Now, I have a number of completed novels (many of which are in need of a good edit/re-write) but they are all VERY long. My kids novels aside (100,000 words) my shortest novel is around 250,000, the longest being 385,000 approx. So what do I do to shorten them down without losing much from the story itself, and what do I do about the 385,000 words novel that I believe could only lose a few thousand words at a push.

Wow, if you have 380,000 words in a novel, odds are, you could bust it into two books. You probably have a ton of description, narration and backstory that could be shortened/hacked or put into dialog somewhere.

Nope, 80K - 100K isn't too short. In fantasy/sci fi that can bleed to about 120K but . . . Check out Ms. Snark's blog - she just answered a question about a 180K ms that an agent wanted cut to 100K. She said get the chain saw out.

Get - Self Editing for Fiction and really look at your stories again.

Fall out of love with the words.

On a 385K story:

(a) There should be a ton you can trim;
(b) trimming may, in part, be breaking it up into 2 or 3 books. Notice, that I still left room for trimming.

Look at your word choices. Have you used three words to say what one could?

Most -ly words and adjectives can really be cut.

You can tell some events that you show now.

Get the resource books that exist on editing and take them to heart.

In order to cut it down you need to be able to seperate your story into distinct story arcs.

Trilogy starts at plot point A
the goal of the trilogy is to get to point D
The goal of the first book should be to Get to point B
The goal of the second book would then be to get to point C
And the goal of the third book is to get to point D

By goal, I mean what your characters are trying to do, not what you are trying to do. Your characters can always want to get to Point D and it can be a goal in every book, but they should be focused primarily on the end of each book moreso than the end of the trilogy.

I had the same problem. My first novel ran 74,000 words. I let it sit for two years. Now, I'm redrafting the novel and hit 65,000 words, but I'm only half way through the story.

Wht happened? I learned how to write better than I did. I get into the characters head more, and I give better description. Both take real estate.

Personally, I would say that is the first thing to do. Be brutal and ruthless. Many writers seem surprised at how much they can cut from a novel or story. If that fails, I would say, then you can look into making it a series.

The first time this happened to me, I had a short story at 8,800 words that I really wanted under 6,000. I thought surely nothing could be cut from it. It was already tight, and everything was there for a reason. When I really got down to being ruthless, it was 5,700 words.

Now, I just tell myself if it's longer than six words, it's too long. (Do an internet search for "six word novels" if you've never bumped into any.) I say it in jest, but also as a reminder that it can always be shorter.

You could send him a scene and let him cut. That way you can see how it's done with your story. He likes blurbs of about 1000 words.

The blog can be found here:

http://www.freivald.org/~jake/cutting_blog

The problem with the 380 K story is:

A. The action takes place over a twenty four hour period.
B. There are only two locations where the action takes place so little room for editing out those uneeded scenes where, for example, the MC meets his freind down the local bar and have a conversation that doesn't add to the story.
C. The story is set in futuristic TV game show in which the contestants have to complete twelve two hour long games - which they do.

I can see where I could delete some backstory though I don't have an alwful lot because of the fast pace of the story.

I'll have to do as pantros says and hope I get something else published first.

[This message has been edited by darklight (edited April 04, 2007).]

I helped a fellow hatracker recently with doing a prologue synopsis. She was having trouble figuring out how to boil it down, so I read it and gave my version of a synopsis, just as a way to help her think it through. It was a valuable exercise for me, because I also tend to be overly wordy and I was curiuos if I would be able to come up with a concise summary. So it was good for me in my writing, and helped the writer, that's what Hatrack is all about!

Darklight, I've got to believe that 380K words is too long for a novel that spans 24 hours. Figure about 500 words per printed page; if you read one page / minute (a pretty good clip), that means that you'll spend 380,000 / 500 words per page / 60 pages per hour = 12.7 hours -- only half as much time reading about the events as the events supposedly took! From a position of almost complete ignorance (and therefore very high fallibility, so forgive me), it seems like you're providing more information than needed about each scene or introducing redundancies, showing and telling (vs. showing or telling), or something.

Kings_falcon is right (and thanks for the kind words, KF), I have a blog focused on cutting, and I find that we can often cut prose by 30-45% without too much trouble and with very little semantic or stylistic change. I'd be willing to take a look at a chapter or two, and it doesn't have to be public. That might get you to a quarter million words.

