171: Making Your Book Shorter

 

If your book is just too long, or if you suspect it's weighed down by unnecessary sentences or scenes, this episode is for you. Learn tips and tricks to cut the length of your book.

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making your book shorter

Hello. Welcome back to big creative life podcast. Thanks for being here. I've been off work for a little while because I had a long weekend and my daughter was sick again home from daycare, and so it feels like it's been a while since I've had, like, a full work day. And this is gonna sound so weird, but it actually kind of feels nice, um, to get back into it and have a full day just to, like, get back into my regular routine, I suppose, um, and I'm also excited. I've got a lot of work to do this week, because we're going to Florida next week, we're driving down to just outside of St Petersburg, Tampa area, and we're gonna meet my mom down there. She lives in Minnesota, and she has to get if she can, if she can swing it. She likes to have some time on the beach in the winter to just kind of help her get through it. And so Sam and Audrey and I are going to drive down and meet her for six days.

 

And I'm so excited. It's going to be awesome. And I live in South Carolina, so it's not like the winter has been bad, but it's just going to be so nice to have warm sun, hopefully warm weather, and sun and beach, and it's just going to be nice. I'm taking a couple days off at the end of the week. I think I'll work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then take Thursday and Friday off, so I'm excited, but it means I've got a lot to do this week, including some podcast episodes. So this one has been on the list for a while. I've had a couple of requests for this topic, and it's also something I've had in the back of my head. So it's just taken us a while to get here. We have so many great podcast topics to cover.

 

But yeah, let's talk about, let's talk about cutting down the length of your book, whether it's because you just have a sense that it needs to be shorter and it's too long, or because you are doing something like querying and you have a sense that your word count is just too high for querying. I saw a video on Tiktok, the game across my FYP this morning, and it was Gina Denny. She's, I'm actually not sure what exactly her background is, but she talks about publishing, and she gives advice for querying, and she does these query critiques, where she will people will submit their query letters to her, and she'll give them feedback. And the person that submitted, I forget the exact word count of their manuscript, but it was something like 217,000 words. They were writing a thriller, which is an auto rejection for probably 95% of agents, because it's just way too long. You cannot query a book that is over 200,000 words. It's just especially a thriller that's just not gonna work. So maybe there's something like that for querying where you're like, I know that to fit within kind of genre conventions, I've got to make this shorter.

 

So whatever the circumstance, whatever the case is, here are, I think I have five tips maybe for you on how to do this, things to think about. And I will say this is it's not really feedback that I give to editing clients frequently, but it does come into play sometimes with editing clients where either their word count is just too high, no matter if they're self publishing, submitting to a small press, querying whatever, it's just way, way up there and it doesn't need to be, or it just feels like some stuff in their novel is not really essential, and the pacing is lagging. And so I have some suggestions for them to tighten it up. So this is something that I'll share some examples here in the episode of feedback that I've given to clients, like situations where this applies. Okay, so first consideration, first Oh, I'm, I read the wrong word for I wrote a little note to myself and said considerations for different genres. And why I want to mention that is because it just, it does depend how long your book should be, depending on what genre you're writing and also what publishing path you're taking. Because if you're self publishing, it doesn't matter quite as much what your word count is.

 

I still think it's a good thing to keep in mind so that you don't have a 217,000 word thriller that you're trying to self publish, because that's going to turn off a lot of readers, and obviously you're not going to tell them in the in the first line of your blurb, like this is a 270,000 word book, because readers don't care about that. But a lot of people will be turned off by just the fact that that's a massive book. It's essentially two books, two long books, and one for thrillers, anyway, so I still think it's something to keep in mind. I. Also, you know the difference between a novella and a novel, like, if you write a 30,000 word book or manuscript and you call it a novel, then readers are going to be disappointed because that's short and that's more of a novella link. So genres, it just depends. There's an infographic that I will link to from Writer's Digest that I always go back to, that shares different word count recommendations for different genres, but standard, generally, is like 70 to 100,000 words fantasy and sci fi and anything that requires world building can be a little bit longer because of that. But yeah. Okay. So suggestion number one, how to edit your book down to be shorter, how to cut length is to remember that every scene should serve a purpose. Sometimes, when I have shared this advice in social media before, I will get pushed back because people are like, Oh, this scene is, it's not furthering the plot. It's just showing character development. It's it's showing interactions between characters, to which I always say, then that is the purpose is to show character development, to show to help the reader get to know the characters. That's the purpose of the scene. You've identified the purpose perfect. So when I say purpose, I don't mean necessarily that it has to, like, move the plot along, but just, can you articulate, like, if I were to pull out a particular scene of your novel, would you be able to articulate to me what the function of that scene is, whether it is advancing the plot, creating some tension, developing conflict, showing a moment of character, a character processing something that's happened to them? What is the function of that scene?

