As implied when I first mentioned this next installment, there’s been a lot of discussion–discourse–cropping up regarding word counts in traditionally published books. It’s daunting to trim a book down; I’ve been there several times. Infamously, I’ve sloughed off as much as 40,000 to 50,000 off fantasy books so that they would be within a range that’s considered acceptable for most agents.

Most advice, however, on tightening stories and making them more efficient is around removing filter words and dialogue tags. It’s never been enough, in my experience. Mostly because that’s a line edit, not a true revision.

In this latest installment of Writing is Hard, I’m going to outline some steps to pull off a revision that not only will make your story more focused, but also remove a whole bunch of words because you’ll be focusing on your story at a more holistic level than the words on the page.