The 25% Solution by Mark Troy

I'm a numbers guy, as I've mentioned in a previous post. I count words, paragraphs and pages, especially when revising. As soon as I write, "The End," on the first draft, I count the words and set my goal for revising accordingly. That goal is always 25%. That is, my final draft will be 25% shorter than the first draft.

As an example, my most recently completed project, The Splintered Paddle, for which I'm currently trying to find a publisher, had a word count of approximately 105,750 on the first draft. Seventy-five percent of that is 79,312 words. My goal was to cut out 26,438 words.

Non-number people might look at that goal and say, "Shouldn't your goal be to make it the best possible?" Well, yes, that is my goal, but how do you know when you have reached that draft that represents the best possible? My answer is, it's 25% shorter.

David, first draft?

Of course, this doesn't mean cutting out just any words. If that were the case, I could take a big chunk from the middle or the ends and leave everything else intact. The effect would be to destroy the story. Revising is about getting rid of the words that don't belong. How did Michelangelo create David? He took a rock and cut away everything that wasn't David. Had he just cut away 25% without regard to whether or not it belonged, he might have produced a statue without a head or arms. The same is true with a story. I cut all the words that don't belong until I reach my goal of a manuscript that is 25% leaner.

Is there something magical about 25%? Why not cut out 20% or 15%? I don't think there is any rule of writing that says the final draft should be 25% shorter than the first draft. Perhaps my first drafts have a lot of fat in them. Other writers might have 20 or 15 percent fat.  I know, from keeping track of my submissions, that the published versions of my stories have all been about 25% shorter than the first drafts. I don't even bother submitting a story that has been cut less than 20%. For me, therefore, the solution is 25%.

Stephen King says the second draft should be 10% shorter than the first. In fact, my second drafts fit that formula. If I could make each draft 10% shorter than the previous one, I would achieve my goal of 25% reduction in four drafts. Alas, that doesn't happen. It's easy to cut 10% from a first draft. The first draft is always full of characters that don't develop, scenes with no point, and paragraph after paragraph of choking description. Those are like the big globs of fat on a brisket--easy to cut away, but the result is only ten percent leaner. Getting at the rest of the fat is tougher. It means tweaking scenes to get the biggest impact from fewer sentences and paring sentences down to the most powerful nouns and verbs. It requires a lot more than four drafts to get that 25% solution.

David, final draft.

I can't even count on each draft to be shorter than the previous one. I've completed some drafts only to discover, to my consternation, that the story has picked up some words. This isn't necessarily bad. The process of cutting away fat can expose holes in the plot or weak development in a character that need to be repaired, usually by adding a scene or two. This is where writing a story is different from trimming a brisket or chiseling a stone. When I do have to add, I try to take away somewhere else, but, as I near the 25% solution, that isn't always possible.

As for, The Splintered Paddle, which I mentioned at the beginning of this post, it comes in on draft number 17 at 78,500 words--26% leaner than draft number one.

Do you have a percentage that you shoot for when you revise or do you aim for some other criterion? If so, what percentage?

Mark Troy
Hawaiian Eye Blog
Mark's website