Cutting Your Way to Freedom
By Dave King | February 15, 2022 |
“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” Henry David Thoreau
Cutting as a way of revising your prose has a bad name. Movies and television present the blue pencil as something to be feared – all those scenes of editors gleefully striking through sentences or whole paragraphs while writers watch and wince. I once had a client tell me she burst into tears when she opened my first batch of editing. (She recovered when she saw how much her writing improved.) And there are all those writing books out there comforting you for having to “kill your babies.”
But cutting has a real advantage over, say, rewriting passages or ripping up a chapter and starting from scratch. When you just cut, what emerges is not only stronger. It’s the story that’s been there all along. The cutting just reveals it, like Michelangelo finding the statue inside the block of marble.
So what sorts of things can simply be cut? Most of you probably already know to avoid exposition. But for newcomers here, don’t worry about confusing your readers. They can get to know your characters and settings gradually. And since this exposition tends to come at the beginning, cutting it will help get your readers into your plot more quickly. So if you feel like your story is getting of to a slow start, just look for blocks of backstory and exposition and start whacking away.
Don’t forget your dialogue. For the most part, people don’t speak in paragraphs. They often don’t speak in complete sentences. So if your characters are not talking like real people, cutting may be the answer.
Lists can generally go, as well. I’m not sure when writers got in the habit of conveying a character or location through a long list of attributes, but to me it feels like you’re asking your readers to do too much of the work for you. They have to find the connections between the elements on your list like it was a question on the SAT’s. It is far stronger, and much harder, to choose the one or maybe two details that say what you want to say and let them stand on their own.
I suspect that lists are becoming so commonplace in fiction now that writers hardly notice when they’re doing it. Elizabeth George has a long history of wonderfully-written books with sharp characters. But in her latest, Something to Hide, she tends to give in to the literary affectation of lists. For instance, consider this passage, about a young man getting a lecture from his father as they walk through their neighborhood.
“Instead of taking any kind of notice of the waves of heat rising from the pavement, of the trees – where there were any in this part of town – losing their leaves far too early into the year, of the remaining ice in the fish stalls in Ridley Road Market melting so quickly that the air was thick with the smell of hake and snapper and mackerel, of the meat in the butchers’ stalls sending forth a stench of blood from the simmering organs of sheep and cows, of the fruit and veg having to be sold at a discount before they rotted, Abeo [the father] merely strode onward in the direction of the Mayville Estate, oblivious of everything save Tani’s [the son’s] failure to arrive at work on time.”
Besides being implausible – I find it hard to believe Tani paused to distinguish the separate smells of the three different types of fish – this 125-word sentence coming in the middle of the first chapter of the book doesn’t exactly pull readers into the story.
Take a look at it with many of the list elements simply stripped away.
“Instead of taking any kind of notice of the waves of heat rising from the pavement, of the trees – where there were any in this part of town – losing their leaves far too early into the year, of the remaining ice in the fish stalls in Ridley Road Market melting so quickly that the air was thick with the smell of hake and snapper and mackerel, of the meat in the butchers’ stalls sending forth a stench of blood from the simmering organs of sheep and cows, of the fruit and veg having to be sold at a discount before they rotted, Abeo merely strode onward in the direction of the Mayville Estate, oblivious of everything save Tani’s failure to arrive at work on time.”
Or, in clean copy, with the punctuation adjusted and just a bit of rearrangement:
“Instead of taking any kind of notice of the heat — the trees losing their leaves far too early, the thick smells of fish on the melting ice in the fish stalls, and blood from the simmering organs in the butcher’s stalls — Abeo merely strode onward, oblivious of everything save Tani’s failure to arrive at work on time.”
Half the words, with only two elements the father is ignoring – the loss of leaves and the smells. But every remaining word was already there. The sharp, clean description (“thick smells” is very nice) just needed to be exposed.
In the late forties, an entrepreneur named Earl “Madman” Muntz wanted to break into the new market for televisions. His plan was to design a simplified, low-cost set for use in metropolitan areas, where the signals were strong and a simpler receiver would be enough. He did it by sitting down with his engineers and snipping the wires to various components in a set until the picture and sound went away. Then he had the engineers hook back up the last thing he’d cut. The process is still known among electrical engineers as “Muntzing.”
