Cutting Your Writing is Editing

How do you eliminate part of a short story or novel to fit a specified word length? That was a dilemma I faced recently. The story I wanted to send was almost 900 words long; the limit was 500. Gut my precious creation? That would kill it, I thought. But I resolved to make the attempt if, for nothing else, to prove my instinct for the story's survival was valid.

I kept removing a word here and there and rechecking the word count with MS Word's "recount" feature that I keep available on my tool bar. Eventually the hopelessness of this approach became evident. Now, it wasn't a bad approach, because along the way the editor took over to adjust and polish each sentence.

I realized the task needed a wider focus. I asked myself, "What sentences can I cut?" In every elaboration of an action or piece of dialog, I found something to eliminate without jerking the plot out of sync or reason. For example, when the protagonist yelled at her mother, "I hate you," followed by the narration She really did despise the woman, I saw that I could eliminate the narrative comment and allow just the dialog to show the emotion.

After the round of sentence eliminations, I was dismayed to find the word count hovering around 600. Whole sections would have to go. Would it be possible? What a challenge. I love challenges! This was getting personal. I decided I would wrestle this story to 499 words or know why I couldn't. I found the key to success in a couple of passages that I'd thought advanced the plot. By rewriting that part to reveal only necessary details instead of literary frivolities, the word count dropped below 500, and the story didn't suffer. It was tight and taut and, perhaps, more effective than when it had been almost twice as long.

As I prepared this post I realized that my actions to fit the story into a set length were similar to what a good editor might have done. Because it was my story, I was too close to it, too proprietary, to see how it could be improved, how less could indeed be more.