by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m still working on the first draft of this first novel that I plan to use to kick off a six novel project. So, still have time yet to figure out how to whittle the word count down from its current obscene ~140,000 or so words, down to something closer to ~100,000.
The first thing that I might be able to do is, once the first draft is finished, to really think about how I might compress the plot some. But I can’t really do that very well until I finish the first draft. That’s why it’s important to finish a first draft, even if it’s crap.
The other idea I have at the moment to fix this particular problem is when I give the second draft to beta readers, I really tell them to look for different ways to cut the word count.
The issue, of course, is that I’m a little nervous that the word count situation is existential. That the story I want to tell is intrinsically a certain length and at some point I’m going to realize that my goal isn’t so much cutting words as it is to make the story so compelling that any literary agent I might query will be willing to look past how long the story is.
That’s probably a pretty big ask, but I’m still very much in the delusional phase of writing this first novel.
