E42 – Dealing With Over-Writing

Show Notes

In this episode, we discuss techniques to deal with over-writing.

The Revision Wizards are at https://www.revisionwizards.com
V.E. Griffith’s website: https://www.vegriffith.com
Miss Catherine M.H.’s website: https://www.scribes-pen.com

Transcript at: https://revisionwizards.com/?p=2428

Transcript

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Welcome to the Revision Wizards Podcast. I’m Ms. Catherine M.H. and I’m joined by my potion hating co-host V.E. Griffith. I’m a proud overwriter.

[V.E. Griffith]
This is episode 42 and we’re talking today about overwriting and some tips and tricks for the editing phase. First off, Ms. Katherine, what does overwriting mean?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Overwriting is literally that you will take extra time to keep describing something you don’t always need. Maybe you’re adding chapters that aren’t part of the book and don’t really need to be there, but it is something that you do. You could go from having, well, what’s the good example?

Right. My own book. Um, for NaNoWriMo, when I originally started, it was 50,000 words is the goal to do.

Scandal’s pen was supposed to be 50,000 words. When, you know, you got the book, V.E., it was 200,000 words. The average sci-fi fantasy novel, 120.

[V.E. Griffith]
Yeah. 80, 90, 120, something like that. Depending exactly on the genre.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yeah.

[V.E. Griffith]
Yeah. So 200 K is a lot of, is a lot to cut. Where does that come from?

How do you find it? What, what’s your process?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Sure. So my first process was to look through and see what was really flowery. And when I say flowery, it means what kind of descriptions did I really not need and that I could cut. Maybe I’ve already described something once so I can cut it later on or just use two words to describe it.

Maybe I’ve talked about what the city looks like. Well, now, you know, so all I have to do is write smoggy city street. Like now you can see that London feel of the smog coming around.

I don’t have to describe it anymore to you. You’ve already got it. There are some setbacks when doing that.

And that’s because of the genre I write it. Steampunk itself is a very flowery genre. They want descriptions of clothing.

They want descriptions of mechanisms. They want descriptions of the whole setting, the social classes. So when doing that, I had to make sure that again, I wasn’t repeating myself multiple times.

If you’re doing hard science, you’re going to need those extra times to explain the science because that is part of the genre. So when you’re looking to cut stuff from over writing, make sure that you’re still following what your genre needs you to do. So flowery words.

And then after that, I’ll look into, really, did I, did I follow what was supposed to be the plot? Cause remember I’m the wonderful pantser. So I will need to make sure that I actually, you know, have a plot fully lined up.

So once I’m, I know that, yes, this plot has a beginning, a middle and an end. I’m good with that. Now I’m going to look at all the subplots that I have put out in the book.

Are they necessary? Do I need these many subplots? Which ones can I cut?

And the story still makes perfect sense. So I’ll look into those. Maybe I’ve got a side character that I don’t need and they have this whole section.

I can cut that now because it’s really not that important to the story. It was cool for me. Doesn’t need to be there.

So those are a few things that you can look at when you’re an overrider, the flowery words and the extra side characters and those extra side plots that you may not actually need for the story.

[V.E. Griffith]
Now, do you have a tool for finding those kinds of things or is it just sort of, you read through the manuscript and you hope for the best? I mean, are you, do you go for the post-it note method or index cards or giving it to your alpha reader, Ben, or what is your process for making that happen?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
So that’s a good question. I did come up with a template for myself when I started my editing process because my book is so large. I really needed to, you know, understand things a lot better and now I start this off much earlier.

So this is part of my series Bible and I call it my chapter index and it will go into, I want a one sentence summary of my chapter. I then have a sentence summary for the beginning, middle and end of my chapter. So I can look through my entire manuscript and read my entire manuscript with my three sentences in this template.

I also have, where is my plot moving? I have my subplot for any plot twists that are happening and does this chapter have any foreshadowing? Those are really the big main ones that I’m like, Hey, do I need this?

I do go overboard. And of course my, you know, my indexes can be like five chapters or five pages long because, you know, I’m an overwriter, but those are like the really important pieces to me when I’m looking at this is what is my whole chapter? Because I learned this one in, um, I had an English teacher in high school who would make us write a book report, but only base the book report strictly off of the sentences we did.

