How to Condense Your Novel (I cut 16k words with this...)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.ค. 2024
- RELATED VIDEOS
→Every Draft of My Novel: • My Revision Process | ...
→How to Edit a Novel: • 14 Revision Tips! | Ho...
0:00 - intro
3:10 - simplify the path between events
4:14 - remove unnecessary arcs
5:38 - removed tangential ideas
6:18 - cut non-sequitur paragraphs
7:17 - streamline action beats
8:20 - condense the dialogue
13:06 - cut repeated description
13:48 - thorough line editing
→All my published work: linktr.ee/shaelinbishop
→If you want to support my channel, you can tip me on ko-fi! ko-fi.com/shaelinbishop
MY SHORT STORIES:
☾Tabula Rasa - The Temz Review: www.thetemzreview.com/fiction...
☾How to Slaughter - The Common: www.thecommononline.org/how-t...
☾After Hours - Vagabond City Lit: vagabondcitylit.com/2022/04/1...
☾Daughter of a King - Vagabond City Lit: vagabondcitylit.com/2022/03/2...
☾Cherry and Jane in the Garden of Eden - The Puritan: ex-puritan.ca/cherry-and-jane...
☾Zugzwang - Plenitude: plenitudemagazine.ca/zugzwang/
☾Elise Holding a Deer Mouse, 1829 - CAROUSEL: carouselmagazine.ca/c45-bishop/
☾I Will Never Tell You This - The Puritan: ex-puritan.ca/never-tell-you-...
☾Solarium - Minola Review: www.minolareview.com/shaelin-b...
☾Barefoot - The Fiddlehead [print only]: thefiddlehead.ca/issue/282
☾Wishbone - PRISM international [print only]: prismmagazine.ca/2020/04/19/pr...
☾Wishbone - video reading: vimeo.com/420052282
☾Hold Me Under Till I See the Light - The New Quarterly: tnq.ca/story/hold-me-under-ti...
☾Beautiful Animal - Room: roommagazine.com/issues/twine
☾How You'll Feel After the War - PRISM international: prismmagazine.ca/2021/10/20/pr...
FAQS
→How old are you? - 26
→How long have you been writing? - Since I was 8
→Where do you live? - I keep that private for safety reasons, but I grew up in Vancouver.
→Where did you go to university and what did you study? - I keep my university information private, but I majored in writing with a concentration in fiction.
→What are your pronouns? - They/them or she/her
→Where can I read your books? - None of my books are published yet, but you can read my published short fiction in my linktree (linked above!)
→So when will your book be published? - I don’t know! I’m in the revision process right now, but I can’t predict exactly when I’ll have a book published. But I’m working on it!
→Do you plan to traditionally publish or self publish? - Traditionally publish
→Will you read my book/story/chapter/mentor me? - Unfortunately I cannot accommodate these requests because editing/critiquing is a labour intensive task that I can’t afford to do for free alongside my job, my own writing, and running this platform. If you would like to hire me for paid editing work, contact me privately on twitter or instagram.
MORE WRITING TIPS: • Writing Tips
WRITING VLOGS: • Writing Vlogs
WRITING CHATS & DISCUSSIONS: • Writing & Authortube D...
BOOK REVIEWS: • Recent Reads
Check out more writing and publishing videos from me over @Reedsy!: / @reedsy
OUTRO MUSIC: "l u v t e a [acoustic]" by Autumn Keys
SOCIAL
Twitter: / shaelinbishop
Instagram: / shaelinbishop
Goodreads: / shaelin-bishop
![[4K] BABYMONSTER(베이비몬스터) “FOREVER” Band LIVE Concert “영원히” 베몬만을 사랑하게 되…💗 [it’s KPOP LIVE 잇츠라이브]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TQfC0xdpiw4/mqdefault.jpg)
Distance from a project helps so much honestly. You stop being sentimental and reading your work as its writer. Instead, you're able to look at it critically as a reader. I think that's really valuable.
oh so I see you’ve read my mind & know I have a 200k draft to whittle down??? okay godsend!!!
What timing! I’m trying to reduce my manuscript from 111,000 words to under 90,000, and I was just trying to figure out where to begin cutting when I received this video notification.
Thank you! You’re the best!
Ohh good luck!! Those kinds of cuts can seem daunting if not impossible at the start but it's way more achievable than it seems!
@@ShaelinWrites Thank you for your encouragement! I have actually wound up with more words than before, adding a coda which I didn’t realize would tie the whole story together. But, slow and steady, the process persists!
