Writing Workshop Lessons: Word Count
Let's take a look at my terrible opening!
I recently participated in a writing workshop because not only did I already know John is a great editor, but the workshop matched goals I’ve been working on: plan short. What I mean is that whenever I write any story, novel or otherwise, I write an outline before I get started. (If you’re more of a pantser, you might end up doing some of the same things, just later in the process). One of the goals I’ve been working on is to be able to look at that outline and know how long the story is going to be. I’ve written plenty of flash and short stories but too often, they surprise me.
Welp.
The story was supposed to be 1500 words. My draft after the editor’s comments? Approaching 3000.
Don’t get me wrong. That’s still a respectably short length—in fact, that’s what I decided, that it’s better at 3000 than 1500. Trying to keep New Wave Archaeology under 1500 got me this gem of an opening:
My wrist-light lit up torn moss around the hole in the floor, and my panting bounced back to me in my mask.Liberating the ancient slab hadn’t been easy with just the two of us.And the editor’s comments? A good visual but a weak opening. Ugh, and I knew it, too! The versions before this one showed more, explained more, but I thought I had to cut it all for length. I thought I couldn’t show them lifting the slab, or at least looking around at the temple, so we know they’re inside, and it’s night time.
In my heart when I submitted this I knew the real way to make the story under 1500 and possibly still retain some of that detail that SF likes (or “voice”). I knew I had to start my characters later in the story, after they jump into the pit of doom, but I’d already moved the starting point once, and I just… hated the idea. And since the editor’s comments did not indicate that anything was wrong with where I started it, I had to decide. Did I love the submission guideline or my story more? And we’ve got to love our stories, right?
I’ve leaned far into “less is more” when crafting my stories. Kill your darlings, they say. And don’t get me wrong, if your story is twice the size of Dune and people are telling you to break it up or take side quests out, they’re probably right. But there’s still a point at which cutting just to cut isn’t helpful. There’s a diminishing return there.
Cutting starts when you craft the idea in the first place. That’s what I was aiming to learn, and I do feel I have a better sense of this now. If I had conceived this flash as a single scene starting in the pit, I might have gone a different way with the other fun aspects, such as character development and backstory, and then I’d be willing to start where it needs to start to be under 1500.
But it would be a different story.
The best cutting happens at the outset, or whenever you rework your plot. All the cutting that happens after plot, other people can help you with, but it can only pare down so far. Maybe you don’t need that paragraph, or that extra word. (John totally marked through a word or two in that short opening. Can you guess which?) But if you try to squeeze a novel-length plot into a short story, welp… Good luck. Some of you already know the pain involved in such a process, don’t you?
So what kind of opening do I have now that I’m letting loose to a whole 3000ish words? Don’t judge too hard because this still isn’t the final draft. Stepping my characters back a few minutes is almost like redrafting a new story, but now it’s a story that can breathe:
As Keith set up the winch, it struck me how not-quiet the inside of the temple was in the pitch black of the night. I turned up the volume on my mask sensors and ran my wrist-light over every moss-covered seam in the walls. I caught drips from the stone ceiling and let them fall back into the darkness. Their subtle plinking mixed with the scurry of evasive jungle rats and giant roaches. I imagined if I took off my mask the air would be as thick with moisture as it was with mosquitoes. Sometimes the near-invisible bodies bounced off my visor, and I blinked as if they could get me.“My soul for an excavator,” Keith grumbled into his mic. Not that the Architects would let us use one here, even if we worked for them. Instead we slithered like snakes under the canopy of their nighttime patrols. We wrapped our feet in saran wrap so we could wear thin, cheap shoes that bend better at the toes than boots, so we could tip-toe. We installed kill-all switches for our equipment, the better to go radio-silent at a moment’s notice.If it needs editing, well, at least there’s more to edit! By the time I was cutting to submit to the editor, I had a lot of these ideas to play with but I was afraid to include them. I cut my voice to try to make up for a plot that was too long, and it didn’t work.
Working on this flash/short story has laid out the whole process at a size I can “see,” from conception, to self-edit, to alpha/beta feedback, then an editor. I’ve experienced all of these things numerous times before, but focusing small can help you grasp it close and really examine it. It also helps to work with people you like! I will definitely be looking for the next workshop through Story Valley. In the meantime, John has a weekly writers meetup I can run this story through…
He said my ending needs more words. I’ve been ruminating on that for a future post!
To read about BMCE in my first post about this workshop, go here. To read the next in the series, go here: Writing Short