One of the old office adages is, "Quality, Quantity, or Quickly.  Pick two of the three."  This also applies to writing.  And what two of the three you’ve picked determines what you’re writing.  I’ll define "Quality" as well-written, aspiring to be literature.  "Quantity" as word count.  "Quickly" as time between sending manuscripts to market.  Quality and Quantity gives you a good novel, and maybe a masterpiece.  Quality and Quickly gives you a good short story.  Quantity and Quickly gives you a throw-away novel, what I call hack work.  Don’t get me wrong.  There is nothing wrong with novels written quickly.  There are some blessed people out there who can do quality, quantity, and quickly.  Unfortunately there are very few of those.  I also don’t have anything against throw-away novels.  Humorous fantasies, tongue-in-cheek SF, media tie-ins, swords and bulging muscle adventures or space operas are fun to read, aren’t taxing, and a good way to relax.  But they are what they seem, just entertainment.

So, what makes Quality?  What differentiates between Quality fiction and hack work?  Given a finished product, a published piece of fiction, we don't know how much time or effort was put into that piece of work.  We can only examine it and guess.  But like an experienced jeweler, we can put it up to the light, screw on our eye piece, and look for Clarity, Cut, Color, and Carats.

In this article, I'll mainly concentrate on Clarity.

Clarity comes with experience.  As words roll by on the word processor odometer, we learn what is effective and what isn't.  We learn about making words work double or triple duty and about timely information release.
Before:  The old man wore a top hat that made his straw colored hair shoot out in all directions, making him look like a scarecrow.  He was a joyous old man with a twinkle in his eye and bounce in his step.  He waved at Madame Parsons and shouted, "Hello."  Parsons just stuck her nose up and passed on by.

What is wrong with the "Before" paragraph?  First of all the description of the character is separate from the action, it could be folded in.  The description standing by itself is static, dead, boring.  Second, there is a fair amount of telling about the character that could be showed.  Showing detail should be used within a scene and telling should be used as glue, transitions between scenes, or short info dumps of important information.  I've rewritten the "Before" paragraph below.

After:  The old man bowed, taking off his top hat, as Madame Parsons walked by.  "Well, hello," he shouted.  Parsons just stuck her nose up and passed on by.  He danced a couple of soft shoe steps and jammed the hat back down on his head, forcing his straw colored hair to shoot out in all directions, making him look like a scarecrow.

Action is now tied into the description.  The telling (joyous old man) has been replaced by shown detail (bowing, dancing).

How much detail should be used?

Enough.

Too little detail makes your writing fall into the category of cliche (The star-crossed lover...).  Too much detail is boring (He was just like that guy Romeo who liked this babe Juliet...).  Just enough detail makes it fresh and interesting.

How do you go about describing this detail?

Study film.  Film is a very good media for story telling.  Description, action, and dialog are presented simultaneously.  Unfortunately, the written word doesn't have such a wide bandwidth of data transmission.  We can only simulate the highly detailed descriptions of film with metaphors, similes, and beautiful prose.  We're not going to describe everything in minute detail, but we'd try to create the right atmosphere and emotional impact with carefully chosen words.  What the camera focuses on in film is what the narrator should focus on in a story.  We have to learn to throw away words, describe what is important with the fewest number of words necessary.  With words, we can duplicate the effects of a slow pan, a camera shifting from an extreme close up to a long shot, zoom in from a birds-eye view of a scene to a close up, or any of the camera techniques used in film.  Our narration should use these techniques for clarity.  As much as a camera that jerks back and forth between two disparate pictures can confuse the viewer, so can narration.  But the narrator can do one thing a camera can't do, go into someone's head.  We can actually describe someone's thought processes and emotions.  We can explain highly complex concepts.  We can write about things that the special effects department can't simulate.

How do you achieve maximum impact with your words?

Timing is everything.

As much as the delivery of a joke's punchline, a karate kick, or a home run swing of a baseball bat requires perfect timing, so does the release of information in a story.