The idea of simplifying the plot path really clicked with me. Thank you! I'm off to cut the convaluted paths.
im nowhere near this editing phase, but i literally saving this video in advanced bc it's so informative and so... concise!
you're a hero 💖
It’s funny, I was just stressing over shortening my story last night. I’m really into a choppier, condensed form for my current project so it’s so helpful to know what to cut, how to smooth the cuts over, and how to know what to condense even further in my next draft ^-^
crazy how I've been stressing about my book being 15-20k more than I anticipated and then you drop this gem! I'm so guilty of over-writing in my books. these tips are things I've felt unconsciously in my gut while drafting, but to hear you break down and articulate your process is extremely helpful. especially on "condensing dialogue" -- I loveee dialogue so much lol and it often leaves me adding more than I need to. definitely going to bookmark this for when I'm in revision!
going on and on with dialogue because i'ts so fun to write is SUCH a mood omg
I'm going through the tenth draft of a novel and found this video very helpful!
While revising with a word-cutting mindset, I noticed something that might help other new writers like me: I found that, for 30-40% of the parapgraphs I had written, the last sentence merely spelled out for the reader what was already very clear from context. I did a round of editing where I focused especially closely on the last sentence of each paragraph and asked myself, "Is this really necessary?" Doing this also helped me see the occasional full paragraph that could be deleted or significantly condensed. I cut about 5000 words during this edit.
Hope that helps someone!
Thank you for the advice. Writing that is short and simple is the best.
Thanks SO much for your addition at ~ 1:45. I've been editing my first novel for years now, and it's comforting to hear a pro like you doing this and seeing value. I wrote my novel before I learned anything "proper" or technical about writing. I've just read a lot of fantasy and loved it. So my first novel has acted as a training ground for me, and it's been great. I've probably deleted and re-written ~60K words, and it has made marked improvements consistently, deleting fluff, focusing on the right characters, condensing themes etc.
Thanks, and good writing!
I am such an overwriter and really enjoy both writing and reading fairly lengthy back-and-forth dialogues. So, editing dialogue is a tricky area for me, but when I come to drafting, I shall take on board what was said here.
Okay, I was reluctant to watch this one because I feel so discouraged with the editing of my 180,000 word novel ... but if you can cut that many words in a late revision, then I actually feel a little hope!
You're a hero for this. I have a book that I pitched to a publisher as 75k which somehow grew to 120k 😬 I managed to get it down to 98k just by throwing out a lot of extraneous scenes that I kinda discovery wrote before I figured out where the plot was going, and which now don't work in context, but a lot of the scenes I've used to replace them are unfinished so I suspect that word count will sneak back up again... I know I'm going to have to be pretty ruthless but I don't know how much more I can cut at the actual scene level without it affecting the plot. These tips are so helpful and have given me a great place to start. Thank you!
This was soooo stinking HELPFUL. THANK YOU!
This is exactly the video I needed!
I've been hard at work finding ways to condense my story, but ultimately, I haven't been able to reduce it enough.
For a while, I've known the culprit was the plot, but I couldn't pinpoint what to get rid of because every scene advanced the main narrative.
But I think the solution is to simplify the steps it takes to progress. It's not so much that my characters are off track on their journey as it is that they're not being efficient enough with it.
Thank you for this advice. It's really saved me.
The example from Honey Vinegar was just priceless! Thank you so much!
So happy it helped!
I have the opposite problem often, I tend to feel like I'm making my books too short lol.
Thanks Shaelin, this is veyr useful!
I appreciate your videos so much
They’ve helped inspire me while writing my novel and you’ve made me a better writer in general! You’re the best! 😊❤
this is sooo helpful omg, love the new perspective of ways to cut down wordcount (as a chronic overwriter!)
I always love it when you use examples from Honey Vinegar or any of your work! Thank you for these valuable tips!
Thank you! This is so helpful! Could you please make a "How to make your book longer?" video?
I was skeptical going into this but your examples really helped demonstrate what you meant. I went from being cautious to a 100% believer. I'll reference this next time I edit a craft haha.
Gonna try this with my longfic. It's currently sitting at 240 scenes for the whole project, and even if I want to write a slowburn, that's just WAY too much. It would end up with ±440k words... I must do everything I can to condense this monstruosity 😭
I'll have to set several reminders to myself throughout the year to come back to this video. Plenty times as a playwright, but *especially* as a screenwriter (having switched to filmmaking), I overplot. My short films need to be short ... as in short enough to comfortably circulate on the festival circuit. What ends up happening is that whatever amount of material I aim for in a first draft, it always lands 5 pages longer than the maximum I've set. This happens even when I edit as I go.
So rather than edit as I go, my future self can go back on a revision armed with the Shaelin tips from 4:15 and 5:40 which address tangent arcs and tangent themes. That's where my overwriting goes: I do a lot of subplots and secondary themes due to my deep and abiding love of working within the largest scope possible. (On a feature-length film, this would already be a problem. On a short, it makes me look like Coppola.)
