Nothing could have been more daunting. With multiple choice options we could take our chances, jogging our memory of facts and figures with one of the choices presented. But essays? We had to come up with our own interpretation of these events and hope and pray it would be enough to cover a word count, word by painfully chosen word, in sentences that we knew would get picked apart for every minor mistake.
By no surprise, not many find this challenge particularly “fun.”
When my kids were much younger, I thought I would foster a love of reading by giving them special treats and prizes for each book that they read. I remember the days back when I was a kid, checking off every book I could read during summer break reading challenges, just for bragging rights, feeling all accomplished every time I added another read book to my collection.
Surely… surely… my kids would get excited about this, too.
There was only one little problem. I had to be certain that they read the books. So I got the ever so brilliant idea that they would turn in a one-page report they’d write to tell me what the book was about.
I figured if nothing else, it would inspire them to at least try to read the book if they knew they’d be tested on what they knew about it. Needless to say, it didn’t work, even when I offered cold, hard cash.
Turns out not all folks like to write, and will do everything in their power to sidestep it. For those who aren’t all that comfortable with using the written word to communicate a cohesive idea, the temptation to cheat the word count is strong, just to get it done and over with. Write big, take up lots of room on the page, and use a lot of words to convey the same thread-bare information.
We got called on that back then, and rightly so.
Overwriting is never a good idea.
Or is it?
The short answer is: it depends. If you’re just trying to stuff 50,000 words into a story that won’t accommodate it, then you’re in a bit of a pickle. No amount of words will ever do the trick if the material doesn’t warrant the space taken. If, however, you are still trying to figure out what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it, like most first drafts, I’m a big proponent of throwing it all out there and sorting it through later. It should be crystal clear by now that I have no problem using a lot of words to make my point. I would much rather get to 60,000 words and cut them down to 50,000 that rely on filler to barely get me where I want to go. This is why all my revisions have added words, rather than take them away. I’m still squarely mired in Draft 1, even though you get to see what is being written as it is being written. (Mostly.)
Consider it Draft 1.5.
There’s a time for fixing everything that doesn’t work later on, in the editing process. What I added for clarity will be deleted for the same reason, once I get all the pieces in place.
Right now I’m just laying the ground work. And there’s a lot to be discovered in the overwriting process. Overwriting is kind of like circling a runway. You’re allowed to take the time and burn the fuel as long as you arrive safely at your destination.
I’ll give you an example, going way back in time to 1984 when I wrote my first novella, “My Father and Me.”
We’ve talked about this before, in that I was inspired to write a book based on a song by Barry Manilow. This gave me a pretty good idea where I wanted to go with the story, but as you’re probably aware by now, a song does not a book make. It’s a skeleton only, even more limited than any kind of outline you might draft. You can plot your story from the inciting incident to the climax and resolution, but there are a lot of little details you’ll have to flesh out throughout the writing process. Hopefully these scenes spring up from the story itself, but sometimes you have to really work hard to piece together all the tiny steps needed to get from Chapter One to The End. This is particularly true if you have a specific word count.
If you plan to get paid for what you write, you will almost always have a word count requirement to meet. It started when I was freelancing and it still holds true, 26 published books later. Commercial fiction will deal with that dreaded word count, no matter what you happen to write. Genres where you make up your worlds, such as science fiction and fantasy, allow a little more room for you to do what you’re going to do, whereas a simple boy-meets-girl romance can be as half as long.
But you’re still expected to meet the industry standards, no matter how hard it is to fill in the spaces.
Agents themselves will tell you that they can tell a lot by the query just by the word count. If you’re trying to pitch a 150,000-word novel that isn’t fantasy or historical romance, they’re going to assume that you are not familiar with the genre you’re attempting to write. If you write a 50,000-word mainstream title, they might assume that you do not have a fully realized idea.
I’d much rather hack away at an overwritten piece than struggle and hem and haw trying to fill up a bone-bare story. We have a wealth of words available to us at any given time. It’s up to us to sort through them to find just the right one. And I prefer having my choice, rather than unearthing them in the cold, hard ground with a broken shovel.
Just like that kid stressing out about a 1,500-word essay about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a writer is challenged to fill that word quota effortlessly. You are a wordsmith. Words are your tools. You’re expected to use them. Most of us love them to the point of eye-rolling verbosity, indulging ourselves and choking on our own self-importance.
This is a delicate balance we all manage to varying degrees of success. I myself have set aside a book before because it spent a half-page telling me about an apple.
It happens. We all walk the line between giving the reader just enough to keep them engaged and making their eyes glass over as they scroll or skip past monotonous passages.
I learned this first lesson on the subject back in 1984, when my “word count” for myself meant filling up one of those 70-page spiral notebooks. I didn’t know squat about word counts back then. I just wanted to have a physical “book” and figured the pages in between that spiral notebook cover would suffice for what I was trying to do.
