WIP Pruning

[Geoff]

Pruning a First Draft WIP Novel can certainly be a Catharic process, a cut here, a chop there, get rid of the waste, that sentence can go, actually the paragraph doesn't do much, don't hold back, go for it, chapter gone too!. You're on a roll, the end result will be worth it .. got to keep cutting … .and finally, yes finally last page …. all done! Right, check that Word Count.

39,000 words ... gulp.

 

[CageSage]

Now to build in the sub-text ...

 

[KateESal]

Heh! Sounds like my first novel. The word count has gone in and out like the tides.

 

[RK Wallis]

And now you'll just make it stronger! I love @KateESal's tide wordcount, so true!

 

[Paul Whybrow]

And yet, with other art, such as painting, music and film, in time, people are more interested in what was covered over and the outtakes and what ended up on the cutting room floor. I've sometimes thought that we writers should offer the 'author's cut' of our book.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

I found it freeing to decide a story is as long as it is. If it comes to 39k, that’s what it is, rather than make it into a novel it doesn’t want to be. There’s a market for all lengths of story.

 

[Geoff]

@Robinne Weiss - good advice. 39K is shall be!

 

[N J Sturgess]

Yup. With the help from people here my current WIP went from 120k to 70k and is now going up again. There was a lot of gumph it didn't need!