I’m fighting towards the end of a book. I have a specific word-count goal (I mean they might decide I can have a 1000 words or so extra, but I’m aiming for a hard-and-fast number). I have 9K words left to deal with the bad guys, and have a cataclysmic end. And I have a lot to cover.
One is tempted towards ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’ sort of end, but I’d like readers to come back and maybe read my other books instead of throwing the book across the room. Many of my friends have their books cut on edit… mine ALWAYS grow.
So here I am: facing a very high likelihood of needing to cut word-count. I really don’t know how to do this! Advice welcome. There are no long descriptions that don’t IMO make part of the plot (It’s a world 40 foot tides, and very strange animals.) And not, methinks, huge amounts of angst. I can’t spot a character that I can chop…
Assigned length is (mutter) a thing of the devil. It’s why I like Indy. A story needs be as long as it needs to be.
Mad Genius Club 
6 responses to “‘So long and thanks for all the fish’”
Speaking as a mercenary editor….
Most writers have surplus-word tics they’re entirely deaf to. Some of the most common take these forms (corrections):
he would be able to (he could)
he didn’t have any (he had no)
he had done (he’d done)
attributions at the end of full-sentence dialog (if you can wait that long to tell us who’s speaking, it’s not needed)
he acted adverbly (he betterverbed) e.g. he walked slowly (he ambled)
redundancies like “a small midget”
Sometimes there’s a reason for the longer form. More often… there’s not. Good for a couple thousand words per 100k.
Thank you.
What does your first reader think?
This. Now seems like the right time to outsource. “What seemed extraneous?”
Maybe just use the low tides? The waves are shorter. I’ll see myself out. 😀
I can only sympathize. My own stories are good at growing and not so good at shrinking.