how do you know what to edit out?

Giving yourself some time between finishing the first draft and starting revisions helps make you somewhat objective about your work. It's often suggested taking six weeks off after the first draft.

How do you know what to edit out? Well, there are edits and there are edits. You cut unnecessary words, entire sentences that don't belong. In editing, while cutting words, you're also rewriting sentences so you say the same thing in fewer words. IOW, "tightening" the manuscript.

You will also shorten scenes or eliminate unnecessary scenes altogether. Each time, of course, you're cutting words and/or sentences and rewriting things to make it sound better, more fluid, more visual. Many people advocate cutting all adverbs. I don't do that myself, but I do cut the unnecessary ones (run quickly, that sort of thing). Oftentimes you cut an adverb and rewrite the sentence to reflect what the adverb was cheaply doing.

As I said, there's a lot to editing.

Is it best to maybe over edit and then add in where I think it's necessary?

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You'll find yourself doing this when you cut a line now, and discover later you need something to take its place.
allen

You may not have to edit out anything when it comes to story. It may just be a matter of going through and deleting redundant phrases or your favorite crutch words.

Okay, more than likely, that won't cut out the more than 40K you're projecting to cut, but it will help. Beyond that, let the book sit for 3-4 weeks, then go back and reread it. You'll see things that aren't right when you go back through. Trust yourself.

The most important step to successfully editing a book is finishing the first draft first. Worry at this stage will probably stifle your creativity. Get it all out there, on the page. (Though some people do edit as they go.)

Generally, make sure your scenes start as late as possible and end as early as possible, and focus on the most interesting bits. For instance, when two people come together in a scene, usually the introductory bits can be cut. Be careful of rehashing sentences and ideas, and keep things tight. Read out loud (or have your computer read to you) and look for rough spots in prose. Being that you're doing historical fantasy, you will likely find that you've written quite a bit of backstory and world building that can probably be safely cut. Not to say that it isn't important to have written it in the first place. If it's helped you to define your story, it's served it's purpose.

Hope some of this helps. Good luck and enjoy the ride!

Nicole

Always, no matter what, save updated versions of your novel. As you move through editing phases, do a Save As, keeping the original document untouched. (This is key if you have the kind of experience I had, where I accidentally broke my first chapter with over-vigorous editing. I had to go back to an earlier version to see where I'd gone wrong.)

Get your story down in your first draft. Don't think about word count, only think about your story.

Only when you've completed that can you go back, read what you have and decide if it's all Story or if there's extra stuff that's not really Story. And then you take out the parts that aren't Story.

And don't I wish it was just that easy, but that's what's got to be done.

Some good books about editing your own work:

The Artful Edit by Susan Bell
The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner
Manuscript Makeover by Elizabeth Lyon

and I'm sure there are many others.

What everyone has said. I finished my first edit about three weeks ago and am now moving towards the 2nd. After I've let it sit for a couple of weeks, stuff just sticks out to me that shouldn't be there. For me the fresh eye thing really works. If I try to redo it too soon, I know what I'm trying to say and will not see critical mistakes. It I let it sit and simmer for a couple of weeks, I see things and wonder why I missed them in the first place. Good luck.

Get feedback from betas and critiquers. If you don't know what to edit out yourself, your readers are going to be your best helpers.

What Dr Nicole said was important. By reading the work out loud you'll hear any parts that hold up the action or you'll be saying words and thinking, 'what has this got to do with anything?'

I also edit the heck out of the first chapter so it says only what is needed to start the book and grab the reader. I also keep description down to attributes needed in the plot. I let the reader decide whether the heroine is blond or brunette unless some action depends upon hair colour.

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”

-- Elmore Leonard

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”

-- Elmore Leonard

I just look for all the little red balloons my editor puts in the columns.

And those come AFTER I get rid of all the suddenlys and thens, omit most of the adverbs, kill off run on sentences, take out the unnecessary backstory, slap those darn dialogue tags away, eliminate my favorite words when they occur more than once on the same page, and restructure a paragraph of tedious description into a sentence.

Works every time.

Lately I've found that if it's going to make me cry to take it out... it needs to go.

That's probably not the kind of help you were looking for, though.

The plot is a game and your characters take turns...

Mela said:

right, so anything that doesn't further the Story is toast.

There's a lot of politics, intrique going on in the first part that comes back to play in the latter part of the book. Between that and the dynamics between characters, I'm having trouble deciding what is absolutely necessary to keep and what will further the plot, not only in the beginning, but further along in the story.

So I thought I'd ask you all: how do you decide what stays and what goes? From my perspective, everything goes that doesn't advance the story.

It's really a tough call and I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but it worries me. But I guess I'll have to finish the damn thing to know specifically what is important in the beginning and what isn't.
sorry for rambling ...

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My theory: If you think about the plot as a game played out by characters, personified forces, and inner demons etc, then you can hack out anything that isn't a move, and anything that gets between important moves thus muddying up the conflict.

The caveat is that sometimes apparently static things are really moves, e.g. a wadge of description may actually be "Stunningly beautiful wilderness demands to be defended".

