Perhaps TMI about my revising process

Wow, you guys had lots of helpful suggestions for how to deal with the revisions. Thanks! I figured I'd talk about some of the comments and answer a few of the questions in the process, since it might be interesting to some of you. But first a clarification: My editor has not seen the book! She has no clue that I'm attempting to cut this much out of the novel. And in the end, if I can't get it down to something reasonable on my own, I will make it as good as possible (even if it is long) and hand it in to see what my editor says.

So this is all angst brought on myself by myself. *grin*

But anyway . . .

Why not make it two books? Well, this actually has two answers. First, I'm only under contract for a single book at this point, so one book is all DAW is expecting, which is what I should deliver. That was the agreement. On the other hand, DAW (and other publishers, but not all of them) has never shown hesitation about taking a long book and breaking it into two . . . as long as both books would be good.

And that's the crux of the problem. The plot I have in this book is not sufficient to support two books. There's enough for one, perhaps a little more than that, but in the end, not enough for two. I can't add enough material to the first half of the book to make the first part be a single novel on its own. There IS a good breaking point, pretty much right in the middle of the book . . . but the good stuff doesn't happen until the second half of the book (well, the good magical stuff), so the first half wouldn't cut it. It all boils down to the fact that there just isn't enough story there for two books. There are enough WORDS, but not enough story . . . which brings me to the next point:

The WORDS! Oh, the WORDS! Yes, I have tons of words. However, I know that not all of those words are needed. I'm an organic writer, which means that I have a tendency not to know what's important while I'm writing, which means that there are often more words than necessary. An example: When I had the group traveling from the border of one country to the capital, I described the land, the architecture, what people wore, how they farmed, blah, blah, blah. I was essentially creating the culture as I wrote. I knew basics before this, but not details, so I was writing the details. Now that the book is finished, I know what details are important. Pretty much, all of that entire section will be cut from the book. Little pieces will be incorporated here and there of course, but most of it will be gone for good. I needed these details for myself, but the book doesn't need them. I'll skip the travel part and get to the capital in the final version.

And that's how I'm going to cut so many words from the book. That one section is probably a good 10 pages long, if not more.

So I don't think the real book is 198,000 words long. There are other sections like the one I described that will reduce the book length tremendously. I just haven't hit them yet in the revision process. The material at the beginning of the book is much more dense and important for the story, so most of it is being kept.

What else do I cut, besides those long "research" kind of scenes?

Even more WORDS! I end up losing quite a few pages just by cutting sentences and words and little snippets here and there. Alot of this is repeated material, something I mentioned more than once and the repetition wasn't necessary. Even more of it is just rearranging sentences and deleting unnecessary words to make things read smoother. I also end up removing lots of "extra phrases" in my sentences, tightening up the prose. This includes cutting adjectives and adverbs. (Yes, cutting these out DOES make a huge difference!) It also, for me, means cutting out dialogue tags. I use them far too much (with adverbs!) and taking most of these out is a must. Hmm . . . what else? Oh, those words that you end up using over and over and OVER and you just didn't realize it at the time. I have alot of "cracking voices" in this novel for some reason. Perhaps the teenage boy main character? But no, his voice has only cracked once or twice. Everyone else's voice is cracking, too. I need to cut most of these out, or come up with something else to get the point across (the point being high emotional strain).

Characters! I also end up trimming out alot of the side characters. Someone commented on The Skewed Throne that everyone, even the minor characters, had . . . well, character. The reason is because when I write the book the first time I end up developing everyone heavily and then trim things down extensively during the revision. How far a character gets trimmed depends on how important the character ended up being for the novel. Some have been trimmed so far back they lose their name and just become "the servant" or something. Others get a name and minimal backstory. Others become much more prominent, like Marielle in the Throne books (who, if I get my way, may have her own trilogy someday). I'm currently considering whether I need to include a character named Tobin, who's legs get crushed in an accident. He doesn't do much after this happens . . . so do I keep him for flavor or do I just rewrite the accident slightly and kill him?

Ah, death. . . . What else?

Subplots I have to admit that I rarely end up cutting subplots. I haven't cut anything like that from the current book yet, although it may happen in the future. I have the horrible habit of taking a subplot and weaving it into the main plot so that its removal mortally wounds the main plot. I'm trying to think if I've ever cut a subplot from one of the Throne books . . . but nothing comes to mind. Interesting.

So, how do I decide what to keep and not keep, of everything that's left?

Beta Readers Actually, I have only one beta reader, comixboy. He's read everything I've ever written, I think, and he's the only one who's seen any part of the book. I had a long phone conversation with him last night and that helped tremendously. To the point where today I went back and started revising over again from page 1. I got all the way through six chapters today, basically to the point where I'd left off before the phone conversation, and I've now cut 5,250 words from the novel. That's 21 pages. (I ended up cutting the eight-page scene I mentioned in my last LJ entry.)

So yes, beta readers are invaluable. My beta reader is invaluable, which is why he gets a free copy of the book, every time a book comes out. *grin*

I also do, essentially, what pbray suggested, except that I don't use highlighters. As I read, I mark sections as possible cuts (usually in a little notebook) and I cut or condense everything else as much as possible. I'll do this on the first run-through and see what happens to the word count. Along the way, I may make a decision about something marked as "possible" and go back and cut it. That's what happened today with the 8-page cut. If I need to cut more words at the end, I go back to the possibles and make some hard-core decisions.

A final word Lastly, I just want to say that cutting 80,000 words is my personal goal. If I can cut more than 40,000 words, I will have a book length I'd feel comfortable sending to my editor, and then she can decide whether more needs to be cut or not, and will have suggestions about what else I should cut as well. So cutting 40,000 is the minimum; 80,000 would be nice; and 100,000 would meet my contract word count (but is highly unlikely).

How will I do? Well, I'll keep you all updated. At least until you get bored and unfriend me. *grin*