50 Ways to Edit Your WIP

When I signed my first contract and agreed to chop 30,000 plus words off my 55,000 word WIP, I knew what I was getting into.

Well, sort of.

I knew it would be painful to cut that many words. I knew scenes I loved would have to go and be condensed. I knew it would be hard. What I didn’t know is how many unnecessary words I used. How many times in a row I said the same thing. And how much internal dialogue could be cut.

As I try and cut the last 10,000 words, I’m also learning that cutting means changing the voice of my characters a little. I try and keep their voice strong in places that count, but in order to cut excess words without cutting out many more scenes, I have to trim their voices. Yes, it is painful. In fact, if you’ve been following my twitter feed, you know. But this is the price of publication. It’s a step in the path I want to go. Not the final destination, but part of the journey.

And to make it a little more bareable for me and you, and hopefully bring a smile to your face, please indulge me in an edit over load break…

Remember that old song “5o ways to Leave your Lover?”  Go ahead! Sing with me. You know you want to!

There’s gotta be 50 ways to edit your WIP

“The problem is all inside your WIP”, my editor told me
“The answer is easy if you want to write for me
I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free
There must be fifty ways to edit your WIP.”

See, it’s really my editor’s habit to intrude
Furthermore, with dozens of pages of edits his meaning can’t be misconstrued
So I’ll repeat his words at the risk of being rude
“There must be fifty ways to edit your WIP
Fifty ways to edit your WIP.”

“Just hit the delete, Pete
Get a new plot, Scott
You don’t need the backstory
Just get your WIP free

“Shore up the mid, Sid
Clean up the end, Ken
You don’t need to rewrite much
Just kill off the man, Stan
And set your WIP free

“Ooo hit the delete, Pete
Get a new plot, Scott
You don’t need the backstory
Just listen to me

“Shore up the mid, Sid
Clean up the end, Ken
You don’t need to rewrite much
Just kill off the man, Stan
And set your WIP free”

He said, “it grieves me so to see you in such pain
I wish there was something I could do, but your WIP is just lame.”
I said, “I appreciate that, but would you please explain
About the fifty ways to edit my WIP.”

He said, “why don’t we both just go our own way
I’ll just rip up your contract, and I won’t have to pay
And then he sent me to spam, and I cried all through the night
Remembering… fifty ways to edit my WIP
Fifty ways to edit my WIP

So I’ll hit the delete, Pete
Get a new plot, Scott
I’ll cut out the backstory
and set my WIP free…

Okay, I’m done! Back to editing!