So we would have to read the book and hand into her a one sentence chapter summary of each chapter in the book. And then she would grade that because she would know what the book was. And she’s like, did you read this?

Are you just copying from other people? Like what was the book? And then we could write our book report off of that.

So I started using that to help summarize my book. So if I’m suddenly seeing like six chapters with Peter in it for no reason, I can cut those. Not that I don’t love Peter, but I don’t need Peter to make the book work.

And that’s the thing is that you’re looking to make sure that the book works because you write that first draft for yourself. Maybe you would really enjoy those. Maybe you needed those 14 chapters in the beginning of the book in order to understand where the book was going to go, because that’s the only section you outline.

So you cut the outline section. That’s what I look for.

[V.E. Griffith]
That makes sense. Do you find yourself as you go through hanging on to stuff that’s unnecessary or are you pretty ruthless these days? Do you get better with time?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I get better with each editing draft. My first editing draft was really hard. The first original draft was 240 words.

That’s 240,000 words. And I cut out about 30,000 on like, and my first go through and I was very heartbroken. Each time I was cutting out words, my second draft, that’s when I started to go in and start cleaning up for like, Hey, this plot did not make sense.

This side plot didn’t need to be here and I could go in and cut those sections out. So the first time I went through it was really to try to get rid of those flowery sections. Then the second time was to really solidify my plot.

And then after that, that’s when I started getting like really vicious. I could go in and be like, I don’t even need this whole four paragraphs and immediately cut all of them out. So I’m, I’m in the proofreading station, right?

Station, whatever, station right now. And I am still actually pretty ruthless. I am cutting full paragraphs still.

We were just chatting, my alpha reader and I, then we were going through and he was reading it out loud and goes, huh, that, that it sounded straight. I was like, we don’t know. Don’t even fix it.

Cut the whole thing. We don’t need it. And he’s like, sounds good.

And we’re just like cutting sections still. So I’m able to now be much more ruthless with my cutting originally. No.

And that’s why I think I have like five to six drafting phases because each drafting phase cuts out different sections for me.

[V.E. Griffith]
Is being an overrider and having to do all this cutting a problem that somebody should address? Is it just a thing that is, is it, is it something to practice on? Do you think, or is it just, is it like, okay, this is my process and get over it?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I know that a lot of cancers who I’ve talked to tend to be overriders and I think it’s because we need to go through some of this stuff and get it out of our heads to make sure it’s not needed. If that makes any sense. Like as if you’re outlining it, you can see, you know, this is what my plot should be.

This is what my side plots and how they tie into my story. Well, I don’t know if Peter was really important. He is, but I didn’t need six chapters of him.

Like he’s just, he’s a character who is important. And all I really need is two chapters with interaction with Theodore to show that he’s an important character. So it’s, it’s those little things of where can I take and like make it into the book without giving you six chapters that you don’t need to read.

So for me, it’s definitely my process. I have tried outlining in order to shorten. It has never worked for me, but it’s definitely a thing that I would rather overwrite because the last time I tried to underwrite, I left my entire villain out of my book until the climax.

Not that he wasn’t there the whole time, but literally never wrote him onto the page because we were trying to make it as short as we could. It was still 200,000 words. But by the time we got to the climax, my alpha and I realized we didn’t have the bad guy in the book and we kept being like, there’s something missing.

But of course I’m too close to it. To have been like, Oh yeah, it’s the villain. I left him out of the book.

Like there’s definitely, I knew the chapters in my head, but I was trying to cut them. So I would rather be an overwriter and write it all in and have to go through and then remove sections because I think that’s easier to do than add stuff in because I’ve tried to go back and add the villain. Nope.

I had to scrap the whole book and start from scratch again.

[V.E. Griffith]
That’s a painful lesson at 200,000 words.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
It is. It was also the second time I had to scrap that book. So I think at that point I was getting a little ruthless.

I had already scrapped over 200,000 words, rewritten it, tried to shorten it, forgot my villain. And now I’m back to rewriting it. I think I’ve got like 40,000 words into it now.

