Fewer Ideas, but Better

A short craft note from Nathan Baugh: the most common failure in writing is trying to cover too many ideas at once, leaving each one underdeveloped. The fix is to cut ideas until the best ones have room to breathe — “fewer ideas, but better.” He walks through a journaling exercise to surface which plot points, characters, or themes are crowding the story, and argues that the percentage of available space devoted to the best ideas compounds their impact.

Connections

• Nathan Baugh — author; Storytelling Substack
• Storytelling — core craft principle for any narrative form
• Writing — applicable to essays, stories, or any long-form piece
• Long-Form Writing — the essay is specifically about avoiding over-complexity in structured writing