The Art of Slashing Word Count

I’ve been busy polishing up my first novel and preparing to query agents and publishers.  That process should begin in a couple of weeks, and it seems surreal to think that I’ll be building my very own collection of rejection notices.

So I won’t write about that anymore because it makes me angsty.  I’ll write instead about how I’ve managed to cut 127,000 words to 103,000 with 100 pages still to edit—without losing plot content. I’m confident I’ll reach my goal of getting below 100,000.

Like any writer, I have my pet words.  When writing from first person, I'm always writing I know:

·         I know Sally is a gifted artist. 

·         I know Blake’s parents expect him home by dark.

·         I know the assembly will go long.

The thing is, if my first-person character says something, that means it’s already in her head.  So I get rid of a whole lot of I knows and save two words every time.

My characters also start to and begin to way too often.

·         I start to walk faster so I’ll beat the tardy bell.

·         Larry begins to speak.

Unless these characters are going to get interrupted, then they don’t need to start anything, they can just do it.  I save another two words by being direct.

I write a lot of sentences like this:

·         “We looked up the address,” I say, adjusting the weight of my backpack.  “It’s about three miles away.” 

I have a thing for dialogue tags, but I also like to add action to my dialogue.  It’s pretty easy to save a word by getting rid of say and letting the action define the speaker. 

·         “We looked up the address.” I adjust the weight of my backpack. “It’s about three miles away.”

Even at merely a single word a pop, I’ve probably saved a thousand overall with this trick.

I’m a just junkie.  I refuse to even search the word just in a manuscript until I’ve edited for it, because I’m sure it will be in there hundreds of times. 

·         I set the table just right. 

·         It’s just a toy. 

·         She just turned it in. 

I’m only slightly better at related words like only and barely.  I often have to replace the word, but when I can remove it completely, it saves a word on my count.

Finally, I try to be efficient with words.  Come back becomes return.  Very loud becomes rambunctious.  Not to mention the linking verbs.  I’m fairly decent at using strong verbs from the get-go, but there are still plenty to send to the Text Sea during revisions. 

·         We were nervous about not waking up, so we set three alarms.

·         Nervous about sleeping in, we set three alarms.

I just cut four words!

Don’t get me wrong—I didn’t cut all 24,000 words through bits and pieces like this, but I’d say the majority did come a word or two at a time.  Some of my bigger word cuts involve:

·         Getting rid of backstory—even if it’s insightful, cute, intense… If it’s important, I can find other places for it that don’t require so many words. (Perhaps it will involve a character just knowing something later on, and I can cut two more words in even later revisions.)

·         Making my characters get to the point.  They like to argue and have Q&A time with each other.  When they’re direct, I save a lot of words.

·         Cutting unnecessary action.  It might be exciting, even entertaining, but if it’s not serving a purpose and I have thousands of words to cut, it either goes completely or undergoes some major lipo.

Those are just a few of my biggest tricks.  I have more up my sleeve.  One thing that the editing and cutting process has done is open my eyes to my personal writing tendencies.  (How many times can I use the word emerge?)  So even though I’m a little depressed that I haven’t spent a lot of time creating new story over the past couple of weeks, I can’t claim that I still haven’t made decent strides as a writer.

I’ll have to remind myself of that when the rejections start pouring in.