Too much information released at once creates dead space, the dreaded info dump.  Too little information lessons your story's impact, like a batter that doesn't setup right for the proper follow through.  Just the right timing and technique can give you a home run.

There are several types of information release:  Foreshadowing, Minor Information, Major Information, Tension Builders, and Symbolic Tie-ins.

I define Foreshadowing as showing the reader some information earlier in the story that is vital later on.  This is used to remove "tomato surprises."  If the hero pulls a lock pick set out of his hat or use some esoteric knowledge about Faberge eggs, the reader must, at the time of this object or skill use, be unsurprised by this item's appearance or information use.

I define Minor Information as information that can be explained in a short sentence or two and is located shortly before or during the action that needs this information.  This information can be folded into the action without slowing down the story's pace.  This information is used for verisimilitude and story flow.  In The Princess Bride by William Goldman, the man in black explains the undetectability of iocane powder.  It is described in three short sentences and is the pivotal prop in that scene, yet it is described close the action and no foreshadowing is necessary about iocane powder until that point.  In fact, if we do foreshadow about iocane powder, the reader would probably forget about it by the time he/she reaches this scene and would say, "Iocane -- what?"

I define Major Information as the info dump.  Some stories require the reader to know in-depth detail about particle physics and there is no way to guarantee the reader already knows this information before reading the story, so the writer must put this information into the story.  This information can't be at the beginning of a story or it'll bore the heck out of the reader (if they wanted a lecture on particle physics they would've bought a copy of Scientific American instead.)  It can't be in the middle of an action sequence because it'll drain the tension out of the action.  So, it has to be presented either in a scene by itself or told during a transition between scenes.  This information can be presented as internal monologue, where a character is thinking about this information; as dialog, but this may become a "As you well know professor" dialog where two characters who already understand the problem discuss not the problem, but a summary of their ten years of university education in physics; or told by the narrator directly to the reader as description.
I define Tension Builders as information required to heighten suspense.  It could be misdirection necessary to keep a murder mystery a mystery, hints about supernatural events or a heinous crime as a young woman stays overnight at a decrepit house, the view of a bomb set to go off at midnight during a New Year's Eve party.  Tension Builders have to be placed early, placed at timed intervals, and increase in significance.
I define Symbolic Tie-ins as information required to link seemingly disparate elements in a story together.  Symbolic Tie-ins enhances the theme of a story, brings it to a simmer, and wraps the whole story together with a neat emotional bow tie.  Careful word choice, similes, and metaphors will give your story a greater overall meaning.  A inconsequential gesture or gift by a character can suddenly become a menacing action or generate a sense of closure.

Look at effective stories, see how good writers release information.  See when they've made a mistake.  Learn from them.

Now, we'll briefly visit Cut, Color, and Carats.

The Cut of a story is determined by its structure, much like how each person's skeleton determines how he or she looks.  Stories are made up of separate scenes hooked up together with transitions, bones held together by cartilage and sinew.  Words fill the scenes, giving them character, like pieces of flesh wrapped around bone.  Polished prose makes everything pretty like flawless skin over raw flesh.  A flaw in the gem, a crooked spine in a story, can ruin the demeanor of any story.  Though a hunchback can have flawless skin, people will still notice the hump.

A story's Color is determined by consistency of tone, word usage, symbolism, exotic settings, and engaging characters.

Carats are the wonderful nuggets of information, the "What If" big idea that drives the story, the turn of phrases, the brilliant characterizations, the artful part of a story, the shining uniqueness in each story instilled by a burst of creativity.

By looking at a story's Clarity, Cut, Color, and Carats, we can determine whether it is of Quality or not.  And we can through conscientious effort make sure that we are writing quality fiction when we want to.  There are good and bad pieces of hack fiction out there.  Strive to write quality fiction and subconsciously, the good habits of quality fiction writing will creep into all your writing and when that publisher asks you to pound out a novel in three months, you'll hopefully crank out a good piece of hack work or even -- a masterpiece.