settled back in the chair. “Better tell me,” he said.

The writer sighed. “OK. The story goes like this… this exploration company is trialling a ground-breaking method of taking core samples. These are far deeper than anything the industry had done before. Then, when this one time the hollow drill is brought back up they find that the end of it is gold plated! You can imagine, the excitement this discovery generates. Because of the vastly increased depth, and the greater temperature, they have hit, not a seam of gold, but a liquid pool of the stuff. Well, the company sets to and builds a plant at the site and starts pumping the precious metal up. You realise of course that this is radically new technology being developed here. When the molten metal reaches the surface, inside the plant that is, it’s poured directly into moulds and left to cool as gold ingots.”

“You see, instead of all that other messing about?”

His friend sat thinking for a while. “Wow! Interesting idea.”

“That’s as maybe, but it’s taken several thousand words to describe that much properly. As for the baddies…”

“Ah! Of course, you haven’t come to them yet.”

“No. You can see how much of a threat this whole thing is. I mean, apart from how it impacts on the gold standard, there are some many other factions that want to get in on the action, both legally and illegally. The mind boggles. Well, no, my mind boggles. Just consider, the repercussions of using this new method of producing gold is going to have such a huge impact on the bullion market. Even the legal ramifications could impinge dramatically on world order, as we know it!”

The writer suddenly stopped speaking. “Do you realise that if I were to write down an account of this conversation, I mean… just me sitting here telling you about it, I would have to write at least six-hundred words to describe it?”

His friend grinned. “No doubt.”

The writer pointed his thumb at the ceiling. “Well then, thanks, I’ll do that…”