Thread: Cutting down on length?

How do you folks go about shortening a work that's gotten a touch too long? I've always had a talent for gross over-writing, and I struggle to pick out what can and can't be cut without sacrificing some quality.

Any tips from the folks around here, wise and experienced and all those other fun things?

Not sure I can call myself wise or experienced, but I have just spent three days taken the raw version of a couple of chapters of what I'm working on, and cutting them down, really polishing them.
I find that I say the same thing a few times. So I've been copying paragraphs at a time, and trying to eliminate anything unnecessary. Sometimes I go into great detail about something that simply doesn't matter.
It might be funny, or pretty, but it slows everything down. So I look for stuff like that.
And simplify, simplify, simplify.

It's your call when to stop culling. And then put it up here and someone is bound to tell you if you're waffling

Give me an example of what you consider over-writing. Are you writing novels or short stories?

The first thing I'd tell you to do is to examine your prose and dialogue. Is there something in your prose that is superfluous? Perhaps you spent a paragraph talking about something that his little to no relevance. Is there something in your dialogue that doesn't move the plot forward? I won't give definites, but dialogue should usually move the plot forward. If it doesn't, you can consider it "filler".

Take out all the words that are not essential to meaning, eg.

How do you folks go about shortening a work that's gotten a touch too long? I've always had a talent for gross over-writing, and I struggle to pick out what can and can't be cut without sacrificing some quality.
becomes
How do you shorten a work that's too long? I've always over-written, and I struggle to cut without sacrificing quality.

You sometimes have to alter verbs, like shorten and writing, if it still looks too long then start re-phrasing

How do you reduce a work's length? I find it hard not to lose quality when I do.

I'm writing a short story, which is currently a touch over 4500 words, with me needing to get it down to around 4000.

Looking over it again, dialogue is probably one of the main offenders. There's definitely some waffle there, though I can try and excuse myself by calling it characterisation. Could definitely condense it some. Prose I struggle with. I'm going to have to bite the bullet and post the damn thing here soon, if I can put a "short" title on it with a straight face.

Originally Posted by Olly Buckle

Take out all the words that are not essential to meaning, eg.

How do you folks go about shortening a work that's gotten a touch too long? I've always had a talent for gross over-writing, and I struggle to pick out what can and can't be cut without sacrificing some quality.
becomes
How do you shorten a work that's too long? I've always over-written, and I struggle to cut without sacrificing quality.

You sometimes have to alter verbs, like shorten and writing, if it still looks too long then start re-phrasing

How do you reduce a work's length? I find it hard not to lose quality when I do.

That... That's an awesome illustration of just how much I waffle. Thanks.

I'm not much of a short story writer, but in any of the poems i write and i need to get rid of something i read it and then slowly just start getting rid of words that still make the story fit, and sometimes it requires taking out two or three and replacing it with one. Its a slow process, but it seems to work for me.

Search for adverbs - delete.

Don't "show" pointless things that don't contribute to the story. "Tell" those bits. Showing takes up more space and should be saved for useful stuff.

Originally Posted by Stardog

Search for adverbs - delete.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had on another forum involving adverbs. This guy said to delete all adverbs as well, and then I asked him what adverbs were. His response was: "All words that end with '-ly'.

Wrong.

Anomaly, monopoly, unruly, grisly, crinkly, ugly, comely, cuddly, cowardly, bubbly, assembly, homely, friendly, sully, tingly, gangly, bully, imply, curly, wobbly, melancholy, silly, leisurely, worldly, heavenly, ghastly, masterly, fatherly, ungodly, shapely, brotherly, bristly, saintly, lovely, lonely, orderly, wrinkly, sparkly, family, dastardly, costly, homily, slovenly, ungainly, womenly, manly.

None of the above are adverbs. When you start telling people to remove adverbs, you cross a line from which there's no coming back. Overuse of them, I will admit, is bad. But cutting them out completely is worse. And it's the kind of advice that's thrown around for no other reason than it sounds good.

