The Clarifying Cut

Forcing yourself to revise with arbitrary wordcounts.

Slicing .gif from Omoide no Mānī (When Marnie Was There)

For the past few weeks, I was working on short story that kept getting longer and longer. I thought I needed more scenes to establish the characters, explore the central idea, and build the required tension. The writing was slow. Eventually, the story sprawled to over six thousand words. Then I saw a submission call that seemed like a good fit. It had a hard wordcount cap. I’d have to cut a few thousand words. I did so in one evening. The story was vastly improved.

Many weeks to build it up, a short time to cut it down. I think of this as the clarifying cut. If I hadn’t had an arbitrary word goal to hit, I likely would have made similar edits. It just would have taken me longer to get there.

When you give yourself a strict wordcount goal, you are forced to see what really matters in the story. Sometimes, for me at least, trimming can be hard if there’s no specific goal. I might find a weak line here or there, but in general if I wrote something I liked it. Yet if I must cut, say, a third of a story, then my brain is forced to see it more clearly—where it is weak, where it is redundant, where it is dull—and cut. It’s clarifying.

A lot of writers I know impose these restrictions on themselves in revision. Make each chapter X words max. Cut this story down Y percent. Sometimes it’s related to submission requirements, but often it is just a way to force cuts. One version of this method comes from Stephen King, who in On Writing describes a 10% revision rule:

In the spring of my senior year at Lisbon High—1966, this would have been—I got a scribbled comment that changed the way I rewrote my fiction once and forever. Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this mot: "Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%. Good luck."

I wish I could remember who wrote that note—Algis Budrys, perhaps. Whoever it was did me a hell of a favor. I copied the formula out on a piece of shirt-cardboard and taped it to the wall beside my typewriter. Good things started to happen for me shortly thereafter.

I know writers who are prone to sprawling drafts and use this “rule” when revising. Trim each draft down around 10% until you feel you can’t trim anymore. (Given Stephen King’s reputation for sprawling novels—he once decided The Stand was too short at only 800 pages and added in 400 more for an “uncut” edition—one might wonder how often he’s been faithful to this rule. But this is revision not religion. “Rules” don’t need to be strictly followed.)

I imagine some writers might be horrified by this idea. A story should be whatever length it wants, they might say. Trimming for an arbitrary wordcount is ruining the “organic” process of writing or some such. I’ve never felt this. Perhaps that’s because I began writing poetry—where both loose and strict forms are common—and then moved to flash fiction, a form that exists entirely in arbitrary word limits.

Or perhaps I’ve always just believed in the Oulipean idea that constraints spawn creativity. By giving yourself strict rules, your brain is forced to problem solve in new ways. This might be the complex mathematical formulas of some Oulipean novels or strict poetic forms like villanelles and Plutarchan sonnets or the looser “formulas” of certain genres. Or it might be a simpler and blunter idea like a strict wordcount. Blunt and simple is often quite effective.

Obviously cutting doesn’t have to be forever. In our digital age it is quite easy to kill your darlings and then drop their mangled corpses in a scrap file for later reviving:

Necromance Your Darlings

Anyway, this is Monday morning craft tip. If you have a piece that feels baggy or simply isn’t working, try the clarifying cut. Give yourself an arbitrary cutting goal. 25% is a good one. Do this in a new document so that it’s easy to add back material if you need. Although in my experience, the lines and scenes you snip away with a clarifying cut rarely come back. When you’re forced to slice, your eye quickly finds the chaff.

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Other works I’ve written or co-edited include Upright Beasts (my story collection), Tiny Nightmares (an anthology of horror fiction), and Tiny Crimes (an anthology of crime fiction).