The Five Es of Editing Your Short Stories

Hello Funny People. I've been quiet for a while, so I thought I'd come back and share a little writing advice.

Those of you who write short stories have had this experience; you find out about a submission call at a zine or a small press for an anthology, you read the guidelines, and realize you have a story that's a perfect fit. You just have one problem: the story is a tad too long. So, what do you do?

Learning how to edit is one of the most valuable skills for a writer, and that includes learning how to get your work to a venue's preferred word count, while still maintaining the story's integrity. In my acquired experience, I've learned

5 valuable ways to go about this, ways I call the "Five Es".

1. Enter Later & Leave Earlier

We all know the phrase "Enter Late, Leave Early". It's a great piece of advice urging writers to get into a scene as quickly as they possibly can, as close to the core event in the scene that advances the story. That said, it takes a lot of practice to get the hang of (and even once you have a grip on it, you can still forget to do it sometimes, I can assure you), and thus, many beginning writers tend to get into scenes too early and drag their feet when getting out of them. 

So, to mitigate this and lower your word count, consider having a look at the first and last few paragraphs of your stories after you're finished with the first draft, and see if you can cut those words.

2. Excise Filter Words

Words like saw, heard, tasted, felt, smelled, thought, realized, remembered, recalled, and their present-tense equivalents are perfectly fine words, and if you look for them, you can still find them in published fiction. Peruse any James Bond novel by Ian Fleming, and you’ll come across these words regularly. However, when one uses them in fiction, they create something called "psychic distance" between the reader and the action of the story; instead of experiencing the story with the character, the reader gets thrown aback and becomes aware that they're reading when coming across these words. 

To prevent that, after you have a clean draft, do a Ctrl + F + Delete of all these words and tighten your sentences up. It'll help keep the reader engaged all the more deeply with your story.

3. Expel Filler Words

In the beginning, before there was the written word, there was the spoken word.

Most writers these days, unless their story calls for a more lyrical touch, aim for a casual, colloquial modern style of writing, a style more akin to the spoken word. Common dictio . Shorter sentences. Briefer paragraphs. This style makes their stories naturally more accessible, but it also opens the floodgates to words common to the spoken word that are detrimental in the written word.

Words such as just, actually, really, very, and that are the verbal equivalent of added sugar; they serve no purpose except to increase your word count like sugar ups a calorie count. After you Crtl + F + Delete the filter words out of your manuscript, cut out these words next. Your story and readers will thank your for it.

4. Employ More Vivid Verbs

One of Stephen King's most famous quotes in his book, On Writing: A Memior of the Craft, is the following:

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."

It's a good line, memorable and funny, despite the passive construct of "is paved," but we can forgive King for that because of the truth at the heart of this declaration. Adverbs in abundance are a sign of lazy writing, but there's an easy fix for them.

The fix is better, stronger, vivid verbs. A good verb can bring a scene to life faster than a handful of adjectives. The character didn't "run rapidly," they "dashed," "rushed," or "darted." They didn't "shut the door angrily," they "slammed" it. Careful verb choice paints the piculture in your reader's mind; they can see your character do it. So, consider combing through your first draft, finding those places where you've used a weaker verb or verb/adverb construct, and changing it out for a stronger one.

5. Eliminate Unnecessary Dialogue

My best writing teacher yet, Christopher McKitterick, told me this, and ever since, I've recalled this advice while writing. 

"Dialogue is the slowest way to tell a story."

Dialogue is a great way to show who a character is, at least in part. After all, what a character says can be misleading; it's what they do and think that shows who they are. That said, there is such a thing as "overshowing," and one of the ways writers like me, who enjoy writing dialogue, sometimes fall prey to this tendency is by writing too much dialogue.

What is too much dialogue? Answer: any line of direct speech that doesn't advance the action of the story. Remember, in short fiction, you don't have the space of a novel, so any needless words can only hurt your piece's effectiveness. If you come across a run of dialogue that doesn’t add anything to the scene—no added tense, no escalation of conflict, no revelation of a new facet of character—the you don't need it.

Hopefully, these tips help some of you in your editing endeavors, but I would like to offer one final note to consider. None of these suggestions are absolutes. You don't have to sheer away every adverb from your story; you don't have to cut every "thought," "felt," or "really" from your stories. The two writing ages I will repeat and advocate for until the day I drop are the following: "Everybody does it differently," & "There are no absolutes." Writing advice is just that, advice. You don't have to always take it. The more you write, the more your confidence will grow in your abilities so you can make your own judgements more astutely. But you can only gain that if you keep writing.