Trimming the Word Count

You've written what you know is the next bestseller. It took months, maybe years, but at last it's done. As you prepare to submit it, you finally check the word count.

250,000 words!

What the...! When? How? It didn't feel like that much writing!

If you're reading this, you likely googled for help on this issue. If you're a casual writer wondering what's the deal with word counts, let me quickly define some things.

Short story - under 7,500 words
Novelette - 7,500 - 17,500 words
Novella - 17,500 - 40,000 words
Novel - 40,000 words and above

Word counts are important in contests. NaNoWriMo requires a minimum of 50,000 words. Some have a cap, a short story no longer than 5,000 words. Likely, the judges have many entries to read and don't want to be bogged down, or a minimum of space to publish your story in a magazine, thus a cap to keep within that space.

I'll be dealing with novels, but short stories can take similar advice.

How Much Is Too Much

The big question, one highly debated. People will argue with me. I encourage it. I win debates!

First time novelists should never submit anything over 100,000 words, and even that is pushing it. The ideal length for a new writer is 50,000 to 80,000. Why? More pages means more money in printing fees, and you're not worth the expense. Sorry, that's the harsh truth. Publish a few smaller works, gain fame, try again.

The general rule is, with the exception of big-name authors, no novel should be over 120,000 words. Murder/mystery books should be no more than 80,000, while science fiction and fantasy can push that limit to 150,000 words, if you're well-established.

That's important. It doesn't matter if you've been writing for your school newspaper since sixth grade, if you have no money behind your name, don't aim for a novel to shame Victor Hugo and Leo Tolstoy. When you're Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, you can write 200,000 words and publishers will still kowtow before you. When you're John Smith, no fan base besides your classmates and parents, no assurance that even your aunt will buy the book, an editor will much rather take a gamble on something small. People don't want 700-page tomes, they want a cheap paperback they can take on the bus. That's what sells. This is a business, it's all about money to them. Save your magnum opus for after you have a few thousand fans on Facebook.

You're probably tempted to check your novel again right now. Go ahead....

Now that you've cringed, as I first did when I realized my novel was 170,000 words, it's time to consider your options.

1. Shelve it. Try a new, smaller story.
2. Split it in half and aim for a sequel.
3. Edit the hell outta that thing.

Finish At Your Own Pace

Before I begin, a writer shouldn't worry about word counts while in the creative process. Let the story flow. Do not look at the word counter. Whether you finish at a mere 40,000 words or over 150,000, let the story finish naturally.

This is what I do. Many people will shovel you advice, and many will say I'm wrong, but this works for me. After I punch in the final period, I immediately go back to page one and do a top-to-bottom read-through. The story is in my head, so I can see if I captured the spirit of it. While enjoying your story, go ahead and fix mundane things: punctuation, grammar, spelling, scenes that just didn't turn out right. Again, don't worry about the word count yet. Make sure this is truly how you want your story to sound. You'd be surprised how often scenes in retrospect are pure crap, or whole conversations of dialogue sound stupid.

Once you have a completed manuscript, put that sucker away. Don't look at it. Don't proofread it. Don't dwell on it. Divorce yourself from that project. Start a new story, or proofread another manuscript gathering dust. Don't think, "But I wanted to publish it before the end of the year." SHELVE IT! Give yourself time to become detached. Trust me, you want no feelings for this story, because the next part will be brutal.

After six months have passed and you can hardly remember the names of your characters, now you can open your file to a story you hardly know. If you haven't already, this is the time to set it up as if you're going to send it to the editor: 8.5" by 11" page, one inch margins, 12-point font Courier New, double spaced, and a header with Last Name / Title / Page Number (use Insert/Fields to make it uniform).

If you're like me, double spacing it will be a shocker. That sweet novel suddenly explodes. But guess what: if it's on your computer at 1,000 pages, it'll arrive at the editors desk at 1,000 pages, and the second thing an editor looks at (the first being your title page with your name and your agent's name) is a word count or the number of pages. It's good to put the word count on the title page, just under your address, that way it saves them from flipping to the end.

