“Needs tightening.” My least favorite comment.

I hate tightening.  Hate it at the gym.  Hate it with my household budget.  Really, really hate it with my writing.

I love the luxuriance of books, the lavishness of language.  Back in first grade, I always needed extra sheets of story-paper for Writing Time, and never got around to drawing the stupid picture.  My very first completed romance-novel chapter?  Thirty-five pages long.  Yup, thirty-five.  Even Charles Dickens would cringe.

I submitted that chapter to the Beau Monde’s Royal Ascot contest (I blush to remember), and a very patient judge responded:  “This is great stuff, but pick up the pace!  Readers won’t be willing to work this hard.”

Ouch.

The good news:  I heeded that advice.  Trimmed those 35 pages to 13.  Kept up that pace for a 369-page novel, which finaled in last year’s Golden Heart, and about which editors and agents have told me, “love your fresh, lively style—the pacing is perfect.”

Believe me, it didn’t come naturally.  I had to learn.

Here’s what I learned:

1. CUT THE FLAB:

- Delete vague, slushy words like “very,” “really,” “actually,” “quite,” “lots of,” “sort of,” “somewhat.”  Avoid “to seem” (i.e, “The storm seemed to be getting more violent”) unless you mean the initial impression’s false.  “That” can usually go.  (Not “I told him that he should run,” but “I told him he should run.”  Or better yet, “I told him to run,” or “‘Run!’ I told him.”).

-Get straight to your verb:  Delete “started to…” “began to….”  (Not “She started to laugh,” but “She laughed.”)  And avoid the present progressive.  (Not “He was standing,” but “He stood.”)

-The right word = fewer words.  Precision gives your writing muscle.  (Not “The carriage swung side to side at high speed,” but “The carriage careened.”  Not “He got down off the horse,” but “He swung from the saddle.”)  Eliminate pesky adverbs with “power verbs” (Not “She yelled loudly,” but “She roared.”  Not “He ran fast,” but “He sprinted.”)

-Trim dialogue tags.  Unless it’s unclear who’s talking, skip most phrases like “she said,” or “he exclaimed.”

-Contract “haves.” Not “She had seen him before,” but “She’d seen him before.”  Lowers word count, and reads quicker.  Works for historical dialogue, too, unless the character’s very formal. (”I’ve no idea.” “I’d best be going.”)

-Skip direct reference to perception.  Within a character’s POV, don’t say “she thought,” “he felt”; just state what she thought or he felt. (Not “She thought he was rude,” but “He was rude.”  Not “She wondered if he’d come again tonight,” but “Would he come again tonight?”)   Same with “heard,” “saw,” “noticed.”  (Not “He noticed fingerprints on the goblet,” but “Fingerprints smeared the goblet.”  Not “He heard footsteps in the other room,” but “Footsteps echoed in the other room.”)

2.  SEEM SLIMMER THAN YOU ARE:

-Action “feels” fast. In place of dialogue tags, use action, even if it requires more words.

Not: “You trollop!” he shouted angrily.

But: “You trollop!” His palm slammed the wall.

-Dialogue “feels” fast.  And creates all that lovely white space!

-Stay concrete.  Our brains process abstract language more slowly.

-Syllables count. Word count’s identical, but which “reads” faster?:

He discovered the treasure at the bottom of the incline.

He found the gold at the base of the hill.

Longer words are fine for more leisurely scenes, but when you need speed, go short.  Play with the phrasing of every sentence.  Find the right cadence.

-End strong.  Put your strongest word, phrase, or image at the END of a sentence (or paragraph, or chapter) to create forward momentum.

Not:  “With vampires on the prowl, no one took out garbage after nightfall.”

But: “No one took out garbage after nightfall, with vampires on the prowl.”

3.  TRUST YOUR READERS’ INTELLIGENCE:

-Don’t spell it out.  I’m reading a novel that’s driving me NUTS by showing THEN telling.  To protect the author’s identity, I’ll invent my own analogs:

Robert burped, and all the dinner guests shifted uncomfortably in their seats.  They didn’t know quite how to react to such rude behavior.

Clarissa smiled and batted her eyes and tapped Robert’s shoulder with her purse.  She  was flirting outrageously.

The werewolves circled Clarissa, their yellow eyes gleaming and their fangs dripping, their powerful muscles tensing to spring.  They would attack at any moment.

In every case, the last sentence can go.  Please.

-Minimize backstory. Give just enough to make the current scene make sense. Unanswered questions are hooks, after all.  And readers are smart; they glean a lot from small details.

Not:                                                                                                                                              “Never trust a handsome man.  She’d learned that lesson the hard way, in the course of three failed marriages, all to men who were gorgeous as movie stars.  The first had actually been an actor, and for the longest time she thought he was checking out other women, when he was actually checking out mirrors.  The second and third were no better, only smiling at her when she was groomed to the nines and helped make them look good.”

But:                                                                                                                                              “Never trust a handsome man.  She’d learned her lesson after three failed marriages, all to movie-star-gorgeous men who focused more attention on hair gel than on her.”

Or even just:                                                                                                                          “Never trust a handsome man.  She’d learned that by Husband Number Three.”

4.  SEE HOW LOW YOU CAN GO:

Is fear of “messing up” keeping you from cutting? Make it a game!

-Do a “contest cut.” Ever have to cut a 12-page chapter to enter a 10-page contest?  If you’re like me, lines that seemed indelible suddenly look disposable.  80% of the time, I preserve the cuts in my “real” manuscript.

-Create a “fearless file.” Many writers keep an “Unused Gems” file for lines they cut.  I suggest the inverse:  keep your official manuscript file as-is, and COPY the text you want to trim into a file called something like “Radical Experiment,” or “Just for Fun,” or “What the Heck?”  Then CUT LIKE A CRAZED AX MURDERER!!  If you feel like you’ve amputated too much, you haven’t harmed your original text at all.  (Remember that 35-page first chapter?  Partway through the tightening project, I made a file called “Crazy Eight Challenge,” to see if I could get it down to eight pages without losing all coherence.  I couldn’t.  But Crazy Eight trimmed the last two pages to make it 13–and, afterwards, having 13 seemed downright luxurious.)

That’s it.

You’ll notice I didn’t even mention “big picture” trims like collapsing two minor characters into one, starting your story in a later chapter, or deleting a subplot.

The upshot:

YOU CAN TIGHTEN YOUR WRITING WITHOUT LOSING ANY OF THE STORY.

With just the changes I’ve mentioned here, I easily cut 10,000 words from a 100,000 manuscript.  The final draft has all the meat of the original, just leaner.

What tricks do you have for tightening?  If you like, post a paragraph you feel is pretty good, and I’ll see if I can tighten it.