Deleting Words

Paula has had a ruthless cull of words.

I finished writing ‘Irish Intrigue’ at the end of November. Finished, did I say? No, the hardest part has been severe editing! For the last two months, as well as editing, I have been deleting words.

The original story came out at 122,336 words. Although my publisher/editor said, “Just use whatever words are necessary to tell the story,” I knew in my own mind that 122K was too many.

My first cull of words brought it down to 114K. That wasn’t too difficult, as there were several scenes I could cut without losing any of the main story. I also reduced conversations to their important elements—and stopped my characters from rabbiting on unnecessarily.

But I still felt 114K was too long. Autocrit helped me to reduce it even more – mainly by cutting repeated words and phrases, tightening up sloppy writing, and (again) getting rid of anything that wasn’t necessary. By this time I was down to 96,660 words i.e. I had cut over 25,000 words from the original.

The final step has been a ‘fresh pair of eyes’ i.e a critique partner who hadn’t agonised with me over all the earlier versions of this story. She has spotted places where I could reduce the wordage still further, and as a result I’ve lost over another 3,000 words in the first two-thirds of the story. I am nearly down to my goal of between 80 and 90K words.

What have I learnt from all this?

1. When you think a story is ‘finished’, it isn’t. Not by a long way – and not even if you’ve had critique partners reading each chapter as you wrote it, and giving their ideas and suggestions. Sometimes, a pair of fresh eyes can spot the areas that aren’t necessary or don’t seem to work.

2. I’ve questioned whether every scene is essential. In some cases, I’ve left in some scenes that might not be considered totally essential, but only because to jump from one ‘major’ scene to the next one would be exhausting both for the reader – and the characters, too. Even so, I’ve tried to make sure that these ‘in-between’ scenes add something either to the storyline or to a character’s development.

3. I’ve also tried to stop my characters doing too much internal agonising. It’s necessary at times, of course, because the reader needs to know what they are thinking, but I know have a tendency to overdo it, and/or repeat what the reader already knows.

4. I’ve stripped a lot of conversations down to their bare essentials and tried to ensure they move the story forward or reveal a character’s thoughts and feelings.

5. I’ve tightened up my writing by being ruthless with words, and also by making paragraphs and sentences more concise.

Reducing wordage by almost 30K was daunting at first, but it has been a very valuable exercise which, hopefully, will stand me in good stead for future novels. It has highlighted some of my ‘bad habits’ like being ‘over wordy’ and I shall be questioning myself all the way in future. Is this scene necessary? Are these conversations/thoughts necessary? What can I cut without losing the important aspects of the story? Does every scene and every conversation add something to the development of the plot or the characters?

Of course, doing such a huge cull has meant I have lost some of the scenes or conversations I enjoyed – but sometimes it is necessary to ‘kill your darlings’! Maybe I’ll be able to use some of them in future stories.