Slash and burn.
I had a good day (and I’m still going). Actually, I’ve had a good week. I did a lot of writing earlier in the week—about 4,000 words total—but I didn’t have time to post anything to the blog.
I really do have a finite number of words in me some days, and it’s hard to take time to write non-story stuff here. But the blog really does let people know what I’m doing. And while most of you realize how hard I work on my stories, it never hurts to show things from the inside. My two cents, at least.
So, about today…
After my additions earlier in the week, Nereids Ch12 stood at 15,000 words… way more than I needed, especially since I still have another ~2,000 words to write, best case. Why is 15k words too much? First, I want to keep the chapters relatively close, size-wise. Second, Ruthie’s Club likes reasonable chapter sizes, so readers don’t have to “plod” through lots of fluff. (For the record, “plod” is my choice of words.) Third, I’m ready to finish Nereids, and I don’t want it to turn into SC-B2.
This morning, I started editing the chapter from the beginning. My goal was to cut 10%, which would give me room to breath within the confines of what I’d already decided was going to be a chapter-and-a-half. I didn’t slash and burn, as the title of this post suggests, but I did look at things with a ruthless and critical eye. I like 98% of what I write… I enjoy reading it. But today, I looked at everything with a very objective eye. If it didn’t advance the story, it got cut. If it was fun but fluff, it got cut. If it was repetitious or too wordy, it got cut.
In the end, I slashed 1,750 words, bringing the chapter down to a still-beefy 13,506 words. But remember, I have another ~2,000 to write, as well as a shortish Epilogue. So the final chapter should be quite large, especially compared to the 8-10,000 word chapters leading up to it.
Fortunately, the final scene is one I’ve had in my head for a long time. The characters will still manage to surprise me, and I’m sure I’ll write more than I need to, but I’m on the home stretch. Now I just need to find the time. (Time is still my bottleneck… paging H.G. Wells.)
Anyway, that’s the story on the story so far.
- Nick
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3 Responses to “Slash and burn.”
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If you have 15,000 words done already, and you need to write about 2,000 more words to finish it the way you want to, why not just add the 2,000 words and make it thirteen chapters of 8,500 words instead of trying to cut 1,750 words and cram those 2,000 new words in just to finish it in twelve chapters?
Thirteen chapters = bad juju. Bad.
(You know me and numbers.)
Besides, the extra words needed cuttin’… you shoulda seen the way they was lookin’ at me.
- Nick
Have you ever considered keeping some of the cut scenes in another file? You could post them to your website after finishing a story. Sort of like the deleted scenes that are on DVDs?