Less words during re-write

Yep...going through the same thing. I haven't had the time to figure out how to begin posting again...
Good luck with your many mini-plots...just weave them through like a tapestry, for it is your tapestry you are weaving...

Donalie Fitzgerald Scherer

Thanks for the support, I wish you the very best of luck too. :)

I'm definitely worried about that happening to me. When I think of editing my work, I think of taking out all the crappy scenes, and there are little to no scenes I want to add in.

My advice is to edit novels that don't have many scenes that need to be cut out. OR to aim much higher in word count, so that after you take out a ton of it, you will still have a decent sized book left.

:)

I'd like to give some professional advice, if I may. First, so that you will know I am not talking out of my hat, I am the Senior Editor for Written Pictures Publishing, Inc.

When editing your drafts, do not remove anything. Simply check for verb tense agreement, grammar, spelling, comma placement and other punctuation issues. If you discover any plot holes, note them and brainstorm solutions for them. DO NOT REMOVE SCENES UNLESS AND UNTIL REQUESTED BY YOUR EDITOR. The impulse to remove scenes comes from allowing your inner critic to take over. Ignore the dirty S.O. B.

Industry standard for a full-fledged novel is 150,000 words, due to printers charging publishers for that word count regardless what actual count is submitted. Publishers must then eat that cost, which ultimately eats into your royalties.

The second reason you do not remove scenes is that most publishers promote your book using every means necessary. One of the best ways to promote a book, from the publisher's point of view, is to take the book to movie. That way, publicity from the film pushes book sales, meaning less marketing expense. Books go to movie when they have one or more powerful scenes per chapter. If you have taken the time to write secneically, using what advances the plot rather than what enhances the extended description, the book WILL be sought by someone for its movie rights. This is A VERY GOOD THING for the author as well as for the publishing company.

Good luck with your efforts!
Sincerely,

Jane M. Smith, Senior Editor
Written Pictures Publishing, Inc.
jsmithwrittenpictures@gmail.com
submissionswp@gmail.com

"Fight the good write..." Quote from racinggirl74

Thank you for your input, I really appreciate it. However, I must admit that my story was really really bad before I started editing it, and it sounds a lot better now. I'm currently working on another scene which should give me more words, but I know I won't be able to turn it into a 150,000 word novel. It's just what it is, and for now, that goal is beyond what I can reach. ;) Perhaps later though.

"Industry standard for a full-fledged novel is 150,000 words, due to printers charging publishers for that word count regardless what actual count is submitted. Publishers must then eat that cost, which ultimately eats into your royalties."

I didn't know that before. I know some people can produce 150,000 words and beyond, but do most really write that much? Dedication...and a good plot. I'd love to one day have my book turned into a movie, so I might want to consider adding more crucial parts, and possibly a couple more chapters. You gave me a fair amount to think about, so as I said before, thank you for your help. :)

Chloe

I've always heard that the industry standard for word counts was more like 70k - 100k. What genre do you work with mostly?

In no way is 150,000 words the "industry standard" for novel length. 150,000 words comes out to over 600 pages. Note how many novels you see on the shelf that reach that length. Not too many. And especially not too many from first-time authors. Each genre has its own parameters for word count. Of course there are novels in each genre that go outside those parameters in both directions, but those very long or very short novels are the exception rather the norm, and, once again, they're generally written by established authors rather than first-timers.

Here's a recent blog post by FinePrint Literary agent Colleen Lindsay about approximate word counts by genre:
http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-word-counts-and-novel-length.ht...

What she's written there follows what I've been hearing for years from conferences, professional organizations, other authors, agents and editors, etc.

Industry standard for a full-fledged novel is 150,000 words, due to printers charging publishers for that word count regardless what actual count is submitted. Publishers must then eat that cost, which ultimately eats into your royalties.

I worked in production / design for one of the big publishing houses and I never heard of book printing economics working this way. If a publisher's having 100,000 copies of a 60,000-word novel printed, they're going to pay for the ink and paper (and labor and cutting and binding and so forth) for what is approximately a 230-page book. (The only quirk I ran up against was making sure the InDesign file I sent to the printer had a page count that was a multiple of 8. This had to do with the number of pages that could fit on one sheet of printer paper.) Why on earth would they be charged for the cost of a 600-plus-page book?