 

And you can even do this like if you if you really want to do to get like, super in depth with this, what you could do is create a reverse outline of your book, where, once the draft is done, maybe you've edited it already, pull apart, create an outline from beginning to end of what happens in your story. And you can even list out all the scenes that happen in your book, and then write what the purpose is, and then examine it. So if you have 70% of your scenes are just showing character development or growth, then that's a sign that there's probably an opportunity to cut some of those things, because you don't need every other scene to show that you can show those things probably through a smaller number of scenes, and also show it while accomplishing other things, like advancing the plot, creating conflict, developing tension, etc.

 

So every scene should serve a purpose, even if that purpose is just a character processing something. I mean, think about it this way. If you've had a character who's gone through something traumatic, big T or little T. They might just need a moment to catch their breath. If you've had fast paced plot, plot conflict, fight, everything your character might need. Let's say they're getting into bed at the end of a long day. They're just like exhaling. They're just taking a beat, processing everything that has happened, reflecting on it a bit before they go to bed. We need that. We need those moments of slow, slowness to balance out the fast paced action moments. And we need that kind of reflection from a character, if we're in their point of view, to help us understand how they're feeling about it, what they're thinking, how they're feeling, etc. So that's a moment where it makes sense to have that, but that's the purpose of that scene is to have the character processes, process it and show, show the reader kind of what's going on with this character internally.

 

Tip number two is similar to this. This, every scene should have a purpose. Tip which is that every subplot should serve a purpose. Subplots or B storylines, however you want to refer to them, there are different names that refer to the same thing. Essentially every or subplots or B storylines are plots that are running alongside the main plot. They're just not the main focus of the story. So it's kind of exactly what it sounds like. It's a subplot underneath the big plot. This a common way to do this that you'll see in a lot of different genres is a romantic subplot, a romantic storyline where it's not a romance, maybe it's a fantasy, maybe it is a mystery, maybe it's literary fiction, and the main point of the novel is not the romantic relationship that the character is exploring getting into the love interest all that, but it's something that's happening alongside the main storyline that this character is going through participating in because of love interest. Having this this romantic cell plot, is a really good way to develop your main character further, to add some growth, to add some conflict, to have a supporting character like they're all these things that subplots can accomplish, but you don't want to just throw subplot after subplot after subplot into the story, just for shits and giggles.

 

So every plot should serve a purpose. Subplot. Are actually essential, if you think about it, because your characters are living complex lives, no matter what kind of book you're writing, no matter what genre your main character or characters are complex beings. We are all living complex lives. I am not just a book editor, I'm not just a writer, I'm not just a content creator. I have a rich life outside of this, outside of work, where I have friends, I have family life, I am really into working out. I'm like all these other things that I do with my time, other bits of conflict that I might have, other struggles I might be going through, those are all present in my life. I'm not just I don't have just this one facet to me. And same with you. You know that. So your character should be that way too. Next tip is to look at your pacing throughout the novel, but especially in the first few chapters. Pacing is simply the speed at which things happen in your book. So if something is very fast paced, it means we're moving through it quickly. Things are rushing. There's a sense of urgency. And if it's slow paced, it means we're taking our time or lingering in certain moments. And every book should have a balance of these things.

