Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Slice and dice: writing with limits

The Call to Pens deadline is very quickly approaching! With only a week left to go, you've written the perfect story. There is only one problem: you're over the word limit. Those angry numbers stare at you and perhaps you wonder how on earth you can sacrifice your wonderful creation to meet a seemingly arbitrary rule. But as an editor and a journalist, I can tell you that it's possible. Often, you can strengthen your writing by cutting out a lot of quite unnecessary words.

How is such slicing and dicing possible, you ask? You must take a surgeon's scalpel to your writing and cut it unmercifully, but for the purpose of healing. If you cut words correctly, your piece will be healthier for the word-surgery.

If you're...

500+ words over: Ask yourself whether you've tried to accomplish too much in one story. A short story should have one well-developed main character; you don't have much space to tell more than one story. Do all the events in the story accomplish your purpose? For the 1,500-word category, you have enough words for only a couple scenes. Each scene should move your character toward a single focused climax. If your hero is fighting dragons and suddenly remembers that he needs toothpaste at the grocery store, take out the grocery store (unless, of course, toothpaste is essential to your character's development). Short stories should start en media res, or in the middle of the action. The beginning of the story is not the time for you to give a vacuous wind-up of the character's past history, friends, and relations.

<200 words over: You'd be surprised how easy it is to trim out some unwanted words without losing content. For example, do a search in your story for the word "that." "She knew that he would come" loses nothing when it's shortened to, "She knew he would come." Try to make every word tell. Take out adjectives and adverbs and replace them with stronger verbs, i.e. "she cried loudly" to "she wailed," or "he ran quickly" to "he sprinted." It will save you words and make your writing stronger.

You can also remove trite, overused words such as "quite," "very," "perhaps," and "suddenly." (Don't warn us the crash is sudden before it happens; crash that car and let us be surprised!) Let's take the 85-word opening paragraph to this blog post as an example:

The Call to Pens deadline is very quickly approaching approaches! With only a week left to go, you've written the perfect story. There is only one problem: But you're over the word limit. Those angry numbers stare at you and perhaps you wonder how on earth you can  to sacrifice your wonderful creation for an to meet a seemingly arbitrary rule. But As an editor and a journalist, I know can tell you that it's possible. Often, you can strengthen your writing by cutting out a lot of quite unnecessary words.
The new version is only 60 words. We've lost 25 words of fat and our writing is healthier for it.

Be a fearless editor, my friends! We are looking forward to reading your creations.

For the judges,

Alicia

3 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for this post!! It helped me and encouraged greatly. Someone once told me; "You just have to murder your darlings" (as in words, of course!) How hard it is at times. Thank you for going more in-depth on the subject of "splicing & dicing"- it really got me thinking. :)

    ~Madison S.

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    Replies
    1. Hey Madison,
      Thanks for your encouragement! It's true; you have to be open to changing your creations. It takes humility to admit that there are a number of good ways to say something, and the one you chose at first might not be the best!).
      One of the things I recommend is that you plan to take a few days off before the deadline and don't look at your story at all. Then, come back to edit it with fresh eyes. You'll be surprised how helpful the distance is!
      Blessings,
      Alicia

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    2. That's a very good idea! Goodness why didn't I think of that? :) I do get a bit stressed about writing- more specifically about deadlines! No, thank YOU for the encouragement.

      ~Madison

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