Want a one-way ticket to the rejection pile? Easy: just slap as many words as you can into that brilliant book of yours!

Moira Allen, the editor of Writing-World.com, talked to nearly fifty fiction editors to find out the kinds of problems that commonly lead to rejection of a manuscript. 

What did she find? One “pervasive problem” the editors cited was simply too many words. Many of them suggested that new writers should cut their stories by 10 to 50 percent. As Anthony Brown and Darrin English of Stickman Review said, “The most obvious error we encounter in fiction is overwriting. Young writers, full of energy, throw everything and the kitchen sink into their work to impress editors.”

If cutting your word count sounds like an impossible task, here are two ways to get started.

 

Cut Irrelevant Detail and Backstory

“Every word has to do a job; if it’s goldbricking, out it goes,” says Robbie Matthews of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Many writers fall into the trap of adding too much detail or description. Don Muchow of Would That It Were says, “Describing the color and length of a protagonist’s hair is great if it’s relevant; otherwise it’s fluff you can cut.” And Diane Walton of ON SPEC deplores too much detail, saying it’s like “lumps” that stop the action dead in its tracks. A good example, she says, is when one character explains to another that society has been operating in a certain way for centuries, or the long speech where the bad guy explains why he has to kill the good guy.

Include information only if it:

• —Furthers the plot
• —Aids in characterization
• —Provides a sense of place and time

Don’t go into detail about characters if they have no significant part to play in the fiction. And never give bit players a name. If all a postman has to do is deliver the all-important letter, don’t say he’s Stan, the postman whose wife nags him and who has a bad back after being chased by a turkey in 1976. His function is just to be a postman.

Moira suggests putting your manuscript aside for at least a week after writing it; then go back over it and search for “flab.”

 

Eliminate Excess Verbiage

Let’s start off with a stunningly bad example: “Here at the top the air was noticeably moving, a slight breeze which had come hundreds of miles above the rocks and gullies and brush of the desert floor, flowing freely with no impediments to snag or slow it, as it was slowed down below, causing the breeze to be nearly non-existent, but up here, it was an untamed horse with no ropes or reins to corral it, strong enough to rustle his hair.”

Whew.

Excess verbiage can result from several fundamental writing errors.

Too many adjectives and adverbs.

As Max Keele of Fiction Inferno put it, “When the yellow, round orb of the sun stealthily and smoothly creeps into the azure blue early-morning sky, one may wonder why the sun didn’t simply rise; it would have saved a good deal of trouble for all concerned.”

Using “big” words when simple ones would do.

Big or long words make writing harder to understand and make you look less, not more, clever. Adam Golaski of New Genre wrote, “To me, ascended sounds inappropriate to describe a man walking up a few steps. Seeking alternatives to said is another common error; too often, characters expostulate or riposte.”

Too much detail or backstory.

To avoid excess verbiage:

—Choose words carefully; never use fancy words just for the sake of it.

—Use intriguing language in new ways. Wind doesn’t only blow. It can rip, roar, strangle, or whip. Be imaginative. It’s not only what you say but the way you say it.

—Write the way you speak.

—Don’t overuse the thesaurus.

If you feel the need to modify every verb with an adverb (or two), or every noun with an adjective, chances are you’re not picking the right words.

For more tips on how to avoid rejection, read Moira’s full article at https://www.writing-world.com/fiction/fivemistakes.shtml.

 

Moira Allen has been the editor and creator of Writing-World.com for close to fifteen years. She is an expert in teaching about the business of writing and honing the craft of writing. An award-winning writer, Moira has written a number of books; nearly four hundred articles; and has served as a columnist and regular contributor for such publications as The Writer, Entrepreneur, Writer’s Digest, and Byline.

(Photos: mail truck, PopSugar; blowing hair, kathryn-jenkins.com; Moira Allen, Writing-World.com)