Writing Report June 27, 2025

I try posing twice a week -- fictoids on Tuesdays, essays / reviews / general business on Fridays -- but have missed the last few weeks due to a busy schedule.

Nothing negative or worrisome, just requiring me to prioritize my efforts.  Now that I’ve gotten one major project out of the way, I intend to post more regularly on Fridays.

The major project?  Trimming my latest WIP -- a historical novel set in 1910 -- down to a more acceptable length for submission.

When I started writing my first draft, I aimed for a thousand words as my daily goal. 

When I started editing, I aimed for deleting a thousand a day. 

When I started, I aimed for an 80K word count. 

I clocked in at 120K+

Started trimming away, hoping to get it below 100K. 

Some notes on my trimming process: 

I over-write and over-explain. 

A lot. 

First swing was easy, just cut out redundancies. 

Trimmed excessive verbiage:  “He got up and left the room” to “He left the room.”

Trimmed down explanations.  Just need to mention item X was in use in 1910, not go into its development history.  

Next I evaluated what was necessary and what wasn’t. 

Looked at scenes with cold eyes.  Do they advance story?  No?  Out they go. (Did keep a couple of short ones that help convey character traits.) 

The reader doesn’t need to know where most characters live since the story focuses more on where they work.

Out those scenes sent.

Dropped judo from one character’s backstory; as a result a scene set in real life Japanese immigrant village of the era can go as well. 

Had a couple paired scenes; i.e., two scenes with the same group of characters dining, two where a couple characters go horseback riding twice.  Did I need two scenes for each? 

Compressed the dining scenes into one.  The scene was just a character introduction, the second one impacts the story. 

In real life those characters sharing two meals on two different days  would make sense but since the second scene carries real urgency, I combined it with the character intro. 

The riding scenes also make sense taking place on two different days in real life but that added 1K words to the story, so they got compressed, too..  

The combined riding scene works better now.  First ride was to get one pesky character out of another character’s hair, second has the pesky pesky character learning something that backfires on the other character. 

“Trimmed dialog scenes.” 

“What do you mean?”

“Got rid of dialog that doesn’t advance story.”

is now 

“Trimmed dialog scenes.  Got rid of dialog that doesn’t advance story.”

Now I’m down from 120K to just under 101K.  Still a lot more trimming to do, however. =sigh= 

I’m ruthless w/scenes that don’t advance plot even if nice character moments.   A bad habit I picked up in TV is to have some character briefly recap the story after a commercial break so any viewers just turning in could catch up.  I find I frequently write scenes that sum up story to that point; out they go.  

I found a >lot< of redundant scenes where characters mused over what just happened. 

Out. 

They. 

Go. 

Kept looking for places to compress scenes.  Originally I had two characters at an institute drive to neighboring community, meet a third character who relayed some vital info to them, then the pair drove back to act on that info. 

Changed it into the third character coming to the institute to deliver a lecture that contains the vital info in it.  Now the pair can act immediately on the info.

Finally decided I squeezed all of the excess out, couldn’t trim more without adversely affecting the story. 

What started as 120K+ is now down to 88K+.

Yea, team.

© Buzz Dixon