As you’re taking your first pass through your revisions, try some Muntzing. Just throw stuff out. If you see blocks of exposition, cut them. If your characters ramble on, rein them in. If you see lists, cut all but one or two elements. You may find that, like Muntz’s TV’s, your story still works just as well.
So what else can be cut without damage? What most needs to be cut, in your opinion, either in your work or in published works?
Dave King has been editing for nearly 40 years now. He is co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a former contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, and has contributed more than 100 articles over the last 12 years to Writer Unboxed. He lives on 25 acres in rural Massachusetts with his business partner and wife, Ruth Julian, who also edits his work. His other day job, at least on Sundays, is as the organist at a Lutheran church in Greenfield, Mass.
[coffee]
Sometimes, when “cutting” feels so brutal, I tell myself that I’m “distilling,” and that helps me face the task a bit less defensively :-)
A question that arises for me, in reading your terrific post, is not just WHAT to cut, but WHEN. There are times when it turns out that I’ve cut the wrong stuff. Generally, that happens when I get too involved in pruning and perfecting before the story has found its full shape (that is, while still working on an early draft), and then I discover that there were details, reflections, or other material that I need after all. A strategy that helps is to save both versions, the “thick” one and the “thin” one, so I can go back if I need to, or maybe even move the excised paragraph to a different place in the manuscript. Kind of like saving those leftovers from your take-out dinner in case you can use them later :-)
First, I like “distilling,” That is kind of what I did with the Elizabeth George passage.
And you’re right about the timing. There are exceptions of course — those blocks you look at the next time you open the file and think, “That’s gotta go.” But in general it’s hard to be certain what to cut when you don’t know yet what the story really is. Though sometimes, cutting can reveal what the story really is.
In any case, save your drafts. Recycling is a large part of writing.
Excellent article, Dave. Your edits on the example drove the point home — so much so, I’ll end my comment here, lest I start listing.
As Mark Twain once said, “Eschew surplussage.”
I’m in the middle of revising now and it’s brutal.I think I’ve gained ten pounds and lost half my hair.
This article was very helpful. Thank you
It can be tough. But the clean copy you see at the end could be inspirational.
Suck it up and keep going, Cupcake.
Yes.
Lol.
I’m pretty good with a scalpel — not so great with a hatchet when the ms needs chopping. I tend to think that EVERYthing is important. Thx for the timely reminder. http://www.anneobriencarelli.com
As Barbara said earlier, cut it but store it away somewhere. If you find you miss it, you can always put it back.
Stand aside Eudora Welty. Writing is rewriting, yes, but recycling is writing as well.
Case in point–I’ve posted twice about murdering 22,000 darlings [words, actually] from my current MS, only to have an editor say she wanted more “world-building.” and so some of that excused materials is being layered back in. I keep folders of outtakes I feel might prove useful later, and thank goodness for that.
And yes, even with the layering back in, I still find places where the dialogue can be trimmed, making it more real by making it less grammatical.
Another great post, Dave. Thanks.
I’ve had one or two cases where I’ve suggested that clients needed a bit more detail, and they’ve sent me copies of earlier drafts to mine.
They wanted YOU to do the work of mining for detail? I’m shocked. On second thought, not shocked, just bemused.
Well, I was line-editing the manuscript at the time, and through the mighty power of my outside eyes ™, I could tell what was needed and where. It wasn’t much more work for me, and it saved writing another draft.
Great post! I’m in the middle of Muntzing right now :)
I’ve got to say, I love the story of Earl Muntz. I first found out about him through car geekery. After making a fortune in low-cost televisions, he tried his hand at automotive design with the Muntz Jet. Unfortunately, he went for luxury rather than economy (the Jet used huge, powerful V-8’s) and wound up losing a lot of the money he made in televisions.
The thing I began to notice in my writing was a tendency to state the obvious. To show, then tell, just in case. I realized I was insulting the reader. Saying things twice (mini-listing) fits into this category, too. I love your examples from Elizabeth George. Cutting flab is like getting a good haircut and feeling transformed in a positive way. Thank you, Dave.
Yes. Judging how your writing affects your readers is a skill that comes with time, and before then there is a real temptation to drive your points home. The result is the kind of repetition that you should rip out when you revise.