8:22 is also helpful, but more so on editing the film than on editing the script. I get the sense that actors will need the exchanges of dialogue to feel natural and have closure. But not all the lines within a conversation will be needed. The trick will be condensing any given scene without ruining a really good take.
*Simplify the path between major events.*
Who would know about this except a professional novelist like yourself ? This advice is Solid Gold.
I am reading the Letters of Flannery O'Connor but she has no advice as good as yours. She does like The Tin Drum, a very big novel like your own.
As a reader I do not care for convoluted plot development. Character- driven novels, with a strong sense of place & time, are stories I can live in.
A character-driven novel : *Final Payments* by Mary Gordon. My Corgi paperback is from 1979.
A first novel is rich in epiphanies and hard-won (often bitter) truths; I read it the same year as Philip Roth's *Letting Go*.
Mary Gordon and Roth remind me of E.M. Forster's advice to young novelists - *Surprise me with the believable.*
I like the idea of removing a mini arc to condense the story.
Thanks! I'm definitely going to need this when I think I'm finished. I'm only at the start of the third act of my story and I've got 90,000 words already. 😵💫
Do you have a video on first draft edits? I heard you should do developmental first.
I’m very worried about my own book. Book 1’s second draft wound up being a whole 10k words over the first draft somehow (I was fleshing out ideas and expanding the story granted) but the tips here might actually help condense that. My ultimate goal is to get close to or less than 150k (YA fantasy).
Now make a vid about how to go from a 300k novel to a 100k 😅 loved the tips!
At that point I’d just say split it into three books😂
This is such a good video! Have you read the craft book Refuse to be Done by Matt Bell? I read it for my MFA and it's hands down one of the best books on writing I've ever read. Why I mention it is because it covers a lot of the advice you've given in ways that could be informative or interesting.
Ohh I haven't but I know Matt Bell! Didn't know he had a book out!
💚💚💚
Help? :) I'm a beginner in creative writing, and the only story that I’m passionate about exploring is suited for a novel length book.
The obvious problem is that this project is SUPER hard and takes a lot of research. Unfortunately, this is the only one that I’m really passionate about... And I don't know what to do. I'm stuck between "I should definitely write something shorter, practice my writing skills with short stories and flash fiction!" and "The only thing that is exciting is a historical romance including astronomy that will be VERY difficult for me!"
What the h*ll do I do? Do I write the novel because that's the only thing I'm passionate about, or do I force myself to do something more constructive to speed up my learning curve, like writing short stories and flash fiction?
Just fyi I’m a Swede, so I will not be writing in English. Sorry for any mistakes.
Go with your passion! I say this as someone who has only ever worked on long projects I've never finished so far, but if you're doing this as a hobby with the goal of publishing someday (like me), but it doesn't need to be _soon_, then just follow the fun. You'll get better at writing by writing anyway. May as well do it on something you love.
And you can and will edit everything in the end anyway, so not being that good at it the first time won't matter as much.
This is probably bad advice for anyone who does want to be published soon, but I think its nice to be able to take the long, but pleasant road with some things. We don't need to be perfect and master everything we do and do it all the right way.
I've personally rewritten several of my personal projects, iterating them to find the bits I like and learning to walk away from those I don't. We still learn how to write, just by writing scenes with our characters interacting with each other and the world. Even if they're not specific scenes _for_ your book, you can still explore things and learn from there!
If you aren't doing this as a hobby then I'm sorry for giving bad advice, though.
I didn't see any mistakes! (But my first language is french, so I'm not always good at noticing errors either)
By aggressive editing and totally eschewing the subtle nuances of the English language, I manage to trim 45,000 words from one of my (unfinished) novels. It is now down to a svelte 950,000 words. :(
im not even halfway through the book and it's at 70,000 words lmao, so much shit im writing feels so dragged out just to 'build tension' to get to a main event. do you have any tips on building tension without having to have multiple chapters?
Cut what isn't necessary for the story. If you have a plot structure it is easy to see what doesn't support or enhance this frame work.
Hi, Shaelin! I was wondering, if you already edited and you went through with your agent, what was the reason you went back through to cut more? I 100% see the value in this! I just wanted to know if it's an industry thing, or if editors prefer it? Thanks!
It was because feedback from a few editors was that it was too long haha
@@ShaelinWrites thank you for letting me know! It's always helped me to know where in the line these changes come from. Fantastic insight as always, much appreciated!
The examples at 9:02 are fabulous. If possible, more of that!
