It’s a common complaint among traditionally publishing and indie authors alike: someone is going to go through my book and cut my word count and pieces that I love. And you know what? You’re right. If you’re considering working with an editor, you should expect cuts. That’s what editors do. They edit.
I’m sure when you edit your story, you see growth because you’re the author with the full vision and intention to create more depth in your story. But an unbiased third-party editor isn’t going to know every detail of how you pictured a particular scene going. All they know is that the pacing is off or the action isn’t clear and they’ve been hired to fix it.
In reality, authors can gain a lot from some shrinkage in their manuscripts. There’s a reason why preferred manuscript lengths you’re seeing from agents are noticeably longer than the average length of books coming out. A little shrinkage can make them stronger. Here’s how:
Shrinkage Fuels Creativity with Gaps
An editor will make cuts to your less-than-par work, and that can include large sections of rambling text, over-explanation, confusing and complex action beats, and, honestly, just boring sentences with little information. But sometimes these edits won’t transition as well as they used to. So, it’s likely you have spaces to fill with new words.
This can be a great opportunity to fill in what used to be longwinded spaces with little value and punch them up creatively with humor, insight, themes, nuance, and more. When you’re writing a first draft, you’re going to be slogging through writing sometimes when you’re creatively spent. But you can treat shrinkage as an opportunity to come back to those uninspired spaces when you’re not creatively drained and improve the effectiveness of your scenes.
Shrinkage Limits Interjection by Editors
When you’re working with an editor who openly communicates there will be shrinkage, you can feel secure in knowing that they won’t be interjecting their own vision for your story into the text. Whether they admit it or not, shrinkage will happen when an editor comes upon a passage that’s redundant or needs clarification. If they aren’t fans of shrinkage, they very well may expand the text left behind with their own words, story arcs, themes, etc. to replace those cut words. This can happen at any level of editing, so it’s good to have someone who acknowledges shrinkage and is ready to come to the table with new ideas to help you fill the spaces rather than words of their own.
Shrinkage Preserves Your Authorial Voice
This point is a kind of amalgamation of the previous two, but when you’re working with an editor who cuts down on wordiness and keeps their words out of your narrative, it’s naturally going to highlight the parts of your authorial voice that are distinct and interesting. There will be fewer words between that don’t adhere to it! So in addition to not watering it down, the right amount of shrinkage can lead to concentrating your authorial voice like a pot of boiling soup.
Shrinkage Clarifies and Simplifies
Why say something in five words when you can say it in two? Okay, just kidding. Sometimes, longer descriptions and explanations can be beautiful, insightful, humorous, or engaging, but often, they’re just wordy. Agents will tell you all the time to take word choice seriously, and when you do, shrinkage happens. Being concise with the best word choice possible is an easy way to keep up the pace of your novel without sacrificing nuance, and an editor can get you there.
Manuscript shrinkage can be a real asset to authors in many ways. It creates new opportunities and removes problematic passages. Seeing your manuscript word count you worked so hard for get smaller can be frustrating, but working with an editor is going to open up the possibilities for your story to build in more complexity and add in new length in ways you couldn’t have imagined before without taking control of your narrative.
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