No, I\u2019m not refer\u00adring to the sick prac\u00adtice of using razor blades on myself\u2014although there have been times when I\u2019ve been tempt\u00aded to. I\u2019m talk\u00ading about cut\u00adting words.<\/p>\n
A month ago, I received the most help\u00adful rejec\u00adtion I\u2019ve ever got\u00adten from an agent. The agent, who shall remain name\u00adless, said that while my nov\u00adel was good\u2014well-written, great char\u00adac\u00adters, enter\u00adtain\u00ading story\u2014it was over<\/em>writ\u00adten in many places, mean\u00ading over-described, over-ren\u00addered.<\/p>\n Good advice is only help\u00adful if the per\u00adson to whom it\u2019s direct\u00aded is ready to hear it. Turns out, after so many no\u2019s, I was ready. I looked at my man\u00adu\u00adscript with an absolute\u00adly ruth\u00adless eye. If the chap\u00adter, scene, sen\u00adtence or word was\u00adn\u2019t ful\u00adfill\u00ading a pur\u00adpose, it got its ass cut.<\/p>\n Luck\u00adi\u00adly I\u2019m blessed with a bril\u00adliant wife who is a nat\u00adur\u00adal edi\u00adtor, and said wife just hap\u00adpens to be unem\u00adployed at the moment. Over the past month, Alexas and I would sit down each morn\u00ading and read the book side-by-side. Each would make rec\u00adom\u00admen\u00adda\u00adtions for cuts, and then we\u2019d argue about it for the rest of the day. And then one of us would give in. Usu\u00adal\u00adly me.<\/p>\n I went into this edit with an ide\u00adal in mind that I\u2019ve termed The Fred Astaire rule. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s apoc\u00adryphal or not, but I once read that when shoot\u00ading wrapped on one his films, Astaire would tell the edi\u00adtor, \u201cMake it as good as you can, then cut ten min\u00adutes.\u201d My plan was to cut the bit of excess ver\u00adbiage lying around, then reduce the book fur\u00adther by 10 per\u00adcent. I thought addi\u00adtion\u00adal cuts would be impos\u00adsi\u00adble. I was wrong.<\/p>\n In the end, I took a 93,000-word man\u00adu\u00adscript down to 74,999. Do the math and you\u2019ll find that\u2019s over 18,000 words, or almost 20 per\u00adcent. The book now reads almost twice as fast, lead\u00ading me to come up with the fol\u00adlow\u00ading for\u00admu\u00adla:<\/p>\n Where<\/strong><\/p>\n RS=Reading Speed per\u00adcent\u00adage faster RS=(((OWC-NWC)\/OWC)*100)*4<\/p>\n The for\u00admu\u00adla is BS, but the idea is sim\u00adple. If you take the per\u00adcent reduc\u00adtion and mul\u00adti\u00adply it by 4, you\u2019ll get an idea of how much faster the book reads. For exam\u00adple, if you take a 100,000-word book and cut it to 80,000 words (a 20% reduc\u00adtion), the book will then read approx\u00adi\u00admate\u00adly 80 per\u00adcent faster.<\/p>\n
\nOWC=Old Word Count
\nNWC=New Word Count<\/p>\n