What happens with those 600-plus-page books is that the publisher must pay more (than a shorter book) to have them printed, but they can't up the cover price of those books at the same rate. Even if the printing of a 600-page book costs nearly twice what it does for a 300-page book, the publisher can't charge the consumer twice as much. So the thicker books become a bigger financial risk for the publisher. They have to sell more of 'em to recoup the cost. But the odds aren't so good at selling more of them, because the bookstores may be hesitant to buy many copies. 3 600-page books take up as much shelf space as 6 300-page books. So, unless the bookstore has a hunch that this particular fat novel will have a lot of fans (say, it's a George R.R. Martin book), they may buy and stock fewer copies than they would have had it been a shorter book.

And I don't have anything against long books. I've got quite a few of them on my bookshelves. It's just that, if you want to write one, and sell it to one of the big houses, you may want to wait until you've established yourself with a few other books first. I've read some agents guidelines where they specifically say they *won't* take any submissions over 100K or 120K.

So definitely don't feel any pressure to stuff your novel full of scenes until it hits 150K.

--
NaNo '01 - '04 - occasional winners, occasional brilliance, but mostly unfinished tripe
NaNo '05 - Number Zero (50K)
NaNo '06 - The Babushka Lady (60K - draft 3 and almost finished!)

Thank you Satori, that makes me feel a lot better. :D And thanks for explaining that, it puts it into a better perspective for me about publishing the books, and the costs it takes.

Funny, because my word count is expanding. I've edited about 20-22k of my rough draft, and my edited draft is almost 28k.

2006: Dance of the Mamed (about 18000 words)
2007: Project I-12 (WINNER AND FINISHED!)
Cups of caffinated drinks consumed: Too many to count.

If it's in the forum, and it doesn't make sence, then I probably posted it.

^_^ You're lucky then. I think it's just because I took out a lot of the crap that it was - I would NEVER send it to a publisher, regardless if people say to just look for spelling/grammar. It was...it was horrible.

Exact opposite is happening to me and I'm equally as worried... I've gotten two chapters done and both ended up about three times as long. Does this mean I'm being too wordy? Am I detracting from the story because I feel like I should put in superfluous detail? Blah. Such a frustrating process, isn't it?

But I really wouldn't be too worried though. I mean, one of the most highly acclaimed books ever is Of Mice and Men and it was only like fifty pages long or something like that. It's tiny... Yet it packs a huge punch. So as long as what you're getting rid of is unnecessary fluff, I wouldn't think it'd be a problem. It's not the size that matters, y'know (yaaaaaay overused sex jokes)

Woah, that must be fate then. I just finished reading Of Mice and Men for English class (which without, I would not know how amazing it is). But you're right, I must take that into consideration. I've just got to keep reminding myself to finish editing it first, then look back over it, and see how ready it is. Just keep working!
(Thank you for the great advice! Best of luck on your own novel too.)

Mine's shrunk by about 6 thousand words in the editing (given the first draft ended up at 114 thousand words, there was room for it to slim down! :D)

Don't worry about it. When you're doing a first draft it's a good idea to chuck everything at the wall and see what sticks. Don't leave something out just because you think "well, it sounds cool, but there's no point to it". It might be useful later. If not, take it out in the editing. And don't worry about the story getting either shorter or longer in the editing. The story will be the length it needs to be.

When I finished the first draft of Bad Company on the first day of NaNoEdMo, the first thing I did was cut the word count down to well below 100,000 by removing several dead scenes. Dead scenes are scenes I rewrote during a WriMo without removing the previous version, but left in to pad the word count. Since they suck, they can be safely removed. But then the word count started going up again when I started filling in the plot holes I left gaping because I never bothered to write those scenes even though I planned them. I'll probably still finish around 100,000. But no way I'm going all the way up to 150K. I'm not, say, Robert Jordan. I'm probably more comparable to Robert Ludlum, in word/page count as well as genre...

-----
Script Frenzy 2008: Spanner -- WINNER!
Project Blog: Spanner's World

As an editor once told Stephen King, "Second draft = first draft - 10%"

Don't stress too much over your word count; your novel will end up however long its supposed to be. Don't try and add extra content that will take away from the story - after all, both short and long novels get published. :-)

____________________________________
There is a world
just around the corner of your mind,
where reality is an intruder
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____________________________________

I think this is going to happen to me. Scratch that - it will be happening to me, lol. The first draft of my story is going to be around 180k words (more or less). But I can already think of a lot of things that I can tighten up and whatnot. It will probably shrink to around 100k - 120k with the second draft, or that's what I'm hoping. My first draft was so large because I basically didn't edit anything as I went - there's a lot of character stuff (personal thoughts from the MC, for example) that don't really need to be in there. I figured... aim for a first draft with everything, so that I could see for myself later on with an un-biased view what works.

