If you’ve read some of my stories, think back on them and guess how many words were in each one (mouse over to reveal):

Story                                                   Words

Behind the Scenes                                1392

Burning Man Brony                              9567

The Corpse Bride                                  2765

Dark Demon King etc.                           4317

The Detective and the Magician        14179

Fluttershy's Night Out                          4981

Mortality Report                                    4296

Pony Tales (all 11 stories)                      8526

Sisters (my 2 stories only)                     6521

Trust, not including alternate ending  1435

Twenty Minutes                                       3361

Twilight Sparkle and the Quest etc.      1754

Did you guess high or low?  Probably high.  I write succinctly.  When I try rewriting someone else’s story, it usually comes out about one-third as long.  I guess that’s my “style”.  It’s deliberate, mostly.  It’s my strength and my weakness.

One way I make things short is by summarizing things that don't need to be said explicitly.  One comment the first EqD pre-reader made on “Moving On” was, “You have a habit of narrating over what could have been interesting interactions.”  I defended summarizing parts of the story that don't move you towards the goal:

Being interesting isn't enough reason to put something in a story.  Every paragraph must do something to achieve at least one of the story goals, and preferably two or more.

Then I quoted one of the summaries in question:

Stepping forward, she floated out the card and introduced herself as the head librarian. The only proof she had of her story was the card and the brightly-colored "Ask a Librarian!" button attached to her cardigan, but the ranking guard brightened immediately at Starflower's name.

This short paragraph does several things.

The guards are the first obstacle to seeing Luna.We see Twilight has low self-esteem.We see that Twilight thinks her main qualification to see Luna is her job.We will later recall that Twilight did not tell them her name.We see that Starflower's name carries some weight here, which increases Twilight's jealousy and lowers her self-esteem even more.

Expanding the conversation would require repeating information we already know about Starflower and the library card, and wouldn't accomplish anything more.  Neither Twilight's attitude toward the guards, nor their personalities, nor anything else I could show in their dialogue would contribute to the story.  It would be boring dialogue because the guards don't want anything and so aren't really story characters.  Summarizing was the right decision here.

Then I looked at the other summary Pre-Reader 63.546 singled out, in scene 5:

Eventually he went back to talking about Derpy, and that seemed natural, just as every long conversation in Ponyville eventually mentioned Pinkie Pie. He leaned over and touched her foreleg lightly. "Did I ever tell you about when she invented the 'banana split muffin'? One banana muffin, one cherry muffin, one chocolate-chip—all at the same time! Just stuffs them all in and starts chewing." Twilight giggled—it was all too easy to imagine exactly how Derpy would have grinned while eating it. "So just then this cello player from the orchestra comes in, mane all tidy, spotless grey coat. Derpy sees her and runs over to tell her how good it is! Only, her mouth's still full of muffin, see?"

Joe went on to describe the inevitable scene of muffin-induced shock and outrage, and Twilight laughed as he did, less at the story than at hearing Pony Joe switch between his thick Fillydelphia accent and an eerily accurate imitation of the Canterlot mare. She re-envisioned the scene in her mind. It was so easy to imagine Pinkie and Rarity doing the same thing.

That section is supposed to:

Bring up three parallels between Twilight's friends in Ponyville and ponies now in Canterlot, suggesting that Twilight could make new friends in Canterlot if she tried.Show that Twilight can find Joe's unscholarly talk entertaining and interesting.Show that Joe and Twilight are physically closer and more comfortable with each other than in the previous scene.

And it does that.  Expanding the summary into a blow-by-blow account wouldn't accomplish anything beyond that.

Yet, expanding the summary seems to be better.

"So just then this cello player from the orchestra comes in, mane all tidy, spotless grey coat. Derpy sees her and runs over to tell her how good it is! Only, her mouth's still full of muffin, see? So she leap-flies over there and gets right in the dame's face, who I don't think even knows her 'coz she says "Oh, I say" and backs away right up against that wall there." Twilight snorted and barely suppressed a whinny at Joe's eerily accurate imitation of a Canterlot mare. "And Derpy's grinning and flapping her wings and going 'Mrph mrmble mrf MRFFN!'"

Twilight re-envisioned the scene in her mind, but instead of Derpy and this Canterlot mare, it was Pinkie and Rarity. She could see exactly how Rarity would arch her eyebrows and look not quite directly back at Pinkie.

"The poor mare is frozen, she's got banana-chocolate-cherry muffin crumbs bouncing off her face like she's a statue. And then—" He tapped her foreleg again. "—and then all of a sudden she shuts her eyes and shouts, 'LENTO! LENTO'"

Twilight leaned back and took a deep breath. If only they hadn't ....

He struck the table with one hoof and laughed. "Lento!'"

Hadn't not followed her to Canterlot?

Is it better?  Why?  I like contrasting (my) Joe's boisterous nature with Twilight's reflective one.  I like that there are some exclamation points there, in a story that doesn't have many.  I wish I had a better explanation for why I should break my "Every word that doesn't work towards a story goal should be eliminated" rule here.

But I should have remembered that was a rule.  And all rules are bad.  Even this one.