How I Cut Down My Novel by 20,000 Words
- Sterling MZ
- Apr 30
- 9 min read
10 Ideas for How to Self-Edit and Reduce Your WIP's Word Count
When I started my first job in publishing, I was an editorial assistant that, both fortunately and unfortunately, got to wear a myriad of hats: marketing, acquisitions, editorial stages from developmental editing to proofreading. Now, pursuing self-publishing for my debut novel, these experiences have, and will, come in handy.
What felt like my biggest strike of fortune was getting to learn from, and become friends with, a publicist who had experience with the Big 5 publishers. I think about her most anytime I open up Instagram to try and market myself (trying not to cry in the process because I don’t know how to brand myself, but that’s a later problem). I also think of her because she gave me a nickname that was, while we were working together, perfect for how I handled anything she needed edited.
Slash n’ Dash.
She’d bring me her press kits, her pitches; me, I brought the editorial pen and the track changes. I was the voice that told her when something needed to go, or when something need to be worked out better. We’d get that sucker of a pitch down to a page and also give it a sucker-punch emotional arc. It was a good day when I got to help her, as well as our authors, edit their work to exact perfection. I’m lucky I still get to do this now as a freelance editor.
But working on my novel, my nickname . . . It couldn’t have been further from the truth.
At home, my book felt like an incredible monster to slay, yet I kept feeding it, raising it until it was an annoying adolescent that constantly nagged me for more and simultaneously wanted me to shut up. I needed the prose to shine, the scenes that foreshadow up into book 5 to be exactly as I will like them, hopefully, in five years from now as I work on the series. I needed the detail and “time on the page,” as I call it, to believe my characters’ connections to one another, as many books have been falling short for me recently (romantic or otherwise). I vowed to myself that my story would have quality writing, was gripping from start to end, and the characters felt authentic in both who they were and their feelings for one another.
Eventually, the monster reared its head, and though I loved it, the words came back to bite me. All 191,000 of them.
Not very Slash n’ Dash of me, is it? But that was her editorial nickname for me, so I guess my writer name (I’m dubbing it now) would be Word n’ Weep. Because that’s how it felt, having to pick up that editorial sword for myself, by myself, and slay this beast down to a more palatable size.
Stats on My In-Progress Novel, To Chase a Prophecy
Draft 1: 191k (completed in March 2024)
Draft 2: 181k (completed in January 2025)
Draft 2.5: 165k, but with a bonus chapter, it’s around 169k (Completed in February 2025)
Nice numbers, huh?
Being an editor and being a writer are two entirely different brains. Writing thrives on creativity and fearlessness; editing demands clarity and correct use of spelling. It’s much easier for other people to edit your work than you edit yours. They haven’t read it as much as you have, are less attached to it, and can make those harder calls that you know you should but just can’t. And believe me, I struggled. Hence why the book my beta readers have is 165k, instead of the 150k I wanted it to be.
But the art of self-editing is crucial for authors when it comes to content, especially if you plan to self-publish, and even more so when you have friends who are doing you the nicest favor in the world: reading your in-progress book, giving you their honest feedback, so you can become a better author before the whole world reads your work. For all that I went through, I’m proud of those 165k words (169k with the bonus chapter), proud that this is the draft my friends are reading. Though it still has a few dimples and isn’t in my ideal word count, it’s much better—and shorter—than Draft 1.
Based on my experience, here are the ten strategies I would recommend when you self-edit your novel for content.
How to Cut Down Your Word Count (Without Sacrificing Your Soul)
1. Be Picky About Your Words
You don’t love every single word. I mean, you do, but you also don’t. Between Draft 1 and Draft 2, I recast nearly every single line. If as I was reading my thought was I can do this better, I did. Sometimes it added words; sometimes it didn’t. And sometimes, if I was really frustrated with the way I rewrote it, I started wondering if I really needed the line at all. I needed to conserve my creativity and energy so I could work on the whole book, not just one line. If I couldn’t get the detail to sound good in Draft 2, it stayed in Draft 1.
2. If Similar Situations Lead to the Same Results, Start Cutting Content
Unless the point of your novel is to talk about insanity, characters should not be going through the exact same actions, reactions, conversations, etc., and getting the same results constantly. That’s what will make your readers feel like not only is your book long, but it’s not progressing—nay, boring. If a book feels tedious, stagnant, and doesn’t give the reader small payoffs throughout (character development, plot, world building, etc.), then they’ll be more likely to put it down. Even worse, if you’re planning on a series like I am, they may not pick up the second book.
3. Consider New Ways to Frame Your Content
Going along with advice number 2, if a scene feels similar to one that came before it, consider revamping. For example, I have a lot of fight scenes in my book, as my main character is a warrior trained in isolation whose sole purpose, she’s told, is to fight wars. So, as the book progress, I have all her fights challenge her in a different way either emotionally or physically. I’ve changed settings, who she fights, what she fights with, how she feels before and after. They’re similar in that she’s fighting, but each fight reveals something different for either plot or character—arguably the reasons why we read books in the first place.
