LHAD: The Pruning

The great pruning continues!

I've deleted 8500 words, and I expect to push that to at least 10K. All the chapters I've pruned are now below 3000 words, and more than half are below 2000, although the 2K list will grow once I've merged the shortest chapters (which I'd split at the behest of readers, but that wasn't how they were written).

The biggest victory so far is a rewrite of one of the last two boggy chapters, which is when the wheels started falling off. I've cut bog #1 from 4238 words down to 2796.The final posted chapter I need to rewrite is 4700 words. Between now and the end of the month, I need to bring that wordcount below 3000 by hook or by crook.

Then I can use NaNo to write what I hope will be the last 5 chapters.

The most important change to my writing in the last ten years is that I've learned to treat story elements as functional, rather than experiential. Before, I tried to bring the story to life so that readers could experience the adventures, struggles and triumphs the characters were going through.

Now I ask myself, "What does this contribute to the plot? What does it set up later in the story? Is this something the audience needs to know about the character?"

I'm still fighting my inner Tolkien. But I'm getting there.

Random question to the people who read my stuff

Are my paragraphs too short?

Since I compose in 18 point type, my paragraphs look long enough to me. But when I look at them on a large display, I see a lot of short choppy paragraphs. I feel like typical paragraph lengths in fic have shortened over my lifetime, but I'm not sure.

Here's the kind of thing I worry about.