Adverbs are not required in fiction writing and removing them will cut down on the length. Adverbs only tell the reader something they would already know if the scene was written properly. Some like "up" or "upstairs" are fine, but avoid the obvious ones.

His response was: "All words that end with '-ly'.

Well, that's his issue.

Originally Posted by Stardog

Adverbs are not required in fiction writing and removing them will cut down on the length. Adverbs only tell the reader something they would already know if the scene was written properly. Some like "up" or "upstairs" are fine, but avoid the obvious ones.

Might I point you to every traditionally-published book on the planet? Take a look at any of them, and if you find one devoid of adverbs, I'll bow to your assessment and say you can't use them.

This is new-age malarkey that largely had its provenance on the Internet. It is not a "rule". If you want to cut out adverbs, by all means do so. Don't say that everyone must also do so.

Your advice is actually good. You can cut a lot of adverbs to reduce word-count. But they aren't "wrong" or "not required".

Originally Posted by Idle Tinkerer

How do you folks go about shortening a work that's gotten a touch too long? I've always had a talent for gross over-writing, and I struggle to pick out what can and can't be cut without sacrificing some quality.

Any tips from the folks around here, wise and experienced and all those other fun things?

The first 3 responses to your thread really hit the nail on the head and I agree with them. There is no real "trick" other than to just start cutting words out or rephrasing things to be less words.

The real difficulty is when to stop yourself. For example, cutting all dialogue that doesn't strictly move the plot forward may also destroy your characters. Of course, the natural response would be, "If it is written properly then that shouldn't be a problem!" but we all know in practice it isn't that simple.

The only other suggestion I have is to participate in something like the LM challenge or make your own challenges. Or just try your hand at Flash fiction. Doing the LM challenges have really helped me with the skill that you're asking about. For example, the word count limit is 500 words and I wrote a 1000 word story, I had to sit there and slim it down to 500 without completely destroying the story. Another thing to be aware of is that you need to plan for your word count. So if you know it's going to be a 500 word flash fiction, don't start outlining 20 characters and 5 subplots, clearly none of them will be realized to any sort of satisfaction.

So in that vein, if you have far too many words already written, consider cutting out whole characters or subplots and making the story more focused on a single theme or message. Of course if you're writing novels... you can go crazy, but writing short fiction is an entirely different skill set.

EDIT : a perfect example of how NOT to write a short story is my post above, not succinct at all and not very organized or focused.

practice helps.

In one of my writing classes, our assignment was to rewrite a well-known short story, reducing it to two pages. That assignment was graded and returned with a new assignment: reduce the story to one page. The next assignment was to reduce it to a paragraph. The final assignment was to reduce it to a sentence. It was a valuable exercise.

Doing the Literary Maneuver competitions on this forum, in which you have a 500 word limit, is also helpful in learning how to edit length. I have never written a 500 word or less story in my first draft. It is always several hundred words over. Then I have to edit it down to fit the word limit.

I have never written a 500 word or less story in my first draft. It is always several hundred words over. Then I have to edit it down to fit the word limit.

This round of LM was a first for me in that regard, I wrote a 183 word story haha. Not saying it's any good, but maybe the judges will give me points for making their lives easier!

I certainly encourage joining the LM and trying to write concisely within the guidelines of the competition. We'll have a lot of prompts which will stretch and test people's abilities, both shrinking and expanding stories.
This has been a public service announcement.

I just cut about 20,000 words from my novel. Reading it over I realized that it wasn't helping in any way. It didn't further the plot at, it was just useless filler. I am bad about being overly descriptive. It might sound beautiful but it's not needed. There was a point where I was reading it and thought no one really cares about this. I'm sure if you read it over and over again you'll find points that aren't needed or you'll get so sick of it you'll toss it across the room.

I do agree that writing short pieces really helps you realize what is and isn't needed. Still have a few days to join this LM. lol shameless spam.