Quantity over quality? No, it's just that, unless their eyes light up with dollar signs simply hearing your name and the prospect of another Hawaiian trip...er, I mean, best-selling novel...when an editor sees 1,000 pages, they think "oh gods not another prolix rookie" and toss it aside. Maybe it really is good, but it's too long to publish.

Try Again

Do not be ashamed if your first attempt at a novel turns into War and Peace. It's likely your story really is good, but it's two novels in one, or you have too many extraneous scenes. Don't wallow in worries. That was a good first try. It was practice. Now, let's go at it for real.

Now that you're acquainted with the writing process, first, set your document settings as if ready for the editor's desk, Courier New 12-point font and double spaced. This time, as you write, you'll know how long your story really is. My very first novel, I went through and added almost a hundred pages to it, thinking it looked too short. Later, after learning about word counts, I checked. Yikes! That hundred pages put it way over the limit. I decided it was easier to move on. I can edit it back down at my own pace, but I have more stories to tell.

Sequel?

When faced with a behemoth story, first see if you can break it into a sequel. Sequels are not good for first-time novelists (again, an editor has no clue if your book will sell, so why commit to two books?) If you've proven you can write quality stuff that sells, then having the assurance that there will be another novel in six months can be a good thing. This might mean rewriting scenes and inventing a new climax in the middle of the present story.

If you can end Book One nicely and pitch it as a stand-alone, while secretly keeping Book Two to spring upon them after the money comes pouring in, all the better. If not, see if the editor is looking for a series, be clear that this is the first in that series, and make an intense cliffhanger that forces a reader to want Book Two.

Chop-chop, Snip-snip

Let's say it's not actually 2 books in one, it's simply too long. This is where it gets bloody, and where divorcing yourself from the project becomes vital. It's time to slaughter that beast.

• Tithing

Here's something I read recently, and I plan on trying it someday. First, cut the chapters by 10%. Let's say you have 50 chapters. Find five that are unnecessary. A little voice in your head will scream, "No! They're all necessary!" Ignore that voice. This is why you must not feel attachment, but maintain the cold calculation of a serial killer. That scene of the protagonist at a party where she meets an old friend who we never see again... not needed! That long bit of dialogue where John and Jane talk about the weather, unless it's foreshadowing the storm that will wipe out their hometown, it's probably not needed. If it has been established that the main character is passive until someone insults his hair, and then he goes into a homicidal rage, showing him attacking a man who just made such an insult might not be necessary. Showing the insult, a flash in the protag's eyes, and then cutting to Protag entering his apartment and Roomie shocked that he's covered in blood is more powerful.

Now that 10% of the chapters are gone, do the same to each chapter. 10 pages to the chapter? Trim it to nine. It's not that hard, really. A word here or there, a shorter word when a long word isn't needed, getting orphaned words back up with the rest of their paragraph...poof! Congratulations, your 50-chapter book, 10 pages each, thus 500-page novel just became 45 chapters at 9 pages, so 405 pages. That's 95 pages of fluff cleaned out.

• Psych Yourself

Too scared to start hacking at this stuff? I have a psychological trick.

What makes most writers reluctant to chop scenes is the love, diligence, and imagination we put into it. So convince yourself you're not tossing that hour of writing into oblivion.

I got into a habit of keeping my major edits in a separate file, Title-outtakes.doc. Copy and paste your scenes in there. I also add why the scene doesn't work, because sometimes I'll ready through those out-takes and think "But that was a really great bit of dialogue!" Yes, it was, but circumstances changed and you can't use it now. Convince yourself that those deleted scenes could form the basis of a whole new book. It's all psychological comforting.

• Dieting Your Book

Let's say you're not faced with trimming War and Peace down to Animal Farm. You just need to trim off 5,000 words.

Here are some tricks:

1) Simple Shortening

This is where you do minor tightening. You can do word searches for these things. My favorite is going to be. Search the document for that phrase.

• "This is going to be great." Shorter! "This will be great."
• "It was going to be an easy task." Shorter! "The task would be easy."

