Blogger: Michelle Ule
Sitting in for Wendy today.
Do you have trouble pruning words from your manuscript?
Since childhood, I’ve cherished the scene in Frances Hodgson’s The Secret Garden, where the three children stand outside the door in the wall they’ve uncovered. The rusty key goes into the ancient lock and they push into an overgrown garden, full of surprises, birds, animals and thick with promise.
Life is good–I had a similar experience as an adult, though we could see the thick, thatchy overgrown orchard through the deer fencing.
In our case, the whole family stood outside the gate as my husband shoved it open. Armed with pruners, lopers, saws, gloves, and masks, we pushed in with curiosity. What types of trees grew in that orchard seven years neglected?
I’m remembering it all today because I have another garden that needs pruning: the recently completed rough draft of my current project.
Ringing in my ears are the valiant words of a teaching assistant from my freshman composition class at UCLA: “Cut out the dead wood!”
I didn’t understand her meaning until I faced an overgrown orchard.
Suddenly pruning made sense.
To grow good fruit, trees need to be pruned regularly. The arborist wants to get light and air into the center, the heart, of the tree.
I spent thirty hours in that orchard, armed with saws and pruners. I stood back and considered each tree in turn. What wood was healthy? What boughs and limbs needed to go?
The more I cut away, the clearer it became.
Some trees gave up their dead wood easily, relieved to have it lopped off. Others trees were not so sure and the saw bit and plowed hard to cut limbs that pulled the tree down, distracted from the tree’s beauty, or simply made it hard to reach healthy fruit.
Some trees looked spindly and denuded when I finished.
Others looked relieved.
The next year, we got a bumper fruit crop.
Manuscript Pruning
I’m reading through my manuscript now, making notes, changing things, recognizing angles I put in unawares, and relentlessly cutting out all the dead writing–words that clutter the read, rather than make it refreshing.
No saws this time, unless I have to remove an entire scene. Right now I’m nipping and tucking, trying to get a sense of the overall story and how the plot interacts.
On a tree, you have to choose between overlapping limbs. Which one is the healthiest? Which will let in the most light?
It’s the same with a manuscript: this line may be terrific but if it rubs against another, or undercuts a third. It’s my task to figure out the strongest, healthiest line–the one that moves my story forward in the best way.
I was 2500 words over my target of 50,000, so obviously some severe pruning, even lopping, needed to be done. I found several paragraphs that went nowhere, or duplicated other scenes.
The saw came out, er, the delete key, and the word count fell.
As in my garden, I began slowly, thinking as I went. I did a “find” search of words I overuse: really, so, some, very, that. I looked at each sentence containing those words and considered how to strengthen the sentence, or maybe pull it out all together. Just those words and other minor alterations, reduced the word count by 1700 words.
I can now see the manuscript as a whole, better, and I’m ready to pull out, reorganize and cut more.
It feels good.
In The Secret Garden, the children grew stronger and healthier the more time they spent in the garden. And while pruning and clearing, they stumbled upon the joy of small things: bulbs pushing up through ancient soil, birds pulling worms and trilling with song.
As I cull through my manuscript, I find similar things: turns of phrase I’d forgotten, multiple layers of meaning I hadn’t realized I wrote.
It’s all joy.
Especially now that I’ve thinned enough to see it in fullness. Sweet.
How much word pruning do you do when rereading your manuscript?
And how do you feel when you’re done?
Tweetables
Pruning a manuscript–just like in The Secret Garden Click to Tweet
Pruning words to find the heart of the message. Click to Tweet
Oh, I love editing others’ works or mine. But I’ve noticed that the more I write over time, the less I have to edit. That means I’m learning some things and taking it to heart as I write. Thank goodness! But, I still have so far to go. 🙂
That’s excellent encouragement, Shelli–but it means I can get bogged down rewording and editing as I go (I usually reread the last chapter before I start on the next).
OTOH, it means I’ve got less to do when I finally AM editing. 🙂
For twenty years I have been a orchardist, farming my dad’s 23 acres
of huge walnut trees planted back in 1980. Every summer I walk the orchard a couple of times with my lopers to trim up some of the hanging low limbs and lopping off the suckers on their trunks. If I didn’t do this task, we would lose huge limbs that are prone to break under the weight of the walnuts especially when they are reaching way out thirty or more feet. I, like you, Michelle, look at the whole tree, judge what my cuts will do, look at what
makes a limb twist or bear down. My father taught me, and I apply his knowledge to practical application. Sometimes I have to clip a branch tip that has lots of nuts on it. This is necessary for the limb’s future life.
Not only in writing do we do a similar task of pruning away the unnecessary
and the detracting for the tighter, better-stated gem, but in Christian living we go through a similar process, that is, if we are serious about becoming more like Christ. The cuts are hard to take but they bear fruit later on in our life. Enjoyed reading your blog today. I could relate. Also, I loved The Secret Garden and remember the delight I felt the first time I discovered it, with fascinating anticipation for each new scene.
