Re: word limits and revision

On Apr 29, 3:57 pm, "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwrede6...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
"Sea Wasp" <seawaspObvi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:4633BB37.70201@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Carole McDonnell wrote:
I am totally convinced that most stories can be cut without harming
them too much.

There's "cut", and then there's "seriously cut".

20% cut is nontrivial. It's one word in five removed. It's reducing a
10,000 word story to 8,000 words.

I would not do that unless I, personally, thought that the story was
bloated and needed cutting to begin with.

Well, and there's cutting and improving, but there's also... Look, if you
took one of the short stories I wrote back when I was trying desperately to
break in by writing short stories, I'm sure you could find ways to cut it.
But that wouldn't turn it into a better short story; it would, at most, turn
it into a better plot outline. It wouldn't exactly be *harmed* by the cuts,
and it might be improved in some way, but it'd be no nearer reaching my
(then) eventual goal of publication, because it wouldn't be "improved" in
the ways it really *needed* improving to achieve that.

I think that's a different issue ,though related to the underwriting/
overwriting
thing. Sometimes stuff can be improved by doing less of something,
some times by doing more of something and sometimes by just doing
something
completely different. Sometimes, unfortuantely, the same piece can
need all three
editorial approaches.

I am struggling at the moment trying to turn my demon story into
something
fit to send my agent. I want her opinion as to what's wrong with it
but if I sent it at
the moment I thinks she's likely to tell me to ditch it. Parts of it
are overdone, parts of it are underwritten, but most of it is just
wrong in ways I cannot pin point and so cannot fi : (

Nicky.



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