Revisions, Revisions, Revisions · 6:40pm Nov 13th, 2023
Say it three times, and they shall appear!
*ahem*
Chapter 5 was ~21.5K words. It is now ~15K words.
26 January 2024: AND NOW IT’S EVEN SHORTER, MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I’ve been looking more seriously at the first half of the story a lot lately, with a fresh perspective thanks to some much-needed criticism from friends and fellow writers.
Now, those 7,500 words were not pointless. They had purpose; it just wasn’t good purpose. It didn’t contribute meaningfully to the story, to the characters, to their relationships, or to any worldbuilding--of which I’m actually trying to do less as of late, or at least to do it in a way that fits a scene and isn’t cramming it down your throat.
Hold on, those numbers don’t add up.
I wrote a sane and logical opening scene for the chapter, and refined a lot of the dialogue and minor details throughout the entire chapter. That opening scene accounts for about 1000 words. So, what was all the rest, that mass of ~6,500 words?
A majority of it was clumsy exposition; the prime culprit was from Crystal’s long conversation by the river with Night Cloud. Their bonding time, which should not have included an impromptu history lesson delivered with little emotion and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...
(There’s still a bit of a history lesson, but it’s truncated. It’s probably still too long... but I’m not trying to let perfect be the enemy of good.)
The rest were segments of conversations that, while kind of okay if viewed in a vacuum, made little sense in the greater context of the story. They have managed to improve the chapter and story as a whole with their absence. I’ve been sitting on these changes for the better part of a month. I finished over the last two days, and I have more revision to do yet on chapters 1-4 and 7, and most especially Chapter 3. I fully expect that one to wind up ~10,000 words shorter by a combination of trimming the fat and replacing the Big Dumb Fight with something sane.
I wouldn’t suggest that anyone read it again at this point. You won’t have missed anything crucial, and I would be surprised and impressed if any of you were to remember the things I have deleted at all.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: If you can delete something from your story, and doing so changes nothing? Look at it a couple more times before you make that decision, just in case, and maybe get a second opinion, but you can know that you probably should do it.