I am a pure, 100% discovery writer, and I find that this approach makes this step quite challenging. I did virtually no world-building other than through plot/dialogue, including only one short history/exposition segment (while a character walked through a city), and tons of action beats and dialogue to move the story forward. Or rather, *as* the story moved forward, with me as a spectator ; ) That produced-in my hideously biased view-quite an engaging narrative. And one that is an utterly untenable 188,000 words long (YA Crossover fantasy).
So how does one step back from that, as a discovery writer? I’m trying it, and the line editing is going great, but the word count is going nowhere. And it’s not a “kill your darlings” problem. I’d take a scythe to ‘em if I could. I just recently “discovered” them anyhow-no pride of authorship or emotion. Just feels like brain surgery with a meat cleaver every time I try to make meaningful cuts. Oog.
I find, for my at least, also being a discovery writer, editing is a bit of a back and forth. So on the first editing pass I cut a lot of stuff that I can tell isn't needed, but then on the next I need to add a bunch of stuff, and then I do line edits and whittle it down, but then certain scenes feel underwritten so I have to flesh them out, etc etc, and it goes on and on like this until eventually, I'm able to do a draft like the one I talked about in this video, where the focus is on condensing and refining, but this can really only happen after all the drafts that require adding. So that's the say, if you're still at an adding/fleshing out draft, you may need to get that out of the way before you can focus on refining. My first draft was 88k then over the course of editing went all the way up to 100k at the highest, then I got it down to 81k with this draft.
One thing that I think is good to look for are scenes that drag on too long because you were struggling while drafting. I know that for me, my scenes will get too long if I'm struggling with them, because I can't get the scene to accomplish its purpose so I just keep writing and writing and writing, unable to end the scene because I can't get it to do what it needs to do. Those scenes are often the ones that can either be cut entirely or whittled down significantly in editing.
@@ShaelinWrites Wow, thanks for that reply! The whole thing is on point for me, but in the second paragraph it’s as though you watched my process and read my manuscript. I hope this makes sense, but that was something I knew, but didn’t perceive until you said it there. I do indeed have a couple significant stretches like that. At least now I see a path ahead. We’ll see how I do with it, of course, but thanks again!
My first book I cut out a lot because I felt it didn't have impact to the plot. The reader could still understand the story without it.
Hey,
Do you need a video editor?
What editing program do you use?
It's just microsoft word!
Ahh, to have 16,000 words to throw away. I can't seem to get past writing 6,000 in total!
Just a gentle piece of advice, my opinion for what it's worth. Try working on your reading voice. When you are reading a portion of your manuscript, you're reading fast and your voice is raspy and somewhat in a whisper. Read to us as if you are reading your book in audio. It will help your listeners to understand much more clearly what you are showing in your editing. Your voice is raspy, monotone, and dry. Other than that good video on the importance of polishing your manuscript.
First. Reclaiming my title
😂
I'm back
@@sumayyahkhan8897 from the woodworks again... good to see you friend
@@rev6215 I'll probably not be able to come first on this again, lockdown just made me have no life..😂
@@sumayyahkhan8897 I have a corporate job now. I literally haven't written anything or watched any of Shaelin's videos for the past 2 months
ok but why did you have to condense it
like what i get from this video is simplify the book but wouldn't you want your book to be more complex? like not convoluted but to me it sounds like you just made the book worse. you should probably go back to that earlier draft.
yeah like in that scene example the first one was much better 😭 like girl why are you simplifying your book to the abc's like
and the crazy thing is it wasn't even long in the first place this was not necessary AT ALL
no like i understand that you only want the necessary things in your book (which you should) but you're definitely taking it too far
I literally said that I cut extraneous action beats, words, tangential paragraphs, repeated dialogue, and condensed a few sections of the plot - aka stuff that you can cut without losing any complexity. I did not say I cut important themes, characters, backstory, context, important plot beats, or anything like that. Saying I 'simplified it to the abcs' is honestly insulting given that this is a book I have spent years developing. I made the book shorter, I did not remove any complexity in doing so because the things I cut were not factors in the book's complexity.
I did this round of cuts because feedback from industry professionals was that the book was too long, so actually, it *was* necessary. I was happy with the earlier draft, hence why I considered the book done at that point, but I definitely feel these edits made it stronger and that no complexity was sacrificed, the story and scenes were just tightened which makes them easier to read and pop a little more. Don't argue with me on this because I have spent years working on this book and you have *never read it* so it's pretty wild that you're throwing out such dramatic opinions on which draft of my book is better and how apparently I have ruined it. If when this book is published you read it and you think it is overly simplified and lacking nuance then you are fully entitled to that opinion, but since as of now you've read all of 200 words of an 80k manuscript I think making such sweeping claims is pretty unfounded and a little ridiculous.