It’s been a week or so since I updated you guys on the new tweaks I’ve been putting to Finders Keepers, so in the spirit of Christmas I figured now was a good time to catch you up (I have no idea how updating you is in the spirit of Christmas, but it kinda sounded like a holiday-type thing to say).
As I noted in an earlier blog, one of the missions of this latest round of tweaks was to trim the Finders Keepers manuscript just a bit, as it came in just a little long. Well, I’m here to reportIt’s been a week or so since I updated you guys on the new tweaks I’ve been putting to Finders Keepers, so in the spirit of Christmas I figured now was a good time to catch you up (I have no idea how updating you is in the spirit of Christmas, but it kinda sounded like a holiday-type thing to say).
As I noted in an earlier blog, one of the missions of this latest round of tweaks was to trim the Finders Keepers manuscript just a bit, as it came in just a little long. Well, I’m here to report that I’ve read the entire manuscript?twice?and made a whole lot of little cuts, and then implemented them. So here’s a little math for you.
Before I started this latest round of tweaks, Finders Keepers came in at 128,368 words, and 544 pages. Now that I’ve finished this round, Finders Keepers is 115,251 words and 445 pages. Let’s look at that in grid form:
Before Tweaks After Tweaks
Word Count 128,368 115,251
Page Count 544 445
Applying a little more math, here’s some additional analysis.
Total Words Cut: 13,117
Total Pages Cut: 99
This means that I was able to cut 11 percent of the word count, and almost 18 percent of the page count. I’m not sure how that sounds to you, but I gotta say, I’m pretty darn happy with it.
Thing is, it’s not that I just cut words from Finders Keepers. It’s that I condensed Finders Keepers so that I’ve pruned off extraneous words. And in doing so I didn’t get rid of a single chapter, nor did I cut any characters. Which means that Finders Keepers is leaner and tighter than ever, while keeping the core story intact?all the vital organs remain. The humor’s still there. The flow is there. The nuance. It’s just Finders Keepers in better shape than it’s ever been!
But the pruning isn’t done yet.
While I’m really, really happy with the way this round of pruning went, I suspect there’s opportunity for more still. What I’m discovering is that the more ruthless I choose to be when looking at my own work, the better I become as I writer. It’s long been said that the real writing is done during the editing process. Well, that’s been absolutely true in my case. Why make my point in 20 words if I can do it in 14? Or 11?
As a writer, the instinct is to write. To add words. But as a storyteller, the goal is to be as efficient as possible. It’s not only my goal, but my responsibility to the readers, to say what I want to say as quickly as possible without sacrificing any meaning.
On the publishing end of things, it’s always going to be in my best interest to present a manuscript that is as short, tight and lean as possible. That doesn’t mean making the manuscript short for the sake of being short, but if I want to thrive in the publishing world, I have to deal with the reality that printed pages cost money, and the fewer pages there are to print the less it costs to produce a physical book. And the more cost efficient my manuscript is, the better chance I have of getting it in print.
That said, I’m not going to cut my book to the point where it will hurt the story, but if there’s a scene or a description or dialogue exchange that I like, but just don’t need, where it doesn’t advance the plot or character development, well, that sucker will likely have to go. Admittedly, there are scenes like those that I’m not cutting. They make me laugh. Or they amuse me. Finders Keepers is supposed to be fun, so I’m not cutting the fun stuff. But other stuff does have to go.
The great thing is that, just because little bits like that won’t make the final draft doesn’t mean they longer exist. That’s what this Web site is for. So anything I like but cut from Finders Keepers will likely end up here at some point.
So starting later today I’ll start printing the newly pruned version of Finders Keepers and look to prune once again. I don’t know how much more I can effectively snip away at this point, but if I’ve learned anything through all this, it?s that if I look hard enough, I can almost always find something to trim down. And if that makes Finders Keepers just that much better, then I’m all for it.
Post edited by: rcolchamiro, at: 2008/01/04 05:44