 

Pacing throughout is essential, because, again, you don't want to have like everything is just we're rushing through it. You're barely getting any time to catch your breath before the character is on to something else, and they're rushing. But you also don't want to have it incredibly slow either. So it's something you need to look at throughout the novel. But I have found in manuscripts that I have worked on for clients that the first few chapters often have the biggest opportunity to speed up the pacing first two chapters and also the midpoint, which I'll talk about in a second. So with the first few chapters, I mean especially your first chapter, if you are doing something like querying, there's there's just often an opportunity for the story to start sooner, meaning we don't need a lengthy explanation of things before we get into the action of the story. We don't need for the action to pause. If you start with action on page one, then on page three, we don't need to pause and get 10 pages of background and exposition and whatever it's you want to balance these things in a way that that's gonna hook the reader. I mean, because that's what you want. When you want when you have a reader pick up your book, whether it is in a bookstore, whether it's an agent that you're querying, whatever it is, you want that person to be hooked, to have an emotional connection to the read, to the character, characters, and you want them to keep reading.

 

So that's why pacing is really important in the first few chapters. And if you do a gut check, if you really take some take some time, set your manuscript aside, come back to it. Look at the first chapter, or first few chapters in particular, with an eye for pacing, you might notice that things kind of lag, or maybe that the story doesn't really kick off until like halfway through chapter two, and in that case, you can look Okay, is there an opportunity for me to cut some of this down so that we move the beginning sooner and really get that momentum going, no matter what genre it is that applies for any genre, and also the midpoint. I think that's another point to look at too, because I've done a couple of episodes recently about the midpoint. So if you didn't listen to those and you're worried about the middle mark of your novel, specifically, you can go check those out. But there's just a pitfall for some writers, not all, but some where the middle 50 ish percent mark of their novel lags. It lacks momentum. The characters have set on the journey that they're taking in the book. We've developed conflict. We've developed characters. There's tension, there's and then things just kind of stall out a bit before they pick back up in like the last 40% of the book.

 

So pay attention to that midpoint too, and do the same thing, read it with an eye for pacing. Does it feel like things are lagging, like not much is happening? Then that's an opportunity to increase the pacing and cut some length from the novel. And we're going to talk about, like, actually cutting length in a second. So, oh, actually, we're going to do it now, because that's my next tip. Is to look at just the amount of description, exposition, etc, that you have in your in your writing. So when it comes to pacing, something that can slow pacing down is too much description. Now this is a tricky thing to talk about in general terms, because some writers naturally have a much more descriptive voice, where they are using more elevated language. They're really taking the time to describe the setting and what the characters are wearing and how they're feeling, and all these things that are just important to the story and important to their voice. And I don't want to mess with that, because that's important, but there can be a risk of too much of that, too much describing to the reader what's going on, instead of just letting the reader form their own interpretations, or instead of letting some of that information and description be dropped in throughout the novel, as opposed to stopping everything and giving us 10 pages of description.

 

So that's something that can affect the pacing. And if you suspect that your first few chapters or your midpoint might be suffering and it feels like it's lagging and kind of slow, look at how much you're describing things. Look at how much information you are stopping to convey to the reader. That might be it's just something to look at. My next tip is related to this, but it's a little bit different. Uh, overwriting, over writing, means different things, but, but to me, how I how I see this in manuscripts or published books, because I do see this sometimes, when I'm just reading a book for fun, is I almost get the sense that the reader or sorry, that the writer is this sounds shitty to say, but it's almost like I get the sense that they're showing off a bit. They're showing off their vocabulary. They're showing off their ability to construct long, detailed sentences. They're showing off their ability to use things like metaphors and similes, and it becomes an exercise in showing off their prose, as opposed to focusing on the story.

 

And just like what I said before with the voice thing. This is tricky, because some people naturally just have that kind of writing style, and it's beautiful and it's wonderful, but where it veers into overwriting is just it. I'm sure you can think of examples as you're listening to this where you've been reading a story and you get taken out of what's happening. You get taken out of the plot, the setting, the world, the characters, because the writing is just so dense. It's so dense with description and flowery language and metaphors, and it's just like, Okay, this can, this can be simplified, for sure, and and with with the overwriting and the description and exposition and all that where you can a practical suggestion for looking at this in your own writing is to go through with a fine tooth comb, to eliminate words that are just not necessary, to eliminate phrases, sentences, all that that just are not needed. This is a version of a line edit, but so I want you to do this when you are done with the big picture editing, like if you have finished your first draft and you are ready to start editing, don't start with this type of editing. You want everything else to be pretty set in stone, like you're not going to be making any more big changes to the book before you get into this level of detailed editing. But I want you to go through your sentences look for unneeded words, like unnecessary adverbs that really very over describing something. I'm going to give you an example that I just wrote right before I started recording. So of course, it's not going to be amazing, but I just wanted to illustrate how sometimes writing can just be. Sentences can be too full of words. Here's my couple of examples, or one example with a couple of sentences. It was a really pretty sunny, warm, gorgeous day outside. She opened the back door of the house, stepped outside, shut the door, and walked over to the lounge chair next to the house, under the big gazebo. She sat down and exhaled as she leaned back, then set her coffee cup upon the table that was next to the lounge chair.

