Good evening everyone!
Let me start off by telling you about my day. It was busy. It was terrible. I went to college and the dentist. The dentist was the more fun of the two (seriously my dentist is a cool dude).
In addition to this I've been so busy I barely had any time to write this week. This doesn't help my depression. But I've committed to writing a post for you guys every day so here it goes. This post will be about CUTTING words to make the BEST story.
Let's say you slaved away the whole last year on a story. You like the story. But it's not finished yet.
You need to cut.
And what do you cut?
EVERYTHING that does not fit in with your THEME.
In the same way that animals (who are not prone to having philosophical debates) know how to communicate with each other and sometimes humans (and other species) about what they need (strictly what they need) the same should be true for stories. They should communicate only what they need to.
Does this mean you will have to cut your 200k words draft to make it more meaningful? Yes it does. All the fluff you put in (and we all do) needs to go out. And I'm not merely talking about killing your darlings. I'm talking about cutting 500k words down into their essence. The fewer words you can make it the better. The fewer words = the tighter the story becomes = the better the story will read.
Don't believe me? Think about all these scenes you wrote where something romantic happens that you love (and secretly want to happen to you in real life). Then think about them again. Do they really need to happen? Or are you just trying to put in the fluffy scene because you wanted to read it? Or because you wrote a little too much fan-fiction in your early years and man your two main characters (who are both guys) WOULD MAKE THE PERFECT COUPLE!
(I'm guilty of this... Don't judge.)
Anyway. Back to cutting.
In order to cut the RIGHT words/scenes/walls of text you might want to write a synopsis first. A synopsis (written after the first draft) lets you see immediately what you need and where you went wrong with the story. It'll work even better if you take AT LEAST a month off in between the first draft and synopsis. Yes. That's a long time. But: a) you will not SUDDENLY FORGET what your book was about to the point that you can NEVER retrieve it and b) it will help your story SO MUCH in terms of cohesion.
A synopsis will further give you solutions and highlight your theme. You will instantly and instinctively know that THIS PART DOES NOT BELONG IN HERE. And then you will ask yourself: BUT WHAT DOES? If I cut this then my whole story is ruined.
Hint: It's not. It just needs to rest a while again after you've made the synopsis and cut out everything you no longer need (which can sometimes be as much as HALF or more of the first draft).
Is this hard? Is it painful? You bet! Every single cut destroys me! It goes into my flesh like a barbed arrowhead. It makes my heart bleed and cry at the same time.
BUT! Out of that pain will come something greater. Something better. The story will be CLEAR to you (not directly after cutting, mind you, because that would just be like putting weight on your leg after you had shinbone surgery). The story will make sense.
And in the end you might even tell yourself: Wow, this story is actually GOOD (GREAT)!
So is it worth it? Is it worth the pain of cutting out your darlings and more? You be the judge! I don't want you to trust me blindly (although I do). I want you to try it out for yourself. So get back to your WIP and stop browsing blogs. Writing advice only goes so far until you have to go and learn for yourself.
Have a good evening! Bleep-blooop WriteBot wants to sleep (it's 17:30 PM).
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