The 25% Challenge

Kathleen Ernst’s latest project taps into the decade she spent as a curator at a large historic site.  The Heirloom Murders was recently released and the third Chloe Ellefson mystery, The Lightkeeper’s Legacy, will be published this fall.  Kathleen’s fiction for young readers includes eight historical mysteries.  Honors for her work include Agatha and Edgar nominations.  Kathleen lives and writes in Wisconsin, but takes great pleasure in research trips to new locales! Welcome to the Blood-Red Pencil, Kathleen.

As a big believer in sloppy first drafts, I try not to censor myself when capturing ideas.  My fingers fly and words fill the pages.

When I revise, a lot of those words disappear.

That wasn’t always the case.  My first three novels were published without making any significant revisions.  Then I began writing books for the History Mystery series published by Pleasant Company.  The business model for these kids’ books dictated a target word count. My rough draft for one of them, Whistler in the Dark, was more than thirty percent too long.

First, I panicked. Second, I reluctantly identified a chapter that could go. Third, I crept through the manuscript looking for places to trim.  I examined each sentence. Was it  necessary? If so, could I rewrite it using fewer words?  Facing the manuscript with scalpel in hand was excruciating. By the time I reached the end of the book, snipping a word here and a phrase there, I had wrestled the count into acceptable range.

Midnight Ink, the publisher for my latest project, the Chloe Ellefson mysteries for adults, also needs manuscripts to fall into a certain target word count range. When MI picked up the first Chloe novel, Old World Murder, the editor asked me to cut the length by about a quarter (I axed twenty thousand words.) Trimming five thousand words from The Lightkeeper’s Legacy, my latest Chloe mystery, was time-consuming but painless. I cut one short scene that didn’t belong, and lost the rest simply by tightening up my prose.

(Want an example of tightening sloppy prose?  Here’s the first draft of a sentence in the third paragraph above:  My first three novels were published by a small press, and each was printed without making any significant length change during the editing process.  That contains twenty-four words; the edited sentence above, eleven.)

I’ve needed to cut length on the last eleven books I’ve had published.  The most important thing  learned along the way?  I don’t miss what was lost.

Since I wouldn’t have discovered this if I hadn’t been forced to,  I often present a challenge to students in classes and workshops.  You can play, too.

1. Choose a short story or novel chapter that you’ve been working with. Not a first sloppy draft; something you’ve revised.

2. Copy it into a new computer document, or make a clean photocopy of the pages. This is important! You won’t feel emotionally safe making changes without knowing that you can return to the original.

3. Check word count.

4. Cut that word count by twenty-five percent. If your first pass through doesn’t do it, work your way through again. Repeat the process until you have reached the goal.

5. Put the manuscript aside for at least a week. Then read the leaner version, without checking it against the original. If you truly miss something you deleted, replace it. Voice and style sometimes trump all else! I suspect, though, that you won’t miss a lot of what was cut.

Give the challenge a try!  I think you—and your editors and readers—will be glad you did.

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 I’m grateful to Dani and the other Blood Red editors  for allowing me to visit.  And I’m grateful to readers!  I love my work, and I’d be nowhere without you.  Leave a comment, and your name will go into a drawing for a free book.  The winner can choose any of my seventeen titles.  The Heirloom Murders, one of my American Girl mysteries, a Civil War novel—the choice will be yours!  To learn more, please visit my website, www.kathleenernst.com.