I’m at the 51% mark with my trim and have cut 10,000 words. Right on target. And I haven’t cut any story, just flab in the writing. Usually when I revise, I add words. I thought I wrote lean, but that’s clearly not the case. Strangely enough, I have to say that I’ve enjoyed every hour of this. I’m loving this edit, improving the flow and immediacy, cutting out redundancies and superflous lines. Who would have thunk?
For those of you who are numbers geeks, here’s a peek at the spreadsheet I’m using to track my trim goals and actuals. “Var” means variance. “CTarget” is the target to cut from the chapter.
Interesting numbers. If I may ask, what kind of “flab” are you cutting: extra adverbs? descriptive passages? superfluous dialogue? Or is it a combination?
It’s not adverbs. I’m cutting redundant lines. And reworking lines where instead of being immediate “Birds sang”, I have things like “Talen heard birds singing.” There are some dialoge exchanges that don’t really add anything. And some inner thoughts. And there are some action sequences where I have just a bit too much back and forth and it doesn’t add and even makes it confusing. And some convoluted sentences that need to be reworked.
Stuff like that.
I simple love how organized your approach is. Keep up the good work, can’t wait to read!