How to Trim Down the Word Count On A Bloated Manuscript

This week's podcast episode is a roundup of all my guests and topics for the month of July, as well as my advice on how to trim down your word count when a manuscript is bloated beyond belief.

I offer manuscript critiques and one of the common mistakes I see new writers making is pacing issues related to scenes that aren't accomplishing anything. One memorable client in 2018 came to me with a fantasy over 120,000 words. It was well-written, with a complex and well-built world... but it didn't need 120k words. I told her I thought she could trim it down to 85k - and with my guidance, she did.

How? By asking critical questions of each scene, and on the microlevel, weeding out unnecessary words.

Learn more about self-editing in this week's podcast episode, below

MEM Author Bethany C. Morrow On the Need for Representation Throughout the Publishing Industry

Today’s guest on the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire podcast is Bethany C. Morrow, author of MEM which released this month from Unnamed Press. Bethany graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a BA in Sociology (but took notable detours in the Film and Theatre departments). Following undergrad, she studied Clinical Psychological Research at the University of Wales, in Great Britain before returning to North America to focus on her literary work.

Bethany joined me to talk about her query process, as well as writing in a post-election world as a black woman, and the concern that minority authors need to be looking for agents that want to represent them for a long-term career, not just as a response to a trend as well as whether or not white writers should attempt to write main characters of color, and the difference between that and being inclusive in your writing.

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