But I'm with everybody else - finish the book, then you'll know what it's about and what to cut!

I read stuff outloud especially dialogue. If does does sound right or if I stumble too much when I read it aloud, it is gone.

I'm going through much the same at the mo - my WIP was hideously overlong. I've been through tightning things which has taken out quite a lot,and now I've got to decide which bits should go entirely.

It helps me to look at a scene and work out exactly what I'm trying to do with it. Characterisation? Forwarding the plot? Foreshadowing? And then trying to see if I can take two, or three, scenes and combine them, make each scene work harder for its money, so I might have furthering the plot, foreshadowing and the characterisation together rather than seperate ( and this has the added advantage of adding extra oomph to the scenes too ). Of course this was something I should have done in the first place, but we learn as we go...

Don't even think about editing until you have written the whole first draft. First drafts are allowed to be rambling and disjointed -- pour out everything that occurs to you at this stage. Looking back will stop you cold. Don't do it.

The first draft done, lock it away for at least six weeks. In the meantime, work on an entirely different project. Also, either read or reread some good books on editing. This reading should get you excited about wading into your second draft, new or resharpened editing tools in hand. A couple of my favorites are:

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Renni Browne and Dave King - excellent basic text, and fun to read. My edition even has cartoons by the great George Booth.

The Fiction Editor, the Novel and the Novelist, Thomas McCormack - brilliant, but could be scary. McCormack like neologisms and complicated concepts, and if you happen to be a professional editor, his ire and trenchant humor may cut you deep.

As for how the actual cutting process goes. I find that I can cut a full quarter or even a full third from my manuscripts just by tightening up the prose, leaving the content pretty much intact. (Think Mammy pulling on Scarlett's corset laces until she can fit in a dress with a 17 inch waist. Now that's tight prose.)

How to know what content to leave out? Or what content needs to be expanded or put in for the first time? Here's where a beta reader comes in. Two of the most helpful things a reader can do for you are simply to check any place in the script where he gets confused and to note any questions about the story that you don't seem to answer for him.

Moved to Basic Writing Questions.

I come from a non-fiction perspective so it's a little different, but I view anything that isn't necessary to convey my meaning as fluff. Fluff is okay; it enhances the story if it's there but doesn't hurt anything if it's removed. There are a couple of publications I work with regularly who give me a variable word count because they're not sure how much space they will have. I deliberately build in a few parageaphs that can be removed without losing meaning if space is tight.

On the flipside, sometimes taking anything at all out would alter the meaning. I had this happen with a sidebar that I just could not get down to the requested word count. I winnowed and pared and cut as much as I could, but it got to a point where I would not have been comfortable with my name on the piece of if I cut anymore because it would not have made sense. Fortunately the editor ultimately agreed.

Tons of great advice in this thread so far.

What I basically to is go sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, scene by scene, one chapter at a time. I make sure that they all fit together, flow well, and above all that they are important to the story I'm telling. If not, I chop them.

Sometimes it's as simple as changing a word or two, or rearranging a phrase or sentence. Sometimes a whole paragraph goes bye bye. Sometimes, a lot of re-writing takes place. Sometimes you add a scene or two.

Long story short...
I started with 154,703 words. I decided The ending needed changing, so I moved two chapters from the second book in the series to the end of the first; that gave me about 168,000 words. So far, Ive fully edited the first three chapters and am down to 160,000 words already. My goal is to get below 140k words without damaging the narrative. I guarantee that will happen.

I write what comes to me and edit later, hence the large word count. Now that I'm finished, the critic in me can go back and cut the unnecessary crap.

As was said above, write it to completion first, them worry about the editing.


Here is a great article from Holly Lisles website. If you aren't sure where to begin, this is a good start.
http://www.hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/wc2-4.html

Mela asks:

"Is there some trick or formula or something you go by to know which strictly necessary info should stay in a book versus which needs to be edited out?"

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Allan Guthrie, an acquisition editor for Point Blank Press, released a 'white paper' on this subject that sits pinned to the wall of many a writer's office. It's called 'Hunting Down the Pleonasms' and has become famous as a valuable and simple tool for cutting out the deadwood.

At the link shown above, there is a video and a Word document. The video with yours truly is reletively unimportant, and I was tired when I filmed it. Download the free Word document, though.

You won't be sorry.

robertmblevins said:

Allan Guthrie, an acquisition editor for Point Blank Press, released a 'white paper' on this subject that sits pinned to the wall of many a writer's office. It's called 'Hunting Down the Pleonasms' and has become famous as a valuable and simple tool for cutting out the deadwood.

Download the free Word document, though.

You won't be sorry.

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I just checked it out, and It's great. Rules to live, er...write by!

Tough question. It's trial and error really. As others have said take a few weeks out after finishing the first draft to get some perspective and when you look back there will be things that jump out at you as needing to be cut. I tend to find that there are a lot of hanging threads that I meant to follow up but never found a place for, they go. Also repetition of information goes and idle conversations between characters get the chop. Then tidy it up and give it to a few beta readers, they will no doubt have a few suggestions for you.