On the Basics: Self-editing your writing

© Ruth E. Thaler-Carter, Owner

An American Editor

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I love to write, and I love to talk with sources and do background research for my journalistic writing. That’s why I often end up with the potential for more words than an assignment requires — sometimes because sources have such good material to include and sometimes because my voice might be more detailed and “wordy” than needed; sometimes because I just start writing and don’t stop until I have nothing more to say. Cutting an article down to size, so to speak, is a challenge when it feels as if every word is worth keeping. Here’s how I (usually) manage self-editing to cut an assignment down to a required word-count limit.

Ask for more space!

If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

Before doing any substantive cutting and self-editing to a story that I’ve realized is likely to run long, I contact my assignment editor and say something like, “I’ve gathered some great quotes and insights, but including all of the sources and their information would require more words than assigned. Please let me know if there’s space for any additional material, and what the absolute maximum word count might be.”

Another option is to ask whether my article could run in two consecutive issues, or even as a longer series.

Heading off the problem

The best way to prevent having to self-edit for length or beg for more words and space is to improve how we plan and organize what we write. That can involve a couple of approaches.

• Make an outline. Structuring the story before you start writing helps tighten it up and saves you from wasting time on unnecessary elements. I learned the value of outlines many moons ago in high school, when our “Critical Reading and Writer” teacher would give us a literary passage or poem, a few questions, and the 45-minute class period to craft a coherent essay incorporating answers to the questions.

• Ask fewer questions. I’m sometimes guilty of coming up with more questions for sources than an article really needs. If I’m dealing with a tight limit on word count, I go over my planned questions and drop anything that could be overkill. (I usually save the ones that might be unnecessary, in case I need more information after all or can use those for a longer assignment in the future.)

Now that I think of it, fewer questions also helped keep junior-high history essays under control. We didn’t have a word count to meet or beat, but our teacher gave us three or four questions every week and as many sources for answering them in, again, a coherent essay. Limiting the number of questions and sources helped organize both the research and the writing process. (That didn’t stop my dad from saying “I have a book!” and finding several additional books in his library for me to reference.)

• Do fewer interviews. There is such a thing as too many sources. When you have a word limit to meet, only contact absolutely necessary sources. That can be confusing when the client provides a list of sources whom you think should all be included. I still remember my first assignment for what became my longest-running client: a 1,500-word article for an association magazine for which my editor provided 15 members to interview. When I said it seemed impossible to reach them all or include substantive quotes from all of them without going well over the word count, he responded with, “Oh, that’s just in case you can’t reach some of them. We only need to reach four or five.” I was so glad I asked!

Working through the pain

Both writers and editors know that cutting good material from an article can be a painful process, especially for the creator of the work. We do tend to get married to our words, especially given the amount of work involved in creating or crafting them in the first place. It’s easier for editors, who don’t have the same investment of time and effort in the piece and are better able to view it objectively.

First and foremost, skim the draft to find and delete repeated words or ones included by mistake. I just cut a 2,500-word article down to the maximum limit of 2,000 by, in part, finding a few extraneous words that snuck in while I was writing and revising.  

The classic self-editing technique to trim word count is eliminating adjectives. Whether that works depends on the project. It’s generally a useful technique, but some adjectives are important, even essential, for clarity, voice or interest level. Like so many other things in life, a heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all approach can result in throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Oh, and ditch the clichés! Relying on clichés can block creativity as well as add words. Try to swap out clichés with your own language; your voice is often shorter and tighter.

Simplify: “had been expecting” could become “expected.” “had to” could work as “was.” Look for unnecessarily complicated phrasing, compounds and similar excesses, and prune them back to essentials.

Another technique that I often use is to look at every instance of “and” or “or,” and choose one piece of each of those lists, groups or collections to represent the whole.

Certain words can almost always be deleted without damaging meaning or clarity. “location” is one — you can often change “Such-and-such an event is located at …” to “Such-and-such an event is at …,” or even put an address in parentheses, without confusing your readers. Most of us know when “that” can be dropped as well.

Turn narratives into bulleted lists in phrases rather than complete sentences. Just be sure to pay attention to parallelism from one item to the next.

The beauty of blogging

For those of us who tend to write long, blogging is a bonus: We can usually write as much as we please, especially if it’s for our own outlet. There’s a concomitant danger, though: No restrictions on story length removes the need to do our own quality control through self-editing. Blogging can be the equivalent of babbling. Readers notice when a piece of writing hasn’t been edited, no matter by whom.

Payment ethics

Coming up with more words than required poses an issue both practical and ethical: Should the writer who goes over the assigned word count be paid more than an agreed-upon fee? I see producing more words and needing more space than assigned as something I’m responsible for, so I’ve usually offered to accept an original payment, whether it’s by the word or a flat fee, if I end up going over the word count and the client agrees to give me free rein. Some have upped the rate while agreeing to increase the word count; others have accepted my offer to stay within the original budget. Either way, as mentioned, check with the client before going over the assigned word count.

Do colleagues have any ways of keeping word count under control when an assigned topic begs for more words than assigned?

Ruth E. Thaler-Carter (www.writerruth.com) is an award-winning provider of editorial and publishing services for publications, independent authors, publishers, associations, nonprofits and companies worldwide, and the editor-in-chief and owner of An American Editor. She created the annual Communication Central Be a Better Freelancer^® conference for colleagues (www.communication-central.com), now co-hosted with the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors (www.naiwe.com) and sponsored by An American Editor. She also owns A Flair for Writing (www.aflairforwriting.com), which helps independent authors produce and publish their books. She can be reached at Ruth@writerruth.com or Ruth.Thaler-Carter@AnAmericanEditor.com.