4. Give Each Chapter a Word-Count Goal
For most of my chapters, I told myself to cut it down by 10 percent. So in a 4k word chapter, I needed to cut 400 words. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. I was giddy when I’d cut a thousand words from a previously 6k chapter, while in one of my alternative POV chapters, I only cut it down by two words because I had to add a detail I’d forgotten.
While I don’t believe in sacrificing content to meet the word count metric, I do believe that this is one of the most technical ways you can keep yourself accountable to reducing your novel’s length.
5. Use Track Changes in MS Word
Word may be old, but it is good. The track changes feature is essential to my jobs both as freelance editor and aspiring novelist. As an editor, I can make a change, have it marked up in red, and can find it fast when I review. I can accept these and reject these as needed. They also have the fun feature that “hides” all the changes, so you’re still looking at an “unedited screen” as you work. As a writer, this meant that all my content still existed in the background should I want to pull it back up. It’s “gone,” but it’s not “gone,” until I hit the “accept all changes” button. So I’d delete something and continue to work, knowing that it was there waiting if I wanted it back.
If you’re a Google Docs person, you can use “Suggestion Mode,” though I still find track changes better for the idea that I’m “deleting” without really “deleting” items.
6. Look for Repetitive or Extraneous Lines
You may have noticed that I called the beta reading draft Draft 2.5. That wasn’t a typo; it’s intentional. This was not like Draft 1 to 2 where I redid whole scenes or rewrote dialogue. This was me going through Draft 2 with my sole focus being to delete: (1) similar information from the same chapter, or even chapters before; (2) sentences that cut the narrative flow; and (3) confusing or ample descriptions. Not only does this help with pacing, but it sharpens your prose and declutters your imagery—all essential to a healthier word count.
7. Look for Filler Words
“That,” “just,” “like,” any adverb—these are the words writers are trained to think of when they think of filler. Deleting them isn’t a bad idea. Often, they aren’t needed, and taking them out can make you sound more professional. These are good ones to start with, but there’s also another type of filler words you can look out for.
The description around your dialogue.
Now, before you come after me with your pitch-fork pens and rolled up paper, consider this: If the scene is a conversation between two characters, which is very easy to follow since it’s a back and forth, do I need to have “Henry said” each time Henry speaks? Do I need to have an action for each time he speaks, if the action is of no consequence?
I’m guilty of this too when I first write my dialogue. Lots of tags, lots of description. That’s okay though—you’re in the drafting phase. But you shouldn’t be attached to these so much that your characters’ conversation feels monotonous, or you’re adding in clarifying markers when it is very clear who is speaking. Sometimes to have energy, we have to remove the weight, and weighing down your dialogue with unnecessary descriptions will make the conversation feel slow.
8. Read Out Loud
If you’re struggling to see where you can cut, consider reading the passage out loud. Anywhere that the content becomes repetitive, the words don’t make sense, or you are not excited to expend the energy to read it out loud—delete. This will also help you catch spelling errors too!
9. Always Save a Draft of the Longer Version
I do this with just about everything I work on—even this blog post. You’re reading draft 3, as my first drafts tend to just be me going wherever my fingers and mind want to, and second is polishing the content. The way I feel comfortable deleting hundreds, maybe thousands, of words is by keeping the longer version just for me. Sometimes what I wrote in that longer first version makes its way into a different blog post, or inspires and entirely different one.
You do your future self a favor by saving drafts. You save yourself time, and you save the little piece of you that you put into every word you write. It makes it easier to let go of content, and if you ever need it again, you already have it.
Side note: When you get to a draft you love, print it in a physical book. This is a tactic that I learned from my friend and fellow author, Olivia J. Bennett, who’s currently working on her first fantasy novel (check out her previous work, Casually Homicidal. Insta: @olivia.j.creates). Think of it like an archive, reminding you of a time in your writing process for that book you were proud of what you’d done. I’ve printed Draft 2.5 through B&N Press by making it a personal project (not for sale). I have one for me to keep as a mento/trophy, one for me to edit in, and several for my beta readers to read from for providing feedback.
10. Have Multiple Draft Rounds with Long Breaks In Between
It took me almost a year between Draft 1 and Draft 2 to complete it, and I cut only 10k words. However, that was a big deal, as I basically rewrote my book. I added in some more personal development scenes and removed some fight scenes because they were getting repetitive (see points 2, 3, and 6). In between draft 1 and draft 2, I believe I gave myself a month before diving back in. During Draft 2, I had to pivot for several months to writing grad school applications. The break, however, worked well for me. I had more time to stew, think, improve, and take my best self back to my book. I ended up reframing two character’s introductions, busting out a new scene that I feel is one of those rare Unicorn moments in writing, where even after three times of reading it, you have very little, if any, notes on what you could’ve done better.
Stepping away helps you “see the forest for the trees,” as my writing group often says. Because that’s what our words are: trees, making a beautiful forest for readers to get lost in.
And because we’re talking about word count, here’s a fun fact! The original version of the post was 3,495 words when I drafted it, then 2,214 words in Draft 2, and now 2,269 words for Draft 3.
Write on,
Sterling M.Z.
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