However, besides cutting the excerpts I might do on the blog, I'd look at possible redundancies in your overall story. Does each scene need to be spelled out, or can some of them naturally be assumed by the implication of a previous scene? Or can you explain one of them away with a few lines? Is there any redundancy among scenes?

I just found a great example in another sphere, a source of inspiration. Michael Kennedy's notes to Benjamin Britten's operatic version of A Midsummer Night's Dream says

quote:

---

[Britten and librettist Pears] reduced Shakespeare's five acts to three and his 2000-odd lines by half, yet they needed to insert only six words of their own. When, in Act One, Lysander tells Hermia that he will marry her in his widowed aunt's house seven leagues from Athens, he explaines that there "the sharp Athenian law/(Compelling thee to marry with Demetrius)/Cannot pursue us." The words in parentheses were the librettists' inspired means of dispensing with Shakespeare's Act One, much of which is concerned wtih the insistence of Hermia's father that she should marry the man he will choose for her.

---

It's a Philips recording, Sir Colin Davis conducting, catalogue number 454 122-2.

If you want to send me something, please do, maybe a few chapters or a few thousand words, but seriously consider looking at the entire book's structure for redundancies.

oliverhouse, thanks for offering to look at a smaple piece of writing - I will send something along when I get the chance. I'm beginnig to understand where I can cut from the novel, if only those unneeded word per sentance and bits that actually dont carry the story forward. There are still some parts I don't know what to do with.

Lets say, in the aforementioned story I detail some of the game rules. For example: they are given to the contestants; or one of the contsetants recites them to his fellow game player or thinks them to himself to enable him to recalls what he can and can not do. Is this necessary to the story or can I delete it?

However, I suspect you can winnow those down considerably to only the essential elements. Can you get away with "telling" some of them rather than showing? Probably.

The situations you've described present perfect opportunities to move from "what the reader needs to know RIGHT NOW" to "infodump."

You probably need some of example 2 to set that character but a snide comment or two - "well, XYZ lost because ABC" may probably work better than a 10 page description of a past event to set him up as a know it all.

I have a feeling that when you start looking at your work in pieces, you'll start to get a better understanding of where there is extra, where there is redundancy, where there might be long stretches that don't serve to move the plot forward.

I've been talking about this for a while, but I've just finished reading the book Self Editing for Fiction Writers, and I highly recommend it. I used the book + a few hatrack critiques to really whittle down a short story I had in progress. It helped tremendously, and now I feel like I will do better with my future efforts from the starting gate, rather than having so much work to do in editing.

Oh, on game rules and things - it's hard to know what's necessary. My kids and I are listening to Harry Potter 1 on CD right now and have just listened to the section explaining Quiddich rules. I have to say it was helpful the way the author did it. She had one kid explaining it to HP, and HP doing some repeating of the rules. Since it was a brand new game for the readers, we needed some level of introduction to it that would stick, all the ideas were pretty foreign. However, she doesn't spend pages and pages doing this. Later on, during the first quiddich match (quite a few pages later) there are more comments interspersed (e.g., some comic relief by character named Dean who makes mention of soccer rules, which confuses those from wizard families.) These additional comments help solidify the point of the game for readers. Quiddich matches serve a role in each of the HP books, so it behooved the author to explain it well at first (via a conversation AND at the same time a practice session with HP and the team captain)

Anyway, just wanted to offer an illustration since it was fresh in my mind.

It seems to me that you're putting the cart ahead of the horse: you're saying, Hey, I have this 380,000-word novel on my shelf and I want to put it on the market, so that means I need to cut it to 100,000 words.

Since I haven't read the novel, I can't tell you if this is a good idea or not. It might be a bit beefy as it stands, but that doesn't mean it should become emaciated with a drastic cut. Cutting 280,000 words, 1120 pages, the equivalent of two novels, is no easy task.

A couple of things I'd think about.

1) It is possible to do something with the novel the way OSC does with the Ender series? In other words, can you highlight one of the story lines, write a 400-page novel based on that, then use the other story lines for future novels set in the same universe?

2) Or, should you keep the novel as it is? Do you like it as it stands? Do you really want to cut it? If not, then you have two choices. First, you can revise it, polish it, and market it; forget the idea that most first novels are short, because the fact is that not every first novel is short, and yours might fall in that category. Second, you can put it on the shelf and write a 100,000-word novel to market as your first.

Obviously, the choice is yours.