A little perspective goes a long way...

Hell's Own was a story I was moderately proud of when I finished writing it. I'd written it in 6,000-word chapters, chunks, really, and I'd read and made edits to each for a day or so after writing.

Well, I entered it in the ABNA contest. I made the first cut, whoo-hoo. I should have made the second cut, down to 100, it's a great story. At first I thought it was a bias against SF/Fantasy in the contest that kept me out... but no.

I attended the writer's conference I went to last weekend, and heard things, and saw things that made me wonder...

So I used a macro or two to highlight words in the manuscript. Words such as 'was', 'by', etc. that indicate passive voice, or helper-verbs or linking.

Wow. I found tons of passive voice. Tons more helper/unnecessary words. Even more sentences with FOUR or MORE linked clauses... especially in action scenes.

Whups.

I spent an intensive four days scrubbing 130,493 words. I trimmed 5200 extra words unpassive-voicing, separating, deleting. Just in Pass One!

Pass Two will have me delete whole sections of unneeded plot, and move whatever plot I need to keep to a different section. I'll also add sensory detail (not just weather, but texture of the floor, internal sensations, grain of wood, that sort of thing). This will probably have me add 1,000 words but delete 3500, for a net reduction of 2500.

That'll bring the 130,453 down to about 121,500 or so words. Almost without trying.

I clearly had a lot to keep me from advancing in the ABNA contest, and I now know I have more work to do on my other mss, plus more to do before I EVER think of querying.

It's important, since Hell's Own goes out in 3 more weeks.

Pass Three will be a repeat of Pass One, looking for more passivity, too-long sentences, redundant clauses.

I'll get to 120,000 words or someone's gonna die (probably an unneeded character :) )

later,

dave