I was working my way through a revision of my b-girl novel and kind of sweating over its ever-expanding length when the following question came into my inbox from Chrisa, regarding her thesis.
“I need to cut approximately 5,000 words. Do you have any hints?”
DO I?
Why yes. In no particular order, I suggest the following tactics. Some of these are sillier than others, but all of them will result in a reduced word count, if that is what you are going for.
- put it down and go back to it days or weeks later with fresh eyes
- look for verbal ticks and kill them one by one– for instance, I tend to write “just” a lot, which is bad because it minimizes whatever else is in the sentence. So I always have to go back and kill all the justs. Same thing with “seems.” Is it or isn’t it? I need to make up my mind.
- adopt the most direct tone possible.
- pare your ideas down to the absolute minimum statement necessary to make a good paper. If you have more to say about something, cut it and paste it to a new document and use it to write another paper later.
- turn similes into metaphors to lose the “like a”
- replace a few small words with one big word
- hyphenate
- look for sentences that can be reorganized to contain fewer words
- cut any paragraph that doesn’t directly support your arguments, or that supports something that’s already adequately justified by something else
- find ways to annex info to appendixes
- adopt a shoot-to-kill mentality
- accept that you’re going to have to cut some good writing to make it happen
- look for more efficient ways to organize whole chapters, thus eliminating the need for some segues
- combine many cutting tactics so it feels systematic
- keep reminding yourself that the more you cut, the more valuable each remaining word will be
I find that once I accept the need to cut and get into cutting, it eventually becomes enjoyable. I like editing more than the initial drafting.
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