Contractions are a prolix writer's best friend. Dialogue is naturally peppered with them. People also don't speak in complete sentences. "Wanna go to the store?" instead of "John, would you like to go to the store with me later this evening?" Don't go too crazy. There are times when using contractions is not good.

Dialogue should flow naturally, but don't give your characters the same word whiskers that plague public speakers. "Like," "you know," "well," "okay," "oh," and the dreaded "um" can give reality to your characters, showing shock, nervousness, temerity, and other emotions (show, not tell, remember?) However, if used in excess, it'll make them and you sound dumb. When trying to edit for less, see if you can cut them out without influencing the character.

Remember, your audience isn't dumb. Saying "green grass" and "blue sky" is unneeded unless the grass has been yellow all summer until the storm passes, or the sky has been gray until that one glorious day.

Beware of repeating terms. Using a single word repetitively in a sentence can be tedious, not to mention it looks juvenile. Editors will naturally catch this error, but...isn't it best to catch it first?

Word search "seem." It either is, or it isn't. Rarely does it "seem."

• "It seemed to last a long time" is fine, if it really didn't.
• "It seems to be raining." Well, it is? If it is, don't say it seems to be!

Word search for "just." Just is the um of writing. Just to let you know, just because you can use it and it just sounds right, it just isn't needed all the time. "In just three minutes" can be "In three minutes." Unless you're an infomercial announcer!

Word search for "which." Sometimes, "which" is necessary, but we tend to use it in unnecessary ways.

• "Her birthday, which would be in just two days from now, was a party which I have been looking forward to all summer." - 23 words
• "All summer, I've anxiously awaited her birthday, now two days away." - 10 words

Look at that! Cut that awkward sentence in half! Call me Jet Li.


2) Unnecessary Description

English teachers, cover your ears!

The sad fact is, as writers, we can lose ourselves in adjectives. Mister Protag brings Love Interest a bouquet. Is it really vital to the story that it was a dozen pink and yellow roses, each bud tightly curled, as if holding within its petals the hopes of all his dreams, and each glistening, verdant leaf a testament to his adoration of her emerald eyes? Or... is it just a bouquet?

Description is important to good storytelling. If that bouquet truly does represent his love for her, by all means, delve into the symbolism! But does the vase she puts it in also convey meaning? It can, if she hates him and puts that gorgeous bouquet in a cracked vase still dirty from the last bouquet he brought. Otherwise, it's just a vase. What about the table she put it on? Is it vital to know it's a plastic table she bought at Ikea the week before when she and her best friend were shopping for shelves? What about when your character stepped into the bathroom at the bar, and those five pages of describing every bit of graffiti on the wall, is that vital to your story? What about the crystal wine goblet etched with a galleon at full sail, is that glass so special it deserves such detail? Sorry, bar bathroom, but you're simply a room to piss in. Sorry, wine goblet, but she'll sip you once, set you down, and we'll forget you and your galleon in two paragraphs.


3) Unnecessary Phrases

Sometimes, we use phrases to sound important, when really we're fluffing out an idea. Lawyers and politicians do this by habit, usually to confuse others, muffle up their arguments, and make their case sound more legitimate. Maybe it works on dumb people, but smart people will be wary of writing filled with these terms. You sound like a politician, and really, who trusts politicians? Beware of these terms:

• All things considered
• As a matter of fact
• As far as I'm concerned
• At the present time
• Because of (or "due to" or "by virtue of") the fact that... (simply "because" or "since" can work)
• By means of ("through" is better)
• For all intents and purposes (you might want to make sure you didn't word it "intensive purposes" too)
• Has a tendency to (just "tends to")
• In a manner of speaking
• In a very real sense
• In my opinion
• In the case of
• It seems that (remember above, bad uses of "seem")
• The point I'm trying to make (obviously you've used too many words to make your point)
• Type of ("It's the type of policy that seems to make voters wary" can be "Such policy makes voters wary")
• What I mean to say is (unless the muttering character has just spent a paragraph rambling aimlessly, in which case, you might want to delete that scene anyway)

4) Unnecessary Prepositions

This won't make much of a dint, but it's worth a shot.

