Cutting Out the Dross

Oh, editing.

When I finished my first book, Powers Awakening, it had a different title (The Awakening), and was pretty long at 142,000 words.  I had learned that Shadow Mountain Publishing only took Utah authors, so I created a query letter, proudly stating that I had a 140k+ word book.

The rejection letter returned promptly.  It was a standard form letter, so I didn't know what, if anything I had done wrong.  But another aspiring writer and a friend, Janette Clark, told me that she thought the page count was too long for a first-time novel of that genre.

Turns out that the average YA debut novel is 80k to 100k words.  Publishers just don't want to risk printing a longer book for a beginning author.  It costs more money to print, and takes up more room on a book shelf.

But now I was faced with a dilemma.  I had to cut out pretty much a third of my book.

I think I've done a good job so far.  It's been about three years since I finished that novel, and I've cut it down to 120k words.  I haven't worked on it continuously, obviously.  I've been learning my craft, writing in my second book, and evolving into the writer I want to be.

I have a few more items to erase.  I originally had my protagonist join a family where there were six kids.  I cut out one kid already, and I think I'm going to cut out another.  They just don't add anything extra to the story, and any story arcs that include them can easily be changed to the other kids.

I also have a few chapters that can be summed up in a page or a flashback.  I don't need to go into all this detail on how the Stillwells are building a room for Garrett.  It's just not exciting to hear about hammering and nailing and putting up sheet rock.  See, you're bored already!

And near the end of the book, an event happens where I'm suddenly introducing twelve new characters.  These characters are actually based on three of my sibling's families, and I did it as a thank you for their help with my book.  However, that's just too many new characters five chapters before the end.  I'm sad to see the bulk of them go, but it needs to be done.  I have a few printed books where those characters can live on, but the final version will only have one family remaining.

Hopefully, with all these changes, and other general tightening up of the paragraphs, I can hit my goal of 100,000 words.  Once that happens, I'll start to shop around for an agent and/or a publisher.  It should help that I'll have the bulk of my second book done already.