[V.E. Griffith]
As a, as a chronic underwriter and an outlaw, something of an outliner, I just can’t imagine putting that much effort, especially as painful as writing is for me. I like to say, and it’s an old quote that I don’t remember where it came from anymore, that I hate writing, but I love having written. And you know, the writing is just very painful for me.

And I can’t imagine throwing away 200,000 words, period.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yeah, it was, it was not something I had expected to do. It is, it is good to still like, I still have it and I can still pull chunks from it and insert it into the, the book that I’m writing now. It’s just, I have to be on that cautious side of here.

I can, I can Frankenstein this in, but now I’ve got to, I’m making sure that it lines up with this version. Okay. So it wasn’t a complete waste.

No, both weren’t complete wastes, but I did have to like change quite a lot. The entire beginnings of each one are completely different. They get to the same point, but it’s getting them into space.

That’s, that’s where it becomes good. After the space part, it’s all the same. It’s getting them into space, which is about a hundred thousand words to get there.

Holy cow.

[V.E. Griffith]
Okay. You don’t want them to just strap a rocket to their butt and go. Okay.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
It would be cool, but it would be hard to explain for teenagers how they get that happens. Target audience, all of that. Okay.

What did we miss about overriding? So overriding can also be kind of stressful because you’re not sure if you’ve got everything you need on page, because you’re always going to sit there and wonder, Ooh, that section I caught are people understanding it. If it’s gone now, do they get it?

And it’s, it’s one of those things where it’s like you don’t want to treat your readers like they’re stupid, but you’re also not sure how stupid sometimes they are. And did you cut out a section that makes them and the book not make any sense anymore? So I, I have that worry still, especially with scandals pen because I just cut out the first 14 chapters of my book.

And I have four sets of readers, two of which never got the first 14 chapters when they started from the new beginning and two who had them to read through to be like, no, I would have needed that information. So I’m, I’m, they’re almost finished. So I’ll like, I’m biting my nails as I wait for my, my reply.

It is one of those very stressful. Oh my God, did I, did I cut the wrong thing? Moments.

[V.E. Griffith]
Okay. Well, I know that as a chronic underwriter, yeah, I left stuff out. That’s kind of what I do.

So, so it’s frustrating. And sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be better if I were an overrider because cutting is relatively easy for me, but creating is the hard, I guess it’s just a difference in approach and temperament.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
It also, so I have ADHD and I will go into a hyper focus. So I enjoy writing the book and my favorite section to write in the book because I am a complete weirdo is the middle. I love writing the middle.

And I think it’s because I do write huge cast member groups. So it’s not like I’m working with like five characters. I’m working with like 40 characters, large cast groups that I like to weave.

So I have a lot of room to weave like extra side plots, this twist and like getting out of the middle and like hafting to write the climax is hard for me because I’m having so much fun. If I could keep making that middle go, I would, which is why I’m debating on doing a serial fiction. Cause I can just keep going.

[V.E. Griffith]
That sounds like fun. Um, unless you have any last comments, I think that about covers it for us.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I think so. Just pretty much, you know, don’t be afraid to cut and have somebody you trust who can read it over and make sure you’re not missing anything big because you know everything in your head at this point, once you’ve written it on paper, you have it all there and it will be nerve wracking. Like it’s going to be harder than the, you know, they, they say kill your darlings.

I thought putting my book was harder than handing it off to an editor. Like having you go through it was a piece of cake for me. Like that was not the hard, scary part.

It’s literally cutting sections. That is terrifying.

[V.E. Griffith]
I guess in some ways it’s, it’s necessary to be terrified because it’s a growth experience for us. So, all righty. Well then I guess that’ll wrap it up for this week.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Alrighty. Stay magical. Bye.

Thank you so much for joining us for today’s episode. You can find every episode on your favorite podcast player and on YouTube. For transcripts, please visit our website at revisionwizards.com.

They go live the same day as our episodes.

[V.E. Griffith]
If you’d like to reach out to us separately, you can find me at vegriffith.com and Ms. Katherine at scribes-pen.com.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Stay magical. Stay magical.