THE QUILL & THE INKPOT

This is the fourth post in my ABCs of Writing series: Post D

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style

If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Writing

If you’ve done any reading about writing or picked up any style manual, you’ll find advice similar to that outlined above. (I had to constrain myself to just these two quotes, but I could have included many more.) This advice is commonplace because it is essential. A good writer must also be able to un-write, to prune and cut. There is both a joy in this editing (ah, how nice to say “He nodded” rather than “He nodded his head”!), but also a frustration(I worked so hard to produce this sentence, this description, this scene). Cutting, especially wide swathes of words, can also be terrifying (but what if by getting rid of this, albeit, wordy monologue, my readers won’t truly understand my character?).

Many people have written extensively on this topics and are far more capable than I am of explaining them in clear, useful language. Instead, I’ve compiled a short list of “loose” tips that I keep in mind editing and cutting.

Don’t delete for the sake of word count.

Let me pause for just a moment to tell a personal story.

I spent four years writing the first draft of my first novel. In my defense, I took a lot of long breaks in there, and I hadn’t even considered building a habit of daily writing. I wish I had. My story would have been far fresher had I sat down and tried to pound the thing out in a year or even six or three months. Another excuse for this lengthy draft period was the sheer size of my completed manuscript: a whopping 247,000 words (almost 700 double-spaced pages in Word). It was massive.

After celebrating its completion, I settled in to the gritty work of editing. As a first-time novelist, I had no clue what to do, so I went looking for advice on the internet and in books. The first thing I found was that my book was too dang long. Sure, George R. R. Martin and Brandon Sanderson can get away with gigantic epics, but I’m an unknown author. It would be a very hard (read, impossible) sell to get an agent, let alone a publisher, to go for such a high word count from a debut author. So I looked for advice on cutting down that word count. I found some great tips, including:

This sounded like great advice to me, so I dove in and started pruning, then cutting, then shearing away great swathes of words. It was difficult, but I comforted myself with all the advice I had read. It’ll hurt, but you’ve got to do it.

After many months and many drafts, I had deleted a ton. I’m guessing in the realm of 30-40%. I sat back, expecting triumph, but I instead felt gutted. I did indeed have a shorter book, but I had also cut out the magic of my original work. In my attempt to fit into the industry standard word count, I’d taken the wide sweeping ambition of my manuscript and turned it into a shrinking violet. Along with words, I’d cut out my confidence in myself and my writing style.

After panicking silently, I made myself re-evaluate. Then I actually started adding words to reintroduce some of that magic I had deleted. I re-thought what I’d always pictured to be the ending of the book , shuffled around a big chunk of chapters around, and formed them into the basis of a sequel. My draft ended up around the 128,000-word mark. Still a big manuscript, but much more fitting for my genre, epic fantasy (Shameless plug: If you want to check out the first chapter of my book, click here).

As my first draft taught me the importance of daily writing, my first self-edit taught me to focus on the shape of the story rather than the number of words it took to tell it. Don’t get me wrong, word counts are important and a limiting factor for most (if not all) literary agents and publishers. But word counts shouldn’t be most important. The magic of the story should be most important. Word counts are secondary.

Trust the reader’s imagination.

This is my revising mantra, especially when I am revising descriptions. Maybe it is crucial to draw in loving detail every piece of intricate furniture in my main character’s living room, or every curving line of my heroine’s face. Second personal story: I was chatting with my husband, who’s an avid reader. He said he gets bored when reading lengthy descriptions and will skim ahead until the story gets back to the action. My writer’s heart died inside me as he told me this, but when my logical editor mind kicked back in, it made sense. I may think every word I write is a gift bestowed upon mankind, but many readers may not agree. Now, when I’m editing, I keep a close eye on my descriptions and keep a savvy reader in mind. I cut all but the most important (and interesting!) details and trust the reader’s imagination to fill in the gaps.

I think this approach also secures the reader’s buy-in. Rather than telling the reader everything about my characters and setting, the reader partners with me and takes ownership of the story. This draws the reader in and (hopefully) makes them want to stick around until the end.

Combine when you cut.

Deleting shouldn’t just be honed in on the word-by-word or sentence-by-sentence level. Instead, it’s important to look at the paragraph, scene, chapter, or even entire work. When I broaden my gaze from a particular sentence and study those that surround it, I often find that I’m repeating the same idea, sometimes multiple times. In those casees, I can combine the idea into a single sentence, or even word. This makes for tighter, quicker writing that, again, keeps the reader’s attention.

If I zoom out even further, I often find that same repetition and realize I can combine several sections that are trying to get across the same idea into a single scene. This happened a lot when i was revising my first novel. My characters were embarking on a long journey, and to show the danger of their trip, I decided they needed to have multiple run-ins with several different groups of bloodthirsty creatures. I think my initial draft had five of these encounters (now you’re beginning to understand why I ended up with a 250k whopper of a book). I combined these scenes into two different encounters, each showcasing a different underlying point. My story was much cleaner, and the pacing improved dramatically.

This combination-cut method also can be helpful when you’re looking at your descriptions. I write my novels from multiple points of view, and often these characters end up interacting with one another or going to the same places. When presenting these events and/or places to the reader, I try to avoid that same repetition. If I need to present the same event or place from multiple viewpoints, I make sure that I only present new information the second time around, information specific to that character’s view point.

Keep your scraps.

Although I accept the fact that cutting is necessary, I still battle with the gut-wrench that accompanies pressing the delete (or backspace) button. To save my soft little heart from this pain, I have a file for each draft called Cuts. If I remove a longer chunk of words, or even a scene/description/sentence that I am particularly fond of, I’ll copy it into my Cuts file. I’ll tell my brain that created this beautiful piece of writing, “See, it’s okay It’s still safe. We can come back and use for another piece.”

Often, the sections I cut are deep dives into world building that my readers don’t need. Such information is important for me so I don’t contradict the rules or history of my story’s universe, but this exposition belongs in the Cuts file or in my World Building notes, not in the book. Honestly, other than this type of fact-checking, I rarely look back at my cuttings, but it’s helpful to know that the file is there waiting for me if my inspiration really happens to run dry someday.

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In keeping with the theme of this blog, I’m going to cut it off here and leave you to wrestle through your own editing journey. As always, if any of this resonated with you or helped you, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Next up in this series, Enjoyment: Who Do You Write For?.