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- Feb 16, 2014
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Just curious how many other romance authors write the story without regard for word count and then cut it down during the editing? (their personal editing & rewrites, not the kind that happen once it goes off to the publisher)
On my last two books, the first drafts were pretty close to 95k each (give or take) and so I did not need to do much, but my current book still has a chunk of the story left to tell and I am already at 86k.
My instinct is to just write it as it is meant to be and then pare it down afterward, but it is not normally the way I work. Thing is, I cannot imagine cramming everything that needs to happen into the next 10,000 words in order to not go over my target word count.
What do you guys do? I have heard a lot of people say that their first draft is a skeleton and they flesh it out in the rewrites. Do any of you start with a huge, fat manuscript and substantially cut it down afterward?
On my last two books, the first drafts were pretty close to 95k each (give or take) and so I did not need to do much, but my current book still has a chunk of the story left to tell and I am already at 86k.
My instinct is to just write it as it is meant to be and then pare it down afterward, but it is not normally the way I work. Thing is, I cannot imagine cramming everything that needs to happen into the next 10,000 words in order to not go over my target word count.
What do you guys do? I have heard a lot of people say that their first draft is a skeleton and they flesh it out in the rewrites. Do any of you start with a huge, fat manuscript and substantially cut it down afterward?