 

Okay, there's a lot going on in these sentences, a lot of description of over describing, over explaining the actions that the character is taking. So I'm going to take this apart sentence by sentence by sentence, and show you what I would cut first sentence, it was a really pretty sunny, warm, gorgeous day outside. Too many adjectives you have really, which is really necessary, I don't know, probably not. Pretty sunny, warm, gorgeous. Maybe pick one to two of those adjectives you don't need four. Next sentence, she opened the back door of the house, stepped outside, shut the door and walked over to the lounge chair next to the house under the big Gizzy bow.

 

This is something I see, actually fairly frequently with writers, is they will list out all of the actions that a character is taking when it's not necessary. You could summarize this very easily and just say, she opened the back door of the house, stepped outside and sat down in the lounge chair. You can condense all of those actions, you don't need to list. They did this and this and this and this and this and this and this. Also in this sentence, I I included, walked over to the lounge chair next to the house, under the big gazebo next to the house. Probably isn't necessary, because she's stepping out, side onto the patio, under the gazebo in her backyard. So saying that the lounge chairs next to the house might not be necessary. Now, if you're using that to explain like there are some lounge chairs that are all the way in the backyard, you know, on the other side, at the end of the yard, by a fence that's really far away, and you want to say specifically, she sat in the lounge chair next to the house. If that's important, then maybe include it. But otherwise, just ask yourself, like, are all of these little pieces necessary? Then our third sentence, she sat down and exhaled as she leaned back, then set her coffee cup upon the table that was next to the lounge chair.

 

So we've listed out all these actions in the previous sentence, where she opened the back door, step outside, shut the door, walked over, then you have sat down, exhaled, lean back, set her coffee cup down. That is so many actions for the character to be taking. So if in the previous sentence, you cut some of those down and just summarized it, then maybe in the next sentence, it wouldn't be as bad. But if you didn't, you could just combine some of those things. She exhaled as she leaned back, then set her coffee cup down so you you cut out the fact that she sat down, because that's implied, if she you know, I this isn't, this isn't an exact science, because I'm doing this in a podcast form, and I just came up with these sentences off the top of my head, but hopefully it illustrates what I'm what I'm doing, or what I would like You to do as a practice as an exercise, and then also upon the table that was next set her coffee cup down upon the table that was next to the lounge chair. Is all of that necessary? Maybe we already know that she's sitting in a lounge chair. So to have a character set a coffee cup on a table next to her. You might not need to say that it's upon the letter, like next to the lounge chair.

 

So this is this is time consuming to do this, but you would be surprised how many words you can trim down when you do this kind of editing, because what you're doing is not messing with the voice here. You're just taking out unnecessary words that drag the momentum down. They drag the story in the writing down because they're just not needed. You're over explaining your your listing out all these actions, including too many descriptors. So you you'd be surprised how many words you can cut from your manuscript when you do this. And I honestly think this is a good exercise to do, even if you are not specifically looking to cut length from your manuscript, this might just be a good exercise to go through and be like, okay, are all of these words necessary? Can we tighten this up any?

 

Okay, I have actually one other tip that is situational. I mean, I guess all these are situational. It just depends. But consider if your book should be split into two books. This is a suggestion that I will just throw out there if you are really struggling with your length and it is very you have a very long draft. I suggested this to a coaching client. We were working on a fantasy novel. It she was a client in my six month program, and we were working together, and she was writing a lot of it, and the length it got up to, like, 100,000 words. And there were, there were still so much that she had to write, because the scope of what she was trying to accomplish in her novel was massive and it was all good. She was a great writer, and the story was extremely compelling. She had a great main character, a great world, but it was just too much. She was trying to cram too much into one novel. And so we ultimately made the decision, okay, I think this needs to actually be two books.

