Cut It Out

I’ve mentioned a few times on social media how, when I finished the first draft of The Case Of The Cheap Suit Plot, the thing was a behemoth. It was 182,000 words long. And this might have been okay if I were an established author of epic fantasy novels, but I am neither. I’m writing Urban Fantasy, and no one’s ever heard of me. I had to cut the word count down to the recommended length for Adult Urban Fantasy, which is somewhere between 80k and 120k words. 

This is the lament of overwriters everywhere – but how will my readers appreciate my genius if they don’t get to experience all 17 subplots, 58 characters and a theme song that my tome has to offer? In reality, if your book is that long, you’re probably either boring or confusing the reader, and they’re going to DNF.

I thought today I would go over some of the things I did to cut a hefty chunk out of my book, bringing it down to the slim, trim 119k words it is today. Yes, I cut a novel’s worth of words out of my novel. So, let’s take a look.

I Realized I Started My Story Too Early

Chapter One of my book was written with the best of intentions. I wanted to establish my main character, Chloe, as a PI, and show her solving a simple case before she takes on the main one that comprises the bulk of the story. Well, pretty soon the simple case turned into a major to-do with developed characters and a story structure all its own. It also had just about nothing to do with the rest of the novel, only being briefly mentioned in one later chapter. I came to the realization that I needed to cut all of Chapter One, and move the start of the book to Chloe being on her way to accept the big case which leads to the Inciting Incident. That cut a whopping 9,000 words out of the book, and I revamped the original Chapter One into my current reader magnet, “A Question Of The Brothers Hamm”.

I Got Rid Of Characters Who Weren’t Doing Important Jobs

After doing my research and actually figuring out how to do this craft passably, I’ve come to think of my books almost like a small business. Each character is an employee. If they don’t do an important job, that no one else can do better, I “fire” them, aka remove them from the book. (God, this is starting to sound like a LinkedIn post.) There were a number of side characters or minor characters who got the boot. Just to name two, originally I had Chloe visit with a missing child’s father, who gives her a ton of information on the missing kids of Chicago, and how there may be a kidnapping ring afoot. But why? I could just let Chloe have agency, and be a main character, and find out this info herself! This allowed me to shave almost 1,000 words from the manuscript.

Then there was the matter of Vicki’s bodyguard. In the final version, Cheap Suit Plot has a pretty classic Five Man Band setup when it comes to the main characters. For a while, though, there was a sixth character, a bodyguard to Vicki who shows up about a third of the way in, and he just didn’t need to be there. He got in the way, caused more problems than what the heroes were already dealing with, and to top it off, when I really thought about it, he had nothing unique to add to the team except toxicity. Now, I am planning to bring this guy back, or a version of him anyway, in a short story, but he needed to be removed from this book. After excising him, I was down 10,000 words in the manuscript.

I Got Rid Of Plot Points That Didn’t Move The Story Forward

Everything that happens in your book should be in service of the main plot, and some things in my original draft…weren’t. Like that entire chapter where the main characters spent 2,500 words opening a refrigerator (it made sense in context). So they could find… something that never matters again. Or, the time I wrote another 3,000 word chapter about fighting the walking dead. Why? I was worried the book wasn’t supernatural enough. Not a good enough reason to spend an entire chapter fighting Risers. 

It really hurt me to cut this, but there was also a whole scene where one of the MCs got to go on a date. And it brought the story to a screeching halt. I worked so hard on that date scene, and no one will ever read it, probably. Felt bad, man.

Even after I’d done all these things, though, the manuscript was still sitting at about 135k words. Too long! So, what else did I do? Well…

I Cut Filter Words and Filler Words

Some people seem to think that filter words and filler words are one and the same, however they do two different things. Filter words involve the senses or thought processes, and remind us that we’re reading a story filtered through the main character’s experience. So, for example, if I write:

“I just watch as Elliot makes another terrible decision.”

“Watch” here is a filter word. I could say instead:

“Elliot’s making his third terrible decision of the day before lunch.”

This immerses us in Chloe’s POV.

A filler word, on the other hand, does not convey any new information and does not add any emotional punch to a sentence. It just adds to the word count. For example:

“And then Vicki takes a sip from her glass.”

“And then” doesn’t tell us anything we don’t know from the rest of the sentence. In fact, if we already know Vicki is holding a glass, we can remove “from her glass” as well, making the sentence simply:

“Vicki takes a sip.”

It only seems like a few words here and there, but spread over the course of a novel, the snips add up.

You can also cut out other things, like characters telling the reader information they’ve been told before, or overly long descriptions, or action scenes that go on too long, all of which will likely be caught by your critique partners and/or beta readers.

Once I learned my particular quirks as an overwriter, it was a lot easier to get my word count under control. In fact, Book 2 is currently coming in at around 90k words. Not too shabby.