How and why to cut words

Hi folks!

This will be a post about how and why you should cut words. I have the perfect example because it happened to me only two days ago.

Let's see.

I've been working on this story the last two weeks. The story's goal/theme was 'character treated poorly by his surroundings wants to be free'. I wrote about 10k words. Then more themes crept in. Why did he want to be free? What did that mean for the rest of his people? What would happen then? How could he solve this? Does he need to free his whole community or only himself? What if he only frees himself?

The story got BIGGER. I did the thing you're not supposed to (always IGNORE 'supposed to' when someone says it to you! Even when you 'supposed-to' yourself!) and started incorporating MORE and BIGGER/BETTER themes into my story. I got to 40k words.

This adding themes is one of the best decisions you can make. Don't stick with a story that's too small. Keep trying to make it bigger. Make it better. Because if you think it's too small (read: boring) when you're writing it (symptoms include boredom and not knowing what to write - also called 'block') it will be sheer agony to finish it (and if you're like me and don't like excruciating pain you won't finish it anyway). At the same time, if it already bores you after 10-20k words, why would anyone else want to read it? And if it bores you after 50k words the same applies.

And if you do add themes and set your sights higher then your story will become better for it. It will surpass your initial 'manageable' goal and grow on its own. It will grow into an amazing story like a rosebud grows into a rose.

Back to my WIP. I am also no longer writing on this document. Why? Because the story outgrew its initial beginnings so much that editing it would NEVER truly work out. The time I would have to invest into editing it is enormous. In truth the whole story would have to be rewritten.

So I had to think about it. It took me two days. There was never a question in my mind about not finishing it. HOWEVER. In order to finish it I have to cut a lot. I have to cut 40k words. The first 40k words. Is that hard? Yes, yes, we've talked about this already, it's hard. But at the same time, it's worth it. I needed to write 40k words to figure out what I wanted my story to be and what I wanted to talk about in it. (Other people by the way call this 'planning'.)


This is the how and why to cut words. There's also a whole post about WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO TAKE BREAKS to follow this up. That will be out tomorrow.

Let me say for now: CUT your words even if it cuts your heart. It's the ONLY way you can find your story's soul and make it what it needs to be for you to be satisfied with it.

WriteBot shall return!