NaNo 2006 = Cloudburst = 14k
NaNo 2007 = Redeeming Pandora's Curse - WINNER

Blogging NaNo 2007 = http://sailorchibi.blogspot.com/

My stuff almost always gets longer in a rewrite. Mainly because I just write a first draft of the storyline, and forget some of the improtant stuff like, say, what the characters actually look like, or how they got to b from a, or important reactions and stuff. I read it throuh once i finish the first draft, and think: 'damn'.

But hey, that's what redrafts are for!

Also writing a novel 8 years in the making so far... Yeek.

Yet another person who cuts a lot during editing, at least the first round. The one I just finished transcribing the edits on (I edit on paper), I ended up cutting nearly 32k- from a 65k novel. I know I'm going to have to add more to it. It's too short, even for a YA. Of course, I may have cut so much that parts of it don't make sense, but I don't realize because I know what happens. Hence I'm going to have a couple friends look at it.

I know part of my problem is that most of the editing advice says, "Cut what isn't necessary." But I have the type of mind where I can justify almost everything as unnecessary, which is a major problem if I actually want novels, not novellas. So I'm going to have to unlearn that tendency.

"Footsteps in the snow suggest where you have been, point where you were going: but where they suddenly vanish, never dismiss the possibility of flight..." - Diane Duane, A Wizard Alone

Moderator: Nano Soundtracks

Going for 75k- FINISHED!

And that is one of the reasons why I hate the phrase "Cut what isn't necessary" (the other reason is that this phrase itself has cut out the most important part: "to the story" should be on the end.). Instead, try substituting this phrase: "Does this scene/character/description/line/etc. move the story in the direction I want it to go?" This way instead of focussing on "cutting," your energy is on what the story is about.

See, to me, that's the same thing as "cut what isn't necessary." It's just worded differently. The idea behind both is what I took too much to heart. I need to stop overthinking it.

"Footsteps in the snow suggest where you have been, point where you were going: but where they suddenly vanish, never dismiss the possibility of flight..." - Diane Duane, A Wizard Alone

Moderator: Nano Soundtracks

Going for 75k- FINISHED!

hello,

well i start on my first ever rewrite tonight. I have already cut bits out where i feel i was just repeating myself;
I
have no idea if i will add or lose words. Normally not if i add more dialogue but I'm more worried about the flow of the story

My scenes were pretty mixed up as i tend to jump back and forwards when i write. When i'm trying to reach my 50 000 words that is.

So i cut them up and swapped them around a bit and now i'm thinking that the story could completely change...and i will have lost my first story, which although was totally corny sentimental and depressing, it was still my story. My first ever !

DO NOT REMOVE SCENES UNLESS AND UNTIL REQUESTED BY YOUR EDITOR

Do editors even have time these days for books that haven't even been properly revised, just proof-read? I've heard a LOT of the opposite - unless you're already fairly well-known, you need to do a whole lot of chopping yourself or your book won't even get that far.

To the OP: Wow, you must have padded... a lot. O_o; Sounds like that book was probably meant to be closer to a short story than a novel...

Actually, I didn't pad at all! It was just really, really bad writing that needed to be chopped - and fast. Lots of bad dialogue and cliches. :D But I'm going to finish hacking away at it, get through this revision, and then ask another person to review it. Then, fixing anything that needs to be fixed, I'll eventually send it to some editors. Yay for planning ahead.

(Plus, I still have to write three chapters over, so it should bump my last word count up a bit).

I've recently started editting my 2006 NaNo again. Last year I proof read it for spelling, grammar, sentence structure etc etc and in the past month I've taken up properly editting it. 10,000 words into it I'm finding that some scenes get lengthened and others get slashed out or changed - drastically shortening them. I'm hoping that it will come out at 75-100K when I'm finished with it but it's pretty much got a mind of it's own at the moment. But I know I've got some gaping plot holes coming up which will expand my word count drastically.

.Suzanne.
NaNoWriMo2007: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.