It was my first real exposure crafting a long-form story, and I hate to admit that I wasn’t all that good at it.
The scene that sticks out in my mind specifically was an engagement scene between my two lead characters. My main character, Paul, was an adult when his estranged father came calling, so he had a life all his own. He had a great job (he was a lawyer,) and a steady girlfriend, (Ivy,) whom he loved, and she loved him right back.
One of the ways he tried to manage this newfound chaos in his life was taking that next step with his beloved. He would have done it anyway, but the fact that his life had been turned upside down made it even more important for him, which, one would hope, would make it even more special for the reader. All the pieces were in place. I just had to get from the beginning of the scene to the end.
What I had hoped would be a romantic scene (at the beach at sunset no less,) turned out being one of the most overwritten and painful passages I’ve ever created.
If you know me, you know that’s saying something.
As a baby storyteller, I knew instinctively that Act II demanded that my character do whatever was possible to get back to the way things were. He was desperately trying to hold on to who he was and what he knew prior to the conflict introduced by the antagonistic force, in this case his estranged dad. Looking back now, that was kind of genius that I would even come up with such a scene, since it really didn’t play into the overall arc of the story I was trying to tell. I simply added it in because I knew I needed to piece the story together and flesh it out, and this particular scene was organic to my characters and the plot.
Of course, I wasn’t going by any kind of outline back then. I wouldn’t have even known where to start filling up a story like that. I was a Pantser through and through, allowing the story to take me where it willed.
So while I didn’t set out for Paul and Ivy to get engaged, it made sense that they did.
My intentions were spot on, but my execution left a lot to be desired. If I remember right, the passage took on a playful, almost joke-y question and answer tone, where I essentially beefed up the word count by overwriting the hell out of the scene with unnecessary, on-the-nose dialogue, which effectively robbed it of its emotional impact.
After I completed the book, I turned it in to my seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Wiseman.
I didn’t do it for an assignment, just to see if I could pull it off, and I turned it into her because I think I had mentioned it to her and she had asked to see it. Bless her soul, she read the whole thing and gave me critical feedback when she was done, like only an English teacher could. She was quick to point out that I had cheated with my word count, telling me that some scenes droned on without building any tension or advancing the story.
Like say, a romantic, beachside engagement at sunset.
Just like that student who fooled nobody when he or she wrote bigger on purpose to fill a page-requirement, I was a newbie writer that had been cold busted by a reader who saw right through what I was doing when I was simply trying to get from one step to another in the plot.
We think we’re so slick. But they catch us. Oh, do they catch us.
And I knew she was right at the time. We writers know when we’ve taken shortcuts. If you get your manuscript 89% where you want it, you can be 100% sure any feedback coming will point out the 11% you tried to sweep under the rug. When the critique comes back, it’s only telling you something you already knew, even if you don’t want to acknowledge it. That’s part of the storytelling instinct as well. You know when you sink the ball. You know when it’s a foul shot.
But, and here’s the important part, you often have to miss the basket a lot to learn how to sink the ball on the regular.
Overwrite to get to that 50,000 words, it’s okay.
Remember, the first draft is for you. It’s a trial run. It’s a first effort. It’s a practice shot. You’re not going to sell it as is, no matter how perfect you get it. So if you overwrite parts just to get connect the dots, who cares? Remember, nothing you write is chiseled in stone. You can fix it later; you just need to get over the hump today. And who knows what you’ll learn about your story and your characters in the meantime?
This is the biggest reason I don’t mind overwriting in a first draft. It’s all the extra clay I need to craft my sculpture into a masterpiece. Most of it may end up on the floor, but that’s okay. What I keep is always, always more important, as is the lesson I take away from it.
I have never regretted that scene to this day because of what it taught me. I was on the right track adding a scene like that, which was doing what it was put there to do, even when I didn’t know it had that job to do in the first place. I overwrote the crap out of it, which gave me the opportunity to learn how to convey my information a little more seamlessly.
In other words, I’d still write their engagement scene if I rewrote that story today, it just wouldn’t take five pages because I had five pages to fill. It wouldn’t have ten lines of back-and-forth dialogue that didn’t advance the scene, saying basically the same thing in five different ways just because dialogue is an easy way to cheat a word count.
These days, I’d find a way to layer that scene so that it does double and triple duty. I would know why it exists and utilize it to the fullest. This is a skill I learned after years of getting the verbosity kicked out of me.
Yes. I used to be worse. If you don’t believe me, read the first draft of MY IMMORTAL that my loving husband had bound for me.
Oh wait. You can’t. Why? Because it’s a first draft… and first drafts aren’t fit for publication. If you could see it, you’d know why.
