Timber!
Oh my god, there is NO way I’m going to be able to turn this story into 500 words. Maybe at most I can squeeze out 50 words. God. Groan. Okay, done. Word count. How much more do I have to fluff this out? What? I wrote 900 words? I have to cut this thing down, now?
Some easy ways to cut it down:
Start by trying to remove a solid graf of copy rather than sentence by sentence (especially if you’re over by more than 100 words.) It’ll be hard to take out a large chunk but it’s easier than combing through. However, hold onto your old trimmings because it might be valuable if your editor wants to dump something else.
Check for unnecessary detail that doesn’t move the piece along. It might be pretty but chuck it.
Read it aloud. You’ll hear better what sounds too unwieldy and what can be cut down.
Check your transitions. Can you say “On Thursday” instead of “A few days later”?
It depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is, right? No. Insead of
“appears to be”, “seems to be” or something or that ilk, use “is.”
And finally: Adverbs? “Very”? “really”? Goodbye.
If you’re still having trouble, hand it to another writer friend who owes you a favor. Your babies won’t be his babies, so he won’t have any trouble cutting out the details that you think are so essential that he just finds wordy.
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