Thanks! Your post and the comments, we all agree. The creative process is not CREATED to initially be precise and cut. It falls on the page, begging for that trim. The brain is not always, initially, a good editor.
Precisely. Cutting is a much a part of the process as writing.
I feel that editing is a tool, while cutting is a brutal barbarian. Keep in mind many good movies that are cut to fit a time slot then reemerge as a director’s cut full length. Editing is an art when done for the good of the story. Cutting for a reason like word length or run time can be a hack.
Cutting — in fact, all editing — should be in the service of the story. As soon as you start trying to make your story conform to something external — an arbitrary length, the market, the expectations of genre — you run the risk of creating something mechanical rather than organic.
Excellent, practical advice, Dave, as always. I’m sharing in my newsletter.
Thank you, and feel free.
Dave, muntzing my historical fiction book brought out the best parts of the story. A tendency to include details, just in case, was my downfall. You know this, editing the first draft. I learned a thing or two. The practice book, rewritten, is lean on details. Sneaking in the necessary history, through dialogue. What the characters know, find out, suspect or question. Thanks for including your edited paragraph. Examples help to reinforce your words. 📚🎶 Christine
The problem I have with “how to” articles like this is that more times than not the lessons are exemplified sans context. In this case, I took the time and made the effort to read the first 30 or so pages of the “look inside” portion of this book offered on Amazon.
First, not only are readers not pulled into the story in the first chapter (in this case, according to Mr. King, by page nine) they’re not pulled into the story by page 29, as through the prologue and first chapter a half-dozen-plus seemingly unrelated characters are introduced, each with a personal backstory.
Second, at least through the first 30 pages, Ms. George writes several other paragraphs/sentences describing scenes in similar detail, and anyone who is able to read intelligently will consider this exemplified 125 word “unedited” sentence in context and understand why it is what it is: Ms. George (or her editor) emphatically did not allow her pen to go walkabout unfettered.
You can score for symphony or solo violin. You can photograph in color or black and white. You can reproduce the Mona Lisa in line drawing or paint-by-numbers and get the point across. Sometimes you’re spare. Sometimes you’re florid. Having a sense to know when to do what is the “art” of making art, and that’s something that can’t be taught in MFA classes, magazines or how-to articles and books. This seeming obsession with “drawing the reader into the story in the first ten pages” only plays to an “Muntzified” attention span that can be measured in milliseconds. Ms. George doesn’t take that bait.
I’ve given this some thought, Phaistos, and I respectfully disagree. Understand, I can respect rich, detailed writing — what you refer to as “florid.” I love the writing of John Crowley, and Mark Halperin’s Winter’s Tale, neither of which could be considered spare.
But where I disagree is that I don’t think florid writing is an end in itself. It needs to be in the service of characters and story. I’ve just reread the context of the passage I edited. Tani is bored by his father’s endless lecture. Ms. George specifically says he is thinking of other things — i.e his girlfriend. Given his state of mind, I found it implausible that he would notice their path in such excruciating detail — again, three separate fish smells? The description doesn’t fit the viewpoint character’s state of mind, and that’s my problem with it. If Ms. George had written from a more distant point of view, then a description divorced from the character doing the describing might be more acceptable. But she is very much in Tani’s head in other ways, and this description pulls readers out of Tani’s head for the duration.
I agree. And also, while Tani can legitimately consider his father oblivious to visual details of scenery, he can’t know what his father is or isn’t smelling along the way. The whole passage read like authorial intrusion to me.
Dave:
As a short-story writer, I found this post especially useful. Five thousand words is a typical limit for lit mags, and you’d be surprised (well, you wouldn’t be, but I always am) at how quickly the words add up. Thanks!
There is no place where Muntzing is more critical than in short stories. Their structure and pace are a category — and perhaps article — unto themselves.
I am a long time Elizabeth George fan. Recently, I have given up reading her novels. I wonder if the lack of careful editing plays a part in my change of interest. Great example, Dave.
Yes, Ruth is kind of there, too. We loved the earlier Ms. George — Havers is a wonderful character. But she may have reached the point where she is unwilling to edit herself and her editors are afraid to touch her. It does sometimes happen with immensely successful writers.