Norma, it’s always so hard to prune our rose bushes. Painful to the heart. They get so big. Cutting them back so small is hard. Like you think they’ll never be big again. But then in no time, they are huge again. It’s amazing how quickly they grow. 🙂
Takes faith, eh? 🙂
Exactly. Getting to see the whole manuscript, however, means you have to write the entire thing before the massive cutting begins.
But it’s all good and it feels so much better when done.
Thanks, Michelle! I’m weird, I guess, because I actually enjoy word-pruning.
I do, too, Janet and can hardly wait to finish writing this biography (the end of the book and the week together!) so I can sit back and figure out what goes, what stays and how to sharpen the words that remain!
Blessings in that!
Then there’s Dickon’s term…”See that bit of green? It’s wick.”
Currently lopping out 6164 non-wick words.
Good for you! You sent me to the dictionary, though, and I’m not sure how Dickens used that word. 🙂
Not Dickens the author, Dickon the story character. Wick is/was apparently Yorkshire dialect meaning “alive”.
Heidi Kortman » Ah, thank you. That was going to bother me!
Excellent advice and comparison. Cut out the dead wood. I don’t know about other writers, but I think I have word count too much on my mind during the writing process. My books are all a little over 60,000 words and when I get to 28,000, I congratulate myself that I’m almost half-finished. But at the halfway mark, the adrenaline gets to pumping and the count climbs out of control. The first book was so hard to cut because I thought all my words were oh so clever! Now that I’m working on my fifth book, it’s much easier to do some intense weed-whacking!
Oh, yes, I know. But after you’ve done it several times, you understand the rhythm a little better and you know you’ll make the book better when you finish.
Michelle,
Thank you for today’s post, and for sitting in for Wendy.
Nope, I have no trouble at all cutting words….my trouble is cutting the right/correct/appropriate words. I always feel like editing + me (doesn’t usually),
= improvements, and yet, just yesterday I read back from a multi-pubbed author who very graciously looked over a couple of chaps, who said I did a great job at rewriting. I just have no idea how I did it. I know my work needs the fresh eye of an editor, I *want* an editor, I just can’t *afford* an editor. Sigh.
Heard back, should have edited, oy!
We’re all about grace here, you’re fine.
You know, I find that if I read my manuscript in a different format, I can see things better. So, I either print it out, or read it on my Kindle–so that it looks like an actual printed book.
I’ve got a photo of me somewhere, reading on my Ipad (Kindle ap) with my laptop open before me. I just went back and forth between the two making changes.
Because I used to be a reporter and an editor, I also like to print out the manuscript and scribble all over it. I’ll be doing that next week–as soon as I finish writing this book!
Michelle, what a great post. When I began editing my last manuscript, I cut out ten THOUSAND words. I had a few scenes that were unnecessary, and I found better ways to describe things. I need to be more aware of my own weasel words and begin eliminating them from my writing. 🙂
*I loved your practical tips.
Ah, yes, those weasel words!
Here’s a post which might help: https://booksandsuch.com/blog/the-value-of-a-word-census/
OK. I am the odd one. I struggle to get enough words.
*Need help pruning? I wield a mean set of clippers.
It’s a gift, Shirlee. My assistant and I just looked at my manuscript. I’ve got 1.5-2 chapters left to go and I’m 3500 from the max amount allowed.
She laughed. “We’ll be pruning and chopping soon!”
I do a lot of pruning as I write, so there’s not as much on a re-write. I think it comes from having written papers for engineering journals for a few years, where a 10k word limit was rigidly enforced. I got to the point where I knew I would bump up against it, and started thinking ahead.
* It’s a good and bad thing; good in that I write economically, bad in that I can’t really do description or introspection well, because my mind’s not attuned to taking that kind of ‘time’.
I think you’re right, Andrew. When you’ve written long enough you get a sense of how long things are. I pegged my manuscript this afternoon pretty close.
I despise pruning, but wow, it sure makes things tighter and more readable.
And that is the point, sort of like teasing your hair . . .
One of my favorite reminders while writing comes from the Bible: “The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone.” (Ecclesiastes 6:11)
CJ Penn » Amen!
Hi Michelle,
Last weekend I picked up and pondered on buying a children’s version of The Secret Garden at a garage sale. So funny you would bring it up here. I loved the story when I was a young girl. I have been pruning my book this past month and wondered is there a set amount of words for a novel? You mentioned 50,000 is your target. I have around 63,000 right now and wondering also if you included the acknowledgements as a part of the total?
The target for word numbers differs by the genre. An historical novel or a speculative fiction novel can easily go over 100K because you have to build the world. A woman’s fiction novel, 80-85K; novellas 20K, different publishers have different requirements.
I’m writing a biography now and my target is 60-65K and that includes everything–acknowledgments, end notes, bibliography, appendix, Index. I’m busily cutting words right now to fit into the middle of that word count.
After not recognizing Dickon’s name above, I’m going to have to reread myself! Enjoy The Secret Garden!
Thank you!
Each publisher’s website will mention their preferences somewhere on the submissions page. Word count can vary somewhat between genres.