Shortening an already short story [closed]
Closed by System on Nov 21, 2018 at 13:26
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I am new to this group but not new to writing in many forms...
I have a great story that flows from my fingers -- got it to about 1500 words - but it must be 1000 for a competition. This has taken me more hours editing than I can count - and I am not there yet. (There is a specific chord I need to hit to cause conflict for the reader - perhaps I am obsessing).
Now, I am wondering if the difficulty in reaching the word limit is due to my ego getting in the way or is a typical struggle, given the circumstance.
I swear I am taking ego out of it (I look at all I am writing and take out all extra I can find) - and yet I cannot condense... Is this something that happens for short story? How do you approach such a challenge?
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1 answer
Some stories simply need more room to breathe. You might be having so much trouble because your story can't lose 1/3 of the words and still tell its tale. 1500 words is not huge to be begin with.
My advice if you're going to go ahead and make the cuts is to take the original and do a save-as so you have it on your computer (or on paper or however you work).
I sometimes agonize over cuts if it means I will never see those words again. What if I want them back? So save them. Sometimes I'll save an older version of an entire chapter (my chapters are mostly around 1500 words) and sometimes I'll put a line or paragraph into a file I have for cuts.
Once you have your copy to mess with, it will be a lot easier to cut what you need to.
Is it ego? I don't know. If you can never make significant cuts to your work, then yeah, maybe it is. But if this story is particularly hard, it might be your inner voice saying, this isn't the right move for this piece.
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