Writers' Workout #5: Word Economy

At The Writers’ Block, development of writing skills is a central goal. To stimulate development everyone is invited to join in exercises to flex those writers muscles in unexpected ways. To try out new things you might normally not do, practice the mechanics to get a firm grasp on them, and to work on the outcome until it shines.

For our fifth exercise in the #writers-workout channel, we had our members work on tightening their writing with a word economy exercise. This continued with the stories drafted for exercise # 4, but could easily be done with any other length story.

Register the word count of your story as it prepares to enter the nitpick review level. During the course of editing, cut a minimum of 1/4 and preferably closer to 1/3 of the words from the story.

We are no longer concerned about the word count from exercise # 4--just work with what you have as you finish dev edits. The opener is now free for editing. The focus is on creating a final completed whole that works.

Word economy relies heavily on the talents of the editors. So you are to help at least two others in the group find places to cut words. It is often easier to see what can be spared in someone else's work before applying it to your own. We also recommend letting your story rest a few days from your last round of developmental revisions so you are able to look at the changes with a cooler head.

The Purpose

This exercise is primarily intended to help us learn to recognize filler words and phrases and to better weigh the value of each word we use. Does the word or phrase or sentence add to the story or did we just think it sounded cool? Is it essential to the character arc or plot line?

The Side Benefits

This list of added benefits is pretty extensive and there are probably a lot more than are mentioned. This kind of exercise is really valuable practice for any writer.

When you start weighing your words and have to take an axe or machete to your story instead of merely a scalpel, you end up cutting a lot of pesky things like adverbs, adjectives, and dialogue tags. The prose that results and seeing what impact it has helps reinforce these other lessons.

Because the exercise includes working on stories from others as well as our own, we grow significantly as editors. We learn a lot when we need to start thinking more critically about each other's stories instead of simply looking at them as a reader. It also becomes easier to recognize words that can be cut in our own stories when we help cut them in others.

Examples

The following are a few examples of transitions our stories went through going from Exercise 4 submissions to after Exercise 5 revisions.

Excerpt from Gryphon Valley by @therosepatch

Before Exercise 5:

A blemish on the grass at the base of a tree caught Meresa’s attention. Inspecting closer she discovered dried blood. Was it Aliyah’s? Could that be why she hadn’t returned yet? There were no other signs of blood. If she was injured, maybe someone helped her.

After Exercise 5:

What was that on the grass? Meresa leaned closer. Dried blood. Aliyah’s? Was that why she hadn’t returned? Her hands trembled as she searched the grass for other signs of her sister. Was she injured? Alive?

Excerpt from The Target by @tinypaleokitchen

Before Exercise 5:

The whirring sound of the winch followed her down as she dropped from the airship as fast as she could without killing herself. Her left hand tightened around the signal line. Jeremy would slow her descent after ten seconds and wait for her signal before bringing her to a full stop.

After Exercise 5:

The whirring of the winch followed her as she dropped from the airship. Her left hand tightened around the signal line. Jeremy would slow her descent after ten seconds and wait for her mark for a full stop.

Excerpt from The Rescue by @bex-dk

Before Exercise 5:

“I will bring him back, I swear.” Merry pressed her lips together and looked over her shoulder. The dark chasm behind her gaped like the night sky, threatening to swallow her. Birds descended into the depths in search of food, and raucous cries rose up from the blackness. She gripped the rope in her hands, adjusted her harness, and prepared to leap off the cliff.

She should have retired already. Then Glen would be safe now. Her fault. But she'd find him.

After Exercise 5:

“I will bring him back, I swear.” Merry looked to her fellow rescuers, who stopped to stare at her. Ignoring their groans, she checked over her shoulder. The dark chasm behind her gaped like the night sky, threatening to swallow her.

It was her fault Glen was missing. If she'd retired already, he'd be safe now. But she'd find him. She adjusted her harness, gripped the rope, and prepared to descend.

You won't be seeing many of our stories online right now. They turned out so well that most of us are making an effort to mainstream them. It might not work, but we want to try submitting to magazines and journals and see if we can learn even more that way even if we don't get published.

