The Day I Cut 5,000 Words From My Draft
You stare at the cursor and press delete. Five thousand words vanish from your work in progress (WIP), and your stomach drops like an elevator. You’re sure you’ve just made the book worse, smaller, flatter—and then you read what remains, and the story breathes again.
Why Trimming Helped Pace
You notice drag before you notice length. It’s the places you set the manuscript down, the moments you skim your own paragraphs, the scene that felt necessary when you wrote it but sags when you read it today.
Pace is clarity plus direction. When each scene has a job, you move; when it repeats a job, you stall. Trimming wasn’t about writing less—it was about removing actions and lines that didn’t pull their weight.
Here’s what tipped me off: I hit a chapter where the hero brewed tea, thought about the mission, checked the lock, and thought about the mission again. Nothing changed. I cut the duplicate thoughts, tightened the actions, and put a new question at the end.
Your measurable next step: pick one chapter that feels slow and mark the moment where something next becomes clear—a decision, a threat, a clue. If you can’t find that turn by the midpoint of the chapter, cut until you can.
You also see it between beats, not just within them. Small re-explanations pile up like pebbles in a shoe; each one is tiny, but the walk gets painful.
When you wrote the first draft, reminders helped you track threads. In revision, those same reminders rob momentum. Cutting them doesn’t remove context; it restores trust in the reader.
Try this test: read your chapter aloud and tap your desk every time you repeat a fact already on the page. If you tap more than three times in a scene, trim until you tap once.
Another clue is scene stacking. You signal urgency, then put two “waiting” scenes back to back: a bus ride, then a quiet café, then a phone call that circles the same concern. Pacing isn’t speed for its own sake—it’s alignment between what the story promises and what the page delivers.
A simple rule helped me: if the scene ends with the same question it started with, it needs compression or a different purpose. That one rule cut pages without touching the good stuff.
Your measurable next step: pick a three-scene sequence and write one sentence for each scene’s unique job. If two sentences match, merge or cut one scene.
You may worry that cutting words will make chapters feel anemic. In practice, space invites energy. When you strip away repeats, each remaining line carries more charge.
The change isn’t an absence—it’s a clearer current. You can feel it as a reader when your eyes stop drifting and your shoulders relax.
Your measurable next step: time yourself reading the trimmed chapter aloud. If your out-loud read drops by a minute or more without confusion, you’ve improved pace.
Trim repetition and end scenes on a turn so the story keeps moving.
What I Cut (and Why)
Cutting is easier when you know what you’re hunting. I wasn’t chasing word count; I was removing friction. I made a short list I could hold in my head.
- Recaps the reader already knows from the last scene
- Throat-clearing lines that delay the point
- Emotional beats that repeat without escalation
- Descriptions that paint the same picture twice
Here’s a concrete before-and-after. Before: “She looked at the old blue door—the very same one she’d stared at last night, when the rain made everything glisten—and felt the same tightness in her chest that reminded her of being fifteen. She didn’t know if she could do it.” After: “She gripped the blue door and hesitated, fifteen again.” The same feeling, half the words, twice the focus.
Recaps hid in polite phrases. “As you know” at the top of dialogue. “Earlier that day” at the start of scenes. I cut those and wrote the line that matters. Instead of “As you know, the gallery closed at six,” it became “The gallery’s in darkness. Six o’clock came and went.”
Your measurable next step: in one chapter, delete every instance of “as you know,” “once again,” and “the fact that.” Read the result. If clarity holds, keep the cuts.
I also hunted hedges and crutches. Words like “just,” “really,” “a little,” “seemed,” and “kind of” multiply in early drafts because they’re how we talk ourselves into a sentence. They add fog.
Cutting them didn’t make the voice harsher. It made the voice decide. “He kind of wanted to leave” became “He wanted to leave.” If the intention needed doubt, I showed it with action—lingering, glancing, turning a key twice.
Your measurable next step: search your manuscript for the five hedges you overuse. Set a goal to remove 50 of them today, replacing with either a stronger verb or a concrete action.
Another category was repeated internal monologue. My protagonist thought through the problem every time she ran into a new obstacle. It felt honest in draft. In revision, it became noise because the thoughts didn’t change.
I kept the first, richest pass and cut the echoes. The story gained momentum without losing depth because the original moment already carried the insight.
Your measurable next step: pick one chapter with lots of inner thought. Underline the first articulation of the character’s fear. Delete later sentences that restate it without adding a new angle or stake.
Descriptions were the last, sneakiest group. I love an image. Two images back to back, however, dulled each other. “The hallway was a throat” and “the hallway was a tunnel” compete; you can’t digest both.
I started asking, “What do I want the reader to look at?” Then I left one image to do the job. Space around that image gave it more force.
Your measurable next step: choose one descriptive paragraph and cut it by 30 percent without losing the image you love most. Use a word counter and watch the number drop.
Aim for decisive sentences and one vivid image; let action carry the rest.
The Emotional Part
Cutting hurts because you’re not pruning words; you’re pruning days of your life. Every line remembers the room you wrote it in, the coffee you made to put it down on the page.
There’s a name for why this stings: sunk cost fallacy. You feel you owe the scene a place because of what you already spent. But a novel isn’t a ledger; it’s a living thing that needs air.
When I deleted a banter scene I adored, I put it in a “graveyard” file. That file is misnamed. Those lines breathe again in newsletters, behind-the-scenes posts, or bonus material. Nothing you cut is wasted if it taught you the tone of the book.
Your measurable next step: create a “Cuts” document labeled with today’s date. Move one scene or paragraph you love but don’t need into it. Say out loud what its job was, and one place it might live later.
There’s also fear under the ache. A big cut feels like admitting you were wrong earlier. It can feel like you are a writer who overwrites, a writer who wastes pages.
Here’s the truth you need: the ability to remove your own words is a sign of control, not failure. Drafting and revising use different muscles. You’re not erasing the past; you’re shaping the future of the book.
One quick ritual helped me. I took a screenshot of the word count before trimming, then another after. Seeing the lower number next to a more alive chapter taught my nervous system that less can be more.
Your measurable next step: before you cut, jot down your chapter’s word count and one sentence about what you want the scene to accomplish. After you cut, jot down the new count and a sentence about how it reads. Keep those pairs for three sessions.
You might also worry about losing your voice. If you associate voice with volume, any reduction feels like a threat.
Voice survives cuts because voice isn’t word count. It’s choices. It shows up in which details you keep, in the verbs you favor