Redaction

You just can't hand a 409k word manuscript to a potential editor and ask if they would please wade through it and see if they want to invest in you as a writer. It would be simply too embarrassing. You've got to at least try to come up with an edited version.

I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to edit this phhhhhat caterpillar of mine, and then I had a breakthrough. I'm now about 30% of the way through the story, and I have reduced the word count to 62% of the original, up to this point.

How did I do that? You're dying to know; I know you are. (Or else you aren't, in which case, you're not reading this blog.)

I stopped trying to figure out what to cut out. Instead, I created a blank document (titled, no joke, "Painful Big Picture Exercise") and began trying to decide what to allow in.

I had two big milestones towards which I needed to move the book—quickly, without wasting the reader's time. By the time you get to the first, you have to have fallen in love with at least a couple of the characters, so you need a certain amount of world building and character development... but just enough. That was hard, but I think I did it.

After that, you really need to rush towards the second big milestone, which introduces another main character who helps carry the book. You really cannot live too long without this character. And yet, Protagonist1 has to do just that—she lives a lot longer without this character than you, the reader, really want to experience alongside her, and yet you need to know about it, and how it affects her, and some milestones in her life along the way, and what the environment is like when Protagonist2 enters the scene. That was harder, but I think I succeeded.

62% of original word count, baby. 💪😅

P, who has been an incredible sounding board but has only read portions of the original text here and there, is starting to read the redaction and tell me if it flows and achieves my goals.

Now I'm to the point where I need to move P1 and P2 along to their first crisis, but you have to have a fair amount of character development of P2 and relationship building between them first. This is involving some major rewriting, because the original plot details bog you down instead of moving you forward. Not that they aren't interesting... but probably not interesting enough to keep in their full, detailed glory. And definitely not fascinating enough to justify the original word count.

So here we go, rolling up the sleeves and sweating some more. 🥵