information-density

name	information-density
description	Draft or revise prose so each sentence carries multiple simultaneous layers of character, texture, emotion, and meaning.

Information Density

Use this skill when drafting prose or revising for quality.

Core Principle

Every sentence should do at least two jobs simultaneously. Thin prose is not prose with few events—it is prose where each sentence earns only one thing. The opposite of thin prose is not more plot; it is more layers per moment.

What a sentence can do

• Establish or change the situation
• Reveal character (what they do, notice, choose, avoid)
• Create texture (atmosphere, time, physical sensation)
• Plant or pay off meaning (irony, anticipation, echo)
• Carry emotional undercurrent without naming it

A sentence doing one of these is meeting the minimum. Revise toward sentences doing two or three simultaneously.

The density test

Remove a sentence. What is lost?

If only a fact is lost—a plot beat, a location, a piece of exposition—the sentence is doing one job. Consider whether it can also carry character or undercurrent.

If removing it loses a fact, an emotional texture, and a character implication simultaneously, the sentence has earned its place.

Thin vs. dense: a direct comparison

Thin: "She was nervous as she walked into the room. The room was large and brightly lit."

Dense: "She pushed the door open and the fluorescent light hit her before she had adjusted her face."

Same facts (she enters, room is bright), but the dense version also shows: her preparation to perform, its failure, the light as something that acts on her rather than something she observes, vulnerability without naming it.

Common sources of thin prose

• Sentences that name an emotion and then separately show a physical response. (Choose one, let the reader build the bridge.)
• Description that sets a scene without simultaneously revealing the character's state.
• Dialogue tags and action beats that only track physical position and do not shift power or atmosphere.
• Transitions that move a character from place to place and do nothing else.
• A sentence that says what is happening followed immediately by a sentence that says what it means.

Applying density to character revelation

Character is most efficiently revealed through what they notice, what they do when no one is watching, and what they do not do when doing it would be easy. These can all happen in a sentence—a glance, a hesitation, an automatic action—that simultaneously advances the scene. Avoid dedicating full sentences to "she was the kind of person who."