Comments from Participants

@anikekirsten

When exercise 5 started, I was pretty confident in doing the word economy challenge it posed. Until we had to do it on each other’s workouts and I realised it was much more difficult than trying on my own work. The line between economy and keeping the story grew thinner with each resubmission in the queue. With my own story--one I realised I was very close to and struggled to fix--I had to chop out a lot of the elements in the plot and practically rewrite it. This allowed me to tighten it, and the feedback on the Block accomplished my word economy success with the story. It’s much stronger now, a strength that would not be there if the word count were more. Just goes to show how much impact length has on the story itself.

@bex-dk

I expected everyone to hate me when I pinned this exercise in the workout channel, but everyone really took it wonderfully. I couldn't be prouder of how hard everyone worked. The extended deadline helped a lot, as we were able to put the stories aside a few days, both as writers and as editors, to let things rest and look at them with cooler heads and fresher eyes.

As for my own, I am a dramatic failure. I only managed to cut 61 words instead of the 500 I was supposed to. But to put a positive spin on it, it means I do a half decent job of self-editing. I had made several large cut-backs--a few hundred words at least--doing self-edits in Exercise 4 to try to get my story closer to the required length there. So at least my failure here--that even the best of the Block teamed up couldn't cut me tighter without sacrificing elements of the story--means my self-editing, when I give it rests in between, is actually effective.

I also knew what Exercise 5 was going to be and I was determined not to leave extra words I knew I could cut when I did 4 to make sure I didn't artificially pad it. I may have been overly thorough in avoiding extra padding.

@nobyeni

Cutting words is actually a lot of fun, I think. But then, I'm not really someone in favor of writing long descriptions anyway, and my stories have so far revolved around a subtle plot with not much happening. But that is because when I know I want to write a short story, I will not invent a whole world that needs much explaining. Perhaps that is what I learned from this exercise the most, that having a plan that fits your goal is most important.

@nostone-unturned

I feel writing and the creative process in general is a bit like gardening. Cutting down your word count is like pruning your plants. It makes your creation look pretty and is better for its health. Stories can branch in many directions and sometimes there's puny shoots that will never grow and are basically a waste of energy. Cutting back on unnecessary words makes your story healthy, giving a long life. Not to mention it's more appealing to the audience. Which would you rather pay to see: a yard full of overgrown grass and bushes or the Royal Botanical Gardens? After a while word economy becomes second nature and you don't feel done until you've "pruned" your work.

@therosepatch

I think I failed both this exercise and the previous one. To be fair, we cancelled the word count for the previous exercise, but exercise 5 was supposed to be about word economy and cutting unnecessary words. The problem with mine, though, is the more I developed my character's arc, the more I ended up adding, even after cutting some. It felt that for every five words I cut I added twenty more. I was trying to fit a whole fantasy world into a short span of words and it just wasn't working.

Still, it's not like I didn't learn anything. I still learned some of the best ways to cut words you don't need, and that will carry through into future exercises.

@tinypaleokitchen

I loved this exercise. It was an eye opener in such a huge way, both as a writer and editor. I didn't make the target in my cuts though. My word count went down by about 200 instead of the designated 400.

I believe this maybe in part due to my prior knowledge of the exercise. I was determined to not let that knowledge give me a head start by slacking on the word count, so I submitted as tight a story as I could manage, and might have shot myself in the foot there.

Still, cutting 200 from a piece that was as tightly written as I could manage without help, is huge, I think.

Word economy is a very important lesson and I'm sure I've got a lot more to learn but this assignment certainly pointed me in the right direction.

The Next Exercise

If you want to join us in our exercises, come on over to @thewritersblock Discord server (see the footer at the bottom). We do all our exercises in the channel.

We're already hard at work on exercise 6--planning a character arc to a shared theme. And 7 will follow up writing the story. Want to join us? Connect to our server and come into the channel. Or watch out for our next follow up article.

Even if many of us have moved on to a new exercise, you're always welcome to pick one of the older ones from the list. We'll all join in cheering you on, editing the heck out of your work, and helping you have as much fun with it as you can while learning in the process.

If you'd like to read up on our previous exercise, you can find that article right here.