Back in my Pantser days, when I was meandering through each event, ping-ponging towards every plot point I knew had to be hit in order to tell the story, I did a lot of unnecessary writing. I honestly didn’t know what would stick and what wouldn’t. It was all part of the discovery process, which many Pantsers love. That part was for me, getting to know my story and fall in love with it through a First Draft courtship.
Communicating the idea to an audience, however, requires a little more finesse. Fewer, more carefully chosen words pack a stronger punch, which is why editing is so important to the process. I don’t care who you are, you can’t get away from that part of it. In fact, you’ll never stop tweaking it yourself. I don’t read past work because of the temptation to make tiny changes along the way.
Works of art are never finished, merely abandoned. This is why I vehemently resist the “More Time = Better Work” idea. Of course it’ll be better a year or two or five down the line, because you’ll be better. Eventually, though, you just have to pull the trigger and put your little darling on the market if you ever want to have any kind of career. Far too many writers use the “more time” thing is an excuse for timidity and never accomplish anything at all. That doesn’t automatically make them a “better” writer than someone who gets on their computer day after day, churning out thousands of words so that they can prune the tree in months rather than years to complete a project they can be proud of.
If you need extra time, by all means take it. But don’t you dare look down your nose at writers who don’t take that approach. They’re not hacks that don’t take the process as seriously as you do, just because they reach the finish line quicker than you do. It’s not a cheat. We do all the same work you do, just with a fixed date to finish. Working writers don’t have the luxury of time. They have to do their best working within a schedule, and believe me, that’s just as hard as simmering on an idea for a year, or two, or five.
We turn writing into a job, and like many other jobs, you have to wring quality out of quantity sometimes, in a very short period of time.
Screenwriting was the best teacher of all in that regard. Unlike a book, where you have room (and time) to spread out and get comfortable, each word in a 100-page screenplay is weighted. You become very adept at whittling away what doesn’t work. A scene with five pages of dialogue in a screenplay grinds the pacing to a halt. Terry Rossio, whose credits include “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Shrek,” “The Legend of Zorro” and “Aladdin,” once said that writing a screenplay is like tying together a bunch of tiny bits of rope, with each tiny piece of rope representing each and every scene. Get into the scene late and leave early. It’s the best way to keep the story flowing.
To keep things moving you have to leave breadcrumbs, not shove entire loaves down their throats. Whether a novel or a screenplay, you will have to hack to pieces whatever you write, just to protect that flow. It’s inevitable. It’s going to happen. The only thing you can do about it is make peace with the idea.
But that’s an editing issue. Right now, you’re smack dab in the middle of the creative process, and you have no idea what you’re going to use or what you’re going to discard until you can see it in the whole scope of things when you’re done, particularly if you’re a Pantser.
Overwrite. It’s okay. Aim for about 10,000 words over your word count, because I guarantee you that you’ll cut at least that many when you’re done. Add those scenes to fill up the empty spaces. Write all that on-the-nose dialogue that totally and unnecessarily narrates the action. If you’re a new writer, your instincts are firing and trying to catch on something. Give yourself room to figure out what you’re going to say so you can determine the best way to say it. Use a lot of words, those evil adverbs included. Say whatever it is you feel like you need to say to explain the story to you, because even if you’re a fastidious outliner/planner, I’m certain you’re going to make a lot of interesting discoveries along the way.
Leave the door open to that discovery. Out of those five pages of dialogue, you may land upon one killer line worth saving. You might land on one idea worth pursuing. Be willing to take the long way around. Just like taking a vacation, you won’t keep or share all the photos you take, only the ones that fully capture the feeling and the experience of your journey. Your book is no different. No matter how much effort it takes pulling each word out of your soul, not all of them will serve you in the end.
Commit to yourself that what you write in this first draft is not publishable. Remember, even the award-winning “To Kill a Mockingbird” went through two years of editing to get it where it was suitable for the market. Your book is going to be changed, whether you do it or someone else, even if you have some beautiful scenes and sharp, witty dialogue. It’s going to be forged in the white hot fires of editing, which will sacrifice the working pieces just for the overall message.
As you become more skilled, your storyteller instincts will sharpen. You’ll know what will work and what doesn’t, usually before you even write it down. In some respects you already do, like I did when I was a clueless fourteen-year-old.
If you’re stuck, just muddle your way through it. Throw all those crap words together on the page to patch a bridge from one scene to the other. Later, when you read back, you’ll know that it isn’t strong enough to keep and you’ll either change it or edit it.
Today your job is to simply keep moving. So write big. Use a lot of words. Who knows? You might even be able to keep a couple.
Started First Draft: November 16, 2015 9:51am PST
Stopped First Draft: November 16, 2015 11:50am PST
Resumed First Draft: November 16, 2015 1:37pm PST
Completed First draft: November 16, 2015 2:04pm PST
Word Count of first draft: 2,621
Completed revisions: November 18, 2015 8:04am PST
Updated WC: 3,487/58,358
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