Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Editing - growth or shrinkage

General Writing Discussion
#1

Some authors say that they tend to overwrite on the first draft. When they go back through to edit, much of the task consists of trimming out the excess, cutting bits that aren’t necessary, tightening up the wording, getting to the point. When they’re done, the resulting draft is shorter.

For me, it is the opposite. I write my first draft, I find many parts that aren’t described well enough, that need to be fleshed out more, things that need to be described or explained better. Almost invariably my stories tend to grow longer as a result of editing.

What about the rest of you? Do your stories tend to grow or shrink when you edit them?

#2

Grow. Usually because a beta reader or editor has told me to knuckle down and write the hard bits I ducked out of.

#3

Short stories tend to either shrink somewhat or stay roughly the same as I trim some areas and expand others. Longer works tend to grow, just because I’m still mostly used to writing short story scenes instead of novel ones, and have to more consciously add layers and detail and depth that you don’t necessarily have room or pacing for in a short story.

#4

My stories grow. I write skeletons just to have the concept out of my head and then go back and write the particulars for every scene as necessary.
With me, my ideas have a limited lifespan so I have to get them on paper as soon as possible or else they’ll either mutate or I’ll get tired of them.

#5

My word count usually goes up. My dialogue and descriptions get fleshed out second round and that usually includes increased wordage.

#6

My word count tends to go up too :smiley: I think I’m in a hurry discovering the story in the first draft, then I go back and flesh things out like the rest of the folks here.

;D

#7

I’m definitely another whose writing only gets longer the more I work on it.
I generally don’t tend to cut large chunks out when editing as I really think long and hard about it before adding it in the first place.

#8

Speaking as an editor rather than a writer, most of what I’ve edited gets flip-flopped quite a bit. Most tend to get shrunk in the first edit, and grow in the second and third edits. I’m about 50/50 when it comes to the final product being longer or shorter than the original.

#9

I find the first draft for me is overindulgent and oversized because I just need to total let go to get the ball rolling. the very next draft trims it way down before I send it to people I swap with. At that point they notice what’s missing and it gets just a little bigger again. The final product is never as large as the first thing written though, I notice that’s a constant.

#10

I usually end up with parts cut, but also parts fleshed out. In general I probably end up keeping approximately the same wordcount because of that. I’m just not good at descriptions, sometimes.

#11

There’s little rhyme or reason with my process, though I think the trend seems to be towards a lower word count post-editing. There’s minimalism. Yet, I’m unable to purge all superfluous elements.

#12

This is from the perspective of non-fiction, but . . . usually when I edit a story it shrinks; I’m picky about excess verbiage. However, it may grow quite significantly if the story requires development; and in a few cases, non-precise language requires expanding.

#13

Most of the time I try to cut the fat. I remove excess words, combine sentences if I notice they touch on the same subject, and other minor things here and there. Every once in a while I’ll remove an entire paragraph and/or a chapter. On a rare occasion I’ll lengthen paragraphs, although not by much.