If you’re wondering how to cut out 19000 words, here’s what I did. Any word I’ve added I’ve put in italics.
Cut adjectives
Describing a noun is sometimes unnecessary. Allow the reader to use their imagination.
Eg: ‘the cold grey mist’
All mists are grey, we only need to mention the colour of the mist if it isn’t grey. So we can just say ‘the cold mist’
Eg: She gasped at its force, her terrified eyes swiveling towards him.
Cut Adverbs
– how something is done should be apparent from the action. How something is spoken should be apparent from the dialogue.
Eg: Swiftly, his hand brushed her side, sending a flash of energy through her.
Eg: But a stone sharply interrupted her musings when it shifted in front of her, jarring her ankle painfully.
Replace a series of words with one that says the same thing
Eg: Ariel grimaced. ‘No point at all,’ she mumbled, feeling as if he had just told her off chastised.
Delete conjunctions to make shorter sentences.
Eg. She lashed out again and he pushed her arm higher up her back, forcing her to bend forward.
She lashed out again. He pushed her arm higher up her back, forcing her to bend forward.
Delete unnecessary phrases
Eg: As they walked, although Ariel’s feet stayed on the path and she tried to keep her mind there as well, her thoughts often wandered far from it away.
Eg: She dug her heels into the dirt, resisting the pull towards the edge of the path and the putrid mud, determined not to go under.
Simplify
Eg: She was losing the battle. The reeds were constricting her chest, making it hard to breathe, squeezing her life away, slowly, painfully.
Eg: Nick dodged the reaching tentacles and swatted them out of the way
Eg: ‘He sliced through the bonds that held Ariel’
Becomes
‘He sliced through Ariel’s bonds.’
Make descriptions more concise
Eg: The village of Shifting Stones shone like amber as the last rays of sun faded from the sky. Small and picturesque, most of its buildings were made of stone with roofs of pale grey slate. Leafy trees overhung lawns and rambling gardens and the sound of music and laughter drifted across the tranquil landscape to greet them.
This passage became
The whitewashed stone buildings of the village of Shifting Stones shone like amber in the last rays of sun, and the sound of music and laughter drifted across the tranquil landscape to greet them.
Don’t say the same thing twice in different ways
Eg: In blind panic, she screamed in desperation until the reeds squeezed her scream to a strangled gasp as they dug into her flesh.
In this example, ‘blind panic’ and ‘desperation’ are really saying the same thing. Here’s the reworked sentence.
They dug into her flesh and squeezed her scream into a strangled gasp.
Excellent advice, Tahlia. So simple too. I can tell you’re a teacher, you’ve taken what can sometimes seem very complicated to new authors and rather than ‘dumbing it down’, you simply used English to explain. Believe me, I know how it feels to have the technical terms used and no other explanation. I spent the first six months of editing scratching my head or bashing it against the wall. This is great. I’m going to direct others here. Very helpful.
Thanks Renee, I’m glad you found it helpful. There’s some good articles on the web about ‘cutting the clutter’ too. I found them really helpful.
This was really informative Tahlia—-I enjoyed it.
Love jen
This helps a tremendous amount. I’ve been afraid that trimming down would necessitate deleting entire scenes or chapters, but when you approach it on a word level like this, it makes the task less daunting. I am positive that redundant me has plenty to condense this way, and I think I might almost enjoy it. It’s like a game
I’ve also repeatedly seen advice to simply use “said” and the like as opposed to more descriptive dialogue tags. Do you agree? Would this necessarily apply in every instance? I’ve simplified in my more recent writing, but I’m definitely guilty otherwise.
Yes, the simple ‘said’ is fashionable. I think because it doesn’t detract from the action, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t times when ‘yelled’, ‘shouted’, ‘whispered,’ and so on are better. I think we should take such ‘rules’ as generalisations and understand that some people include such things as this, and advervbs with dialogue tags ( eg said morosely) as one of their pet hates. But you still see them sometimes in high profile published fiction. As a writer, I try to follow what feels right to me, whilst bearing in mind that using things like ‘grunted’, ‘hissed’ and so on instead of said, should be the exception not the rule.
Great advice Tahlia, thanks for this, it’s very informative and it makes me see I am at least editing in the right direction.
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