This isn't just prepositions at the end of sentences ("That's where it's at" which should be "That's where it is" ...no at). I'm talking prepositions that simply should not be in a sentence. We're all guilty of it.

A boss may intone, "Work outside of the box." A hand will pop up in the back. "Ma'am, don't you mean 'work outside the box'?" The boss snaps, "That's what I said!"

Inside of, outside of, off of... keep listing them.

"She jumped off of the swing" should be "She jumped off the swing."

Like I said, it's minimal, maybe you'll trim 50 words, but every bit helps.

On the subject of prepositions, don't be fooled into believing sentences NEVER end with prepositions. Grammatically, they can. Latin doesn't, but that's Latin. Pedantic plebeians will teach that English should be exactly the same as Latin in all of its rules (including raving about the infamous "to boldly go" phrase). Sorry, elitist snobs, but English is a German-based language that happens to have some Latin-inspired words in our dictionary placed there by the French.

My favorite example, consider these verbs:
to put
to put up
to put up with
All three mean very different things.

Two friends are talking.
1) "I have to put up with this crap all day."
2) "Well, it's just something with which you'll have to put up."
What the...? Do people really talk like that? Some do. Some were lambasted by a middle school teacher, humiliated in front of peers, forced to stand in a corner wearing the dunce cap for writing prepositions at the end of their sentences. I pity those people.

Seriously, if you smell dog crap, do you yell, "On what did I step?"
Hell no! You yell, "What did I step on?"

"To step on" is called a verb phrase. Learn it. Love it. It's something you'll have to boldly put up with!


5) Unintense intensifiers

Some intensifiers don't empower our writing. "Really, very, quite, severely, extremely"... they don't cut it, so cut it! (and yes, "unintense" is not a real word, so sue me!)

• "It really is important that you come into work on time today because we've been very busy, extremely packed, and we're severely understaffed, so we're quite overwhelmed." - 27 words

An angry boss (unless she's a don't-stop-for-a-breath motormouth) is more likely to take the Hemingway approach

• "We're busy. It's packed. We're understaffed and overwhelmed. Come into work NOW!" - 12 words

6) Cliches and Euphemisms

You're nitpicking now, so you might as well search your work for these. Cliches make your work sound trite. Unfortunately, there are so many cliches and euphemisms out there, it's nigh impossible to list them all. Read through some at:
http://www.gardendigest.com/cliche.htm


7) Expletive Constructions

These little buggers are the termites of writing. "It is/was" and "There is/are" at the beginning of sentences weaken anything that come after them. Terminate the pests!

My suggestion: word search again, this time using the "match case" option. Find all instances of "It is/was" and "There is/are" at the beginning of sentences, and rewrite them into something stronger.

• "There are many fish living in the sea." - soggy, like a 6th grader's biology essay.
• "Many fish live in the sea." - more concise, crisper, like fried calamari.

Once you finish this, click off the "match case" option and search all such instances. Look at how to strengthen and shorten those sentences, ridding yourself of that horrible passive voice. For one, you're not reading the story as a flowing river, but as individual sentences, separate entities. Many novelists have a hard time examining their manuscript line by line, so this helps. I've trimmed hundreds of words off a manuscript using this suggestion alone!


8) Use the active voice.

This naturally follows extermination of expletive constructions.

This is straight out of Strunk and White. If you have not read Elements of Style, do so. Seriously! That book and Stephen King's On Writing should be considered mandatory for any aspiring writer.

Not only will this make your writing more powerful, it will often shorten your sentences and cut out fluff. Fluff is bad. Fluff is the habit we picked up when our high school teacher assigned a five-page essay on the French Revolution, due Friday. Fluff will make you sound like you're still in high school hating that teacher.

• "It was not long before he was very sorry that he had said what he said." - 16 words

There's nothing wrong with this sentence, but it's long, awkward, and conveys little. You can give the same meaning with five words.