 

And she had originally planned, I believe for it to be a duology, but we decided it should probably be a trilogy. So the book one was going to be split, because otherwise her length probably would have been like 150,000 words, 160,000 words. I mean, who knows, but it would have been very long. So instead cutting it into two and maybe adding a bit more to each of those so that they're able to stand on their own. That might be the right decision. I also gave this feedback recently to an editing client who same thing as my coaching client, her the scope of what she was, she was trying to accomplish and the story that she wanted to tell about this character. Well, two characters. It was a romantic see, it was just so large, and the time and everything, all of these events that occurred, it was just massive. And so splitting it into two was a way to give the story the attention that it needed without rushing through things. And it's a big suggestion. I mean, I can't imagine it's easy for clients to hear that, but ultimately, I think in both of those cases, it's the right it was the right decision. And so I just want to throw that out there, especially if you're writing something like fantasy. I mean, if you're writing a thriller that's like you envision as a standalone, and you're at 100,000 words, then splitting it into two is not going to be the right decision.

 

But if you're writing fantasy or some other genre where there's it's more common to have series, then consider that does, does this need to be two books? Am I trying to do too much in one book? Just an option for you to think about? Okay, I think that's all of my tips that I have. Oh, yeah, I'll paste the link to the Writer's Digest word count information like the infographic. But if you want more information about word count and like your specific case, just do some research online. There are lots of resources to talk about this, whether you are indie publishing, self publishing, whatever, if you're querying too sometimes agents will have word count suggestions like, don't send a manuscript over this amount. And it's not because they're it's not because people don't want long books. Overall. It just is a tricky sell. It's and also, you know, in the case of the 217,000 word thriller. It shows that. And in this query, in this video, the person acknowledged in their query letter the draft that Gina Denny edited or gave suggestions for, they acknowledged like, I know this is longer than normal, but I'm envisioning it this way, so at least they had done enough market research to identify that it was too long, but it shows often, I think, that you just don't understand how to edit your own work, and you don't understand like you're not able to determine what's essential and what's not, and That's where getting another set of eyes on your manuscript. Can really help, whether it's an editor like me or a beta reader or just someone to give you that gut check and be like, okay, is all of this actually necessary? Like and not even that example. I mean, even with fantasy I've worked on, I think 140 Well, no, 160 actually might be the longest manuscripts that I've ever worked on.

 

Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you one, two more, two instances of this, of longer word counts for books. So I worked. I have an editing client who wrote 140,000 word fantasy novel, and then another editing client who wrote 160 155 ish 1000 word fantasy novel, the 140,000 word manuscript was and she was self publishing, so word count didn't matter as much. It was incredible. Pacing was spot on. The writing was tight. Everything was great. I had no suggestions for her to cut length. It was great. At 140,000 words, if she were querying my feedback would have been different. I would have been like, hey, we need to make some tough decisions about where to trim this down. But she was an indie author, so it didn't matter. And that that length, that 140,000 words, that's what she needed to tell the story. Well, so it was fine. The other instance, the 150 560,000 word manuscript, I had a suggestion to cut about a third of that from the manuscript, because it just wasn't essential. It took about 40,000 words, ish, for me to feel like the story was actually beginning. So it's not necessarily the word count, it's what you do with it. It's the pacing, it's how you're telling the story. Because sometimes longer word counts can be great, and that's just what you need to tell the story.

 

Okay, I'm gonna stop talking my episodes. Y'all my episodes are getting longer. I don't know how to like cut myself off. Speaking of making things shorter, I need to just cut myself off for these podcasts, but I have so much I want to share with you. Okay, that's it. Thank you for listening. I hope this was helpful. Good luck if you're in this process. Remember what's the what's the saying, kill, kill your darlings. Essentially, it means like, Be ruthless. Don't be afraid to just cut things out, even if you love them, even if you're attached to them, if they're not serving the story, they gotta go. All right, thanks y'all. Thank you so much for listening.

Katie Wolf