Slave to the Script

I've been 'finished' with Writ in Blood for over a year now, but I'm not done with it yet. I spent the last year reading, revising, rereading, revising, and now going through a "final" edit of the book. This will be the last time that I touch the book until I get an agent, as I am ready to vomit with weariness every time I launch yWriter5 and work on the beast.

But things are happening. The book--despite all of my earliest efforts--is actually shrinking. I'm losing a couple hundred words every time I sit down--which usually entails a chapter each time--which, if I keep this up, will put my total number at 280,000 words or so.

Why is this good? Well, I'm glad I asked.

I did submit (as I mentioned earlier) to an agent, but was rejected within a couple of weeks. Part of it has to come from the size of my book. Retailers (who still matter a great deal in this business) aren't eager to give an untested brand--which, in publishing, is one's name (Stephen King have a more well known 'brand' than Steven Dowdle)--too much shelf space.* Why let some newbie have so much space when the new George R.R. Martin is coming out soon? They'd rather have multiple copies of the latest Song of Ice and Fire paperback on a shelf than Writ in Blood.

Do I know, empirically, that the length was part of the reason I was rejected? No. Of course not. But it's a pretty reasonable assumption. There are books longer than mine, of course, and some of them are by new authors. But that wasn't what worked for me.

And there's another issue to consider: The book needs to be shorter. I know that I spilled a lot of digital ink on bragging about my output for the last couple of years. Now I'm trying to undo all of that. But as anyone who writes frequently can tell you, taking away is much easier than adding to it. Compressing, reducing, cutting, trimming--it all builds together for a much more enjoyable read. If all 310,000 words had needed to be there, I would be fine with that. But, as I'm working, I realize that isn't the case. I don't need all of them. I just need most of them.

Examples, yes?

Here is some text from the second draft as it read today before editing.

Disrobing, he crawled beneath the covers, his legs whispering to the linens their pleasure at being surrounded by something so clean. The room, located in the Potentate's Palace across the street from the Circle of Heroes, had a beautiful view of the Circle itself, if the night had as much light as it should have. The glowrods still struggled to illumine the darkness, though in some places it had faded out entirely. Other reports had filtered in about further repercussions of the loss of the Writ, though nothing as drastic as he had feared at first. Originally he had been afraid that the perdition of the Writ would become exponential, with loss building upon loss. As it stood, however, the first interruptions had slowed. Though not stabilized, he knew the city had greater safety now than they had had before. The Weeping Men still haunted him--no one knew where they had gone after breaking free at the border, and all feared their appearance in Coratha.

This paragraph consists of 166 words and does just what it's supposed to do. There's action described, a little bit of Nic's voice there in the poetic description, and important information about the location of where he is. It's all pretty much necessary. Still, however, I was able to reduce this paragraph by more than ten percent. Here's the current draft.

Disrobing, he crawled beneath the covers, his legs whispering through the clean linens. The room, across the street from the Circle of Heroes, had a beautiful view of the Circle itself, if the night had as much light as it should have. The glowrods still struggled to illumine the darkness, though in some places it had faded out entirely. Other reports had filtered in about further repercussions of the loss of the Writ, allaying his fears that the perdition of the Writ would worsen, with loss building upon loss. That had not happened, and he could only credit the fact that *********** had not taken the Writ out of the city.

His mind wandered to the greatest threat: the Weeping Men. No one knew where they had gone after breaking free at the border, and all feared their appearance in Coratha. Yet none had any report on their whereabouts. 

Combined, these two paragraphs now have 149 words. They do all the same things, but keep it tighter, cleaner, and more in control. For example, I kept the idea of legs whispering in the clean sheets, but I eased off on the anthropomorphic mode. I took out superfluous information regarding locus and tightened the overall look by making one paragraph into two. (By the way, the asterisks denote a mild spoiler.) I cut down on the amount of 'reminder text' that refreshes the reader about stuff they'd read earlier in the book.

This process is time consuming. I have to read each line carefully and make sure that there's nothing unnecessary that's left behind. If I'm going to sell this book and its 280k words, I need to make sure that each one is worth having in there and reading.

On an alternate note, I have already begun work on my next book by designing the magic and technology systems that let the sci-fi/fantasy hybrid I'm thinking of come to pass. I'll post more as events warrant.


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*Yes, ereaders abound. I know. That isn't, actually, what matters here. Until the roles change and hard copies sell the vast minority of copies, the amount of physical space one's book takes up on the shelf is a legitimate concern for book vendors.