• "He soon repented his words."

Now, I'm not one for E-Prime, but many "to be" verbs lead into passive tenses. "She is hurt" is perfectly fine, but "They were dancing all night" is passive voice. "Were dancing" can also be "danced." Sometimes passive is fine, such as for a timid character. Often it's not. Excessive passive voice bogs a reader down. That reader includes your editor. If he feels bogged, your manuscript gets tossed.


9) Omit needless words!

Again, right out of Elements, and this will be my final suggestion. After all, "needless" could mean half your novel. It all depends on your talent. (Ain't I brutal!)

Seriously, what are needless words? Pleonasms, phrases that repeat themselves. "I saw it with my own eyes" is a good example. So is "fly through the air." What, not through Jello?

"A total of [number] [items]" can be only the number and the items.

"Scarlet red," "azure blue," "pale white," "tediously boring," "strangely odd." Notice these couplets mean the exact same thing. We see and hear these all the time, and some terms have wormed into acceptance. "Foreign imports," for example. Sorry, I've never heard of domestic imports.

Redundancies have plagued the English language since the Normans and Saxons tried to blend their languages, often resorting to a Norman term juxtaposed with a Saxon term, just to make sure the meaning was understood. "Aid and abet" and "cease and desist" are notorious examples.

Sometimes, we repeat a word without realizing it, such as ATM machine. The "M" means machine. Chai tea is another common one. Chai means tea.

These are some of my biggest redundancies. Again, these terms are not by themselves bad. Professional documents are filled with them. Using them will not spell death to your novel. However, if your goal is to tighten the belt of your fat manuscript, doing word searches might help shave off a few words.

For the complete list, see here:

• absolutely necessary
• actual fact
• armed gunman
• ask the question
• basic necessities
• blend together
• blue (or any hue) in color
• bouquet of flowers (either specify or say just bouquet)
• burning embers
• cacophony of sound
• circle around
• close proximity
• closed fist (I laugh at this one. What, praytell, is an open fist?)
• completely... (just search that word. Completely filled, completely eliminated, completely dead... unless he's "mostly dead." Sorry, couldn't help a little Princess Bride reference)
• could possibly
• descend down (also raise up)
• disappear from sight
• during the course of (just "during" is fine)
• dwindle down (you can't go up)
• each and every
• enter in (and exit out)
• exact same
• final outcome
• frozen ice (and burning fire)
• kneel down
• lag behind
• lift up (and lower down)
• may/might possibly
• mental telepathy
• new beginning
• pair of twins
• palm of the hand (unless your foot has a palm. Mine doesn't.)
• past history
• pick and choose
• pouring down
• proceed ahead
• protest against
• repeat again
• sudden impulse
• twelve noon
• unexpected surprise
• usual custom
• very unique
• white snow

Sorry this post is long

Hopefully by now your novel is a bit thinner. If you do all of this and still have a monster on your hands, perhaps you really should consider if this is two stories in one. There is no shame in taking the romance between the main character and the murder victim out and making that into a completely different story.

Whatever advice people give, either biting or gentle, listen seriously to it. You might think that chapter flashing back to the villain's childhood is vital to knowing his character, but maybe others can figure out his personality without that massive, boring chunk. It's not easy to take our darling creation and shred it to bits, but that's part of the creative writing process.

Have friends read your story, and challenge them to be brutally honest about what parts bored them. Better yet, have other writers read it, since they know what to look for and will be less cautious about hurting your feelings than a friend. Some will be more than willing to give a scathing review and red-mark that thing to bits. I'm that sort. I would be your worst nightmare if I ever became an editor. However, that's the type of editing I want: brutal, honest, tear out the rot and hand it back raw, pink, ready to be healed and become stronger from the scars. I don't want happy, sappy, omg-it's-so-great fluffery. Gawd, I hated professors who believed in writing only what was good about a story and never giving negative input. I want to know what's bad so I can fix it! Writers should take on that mentality. Don't fear criticism. Crave it!

Beat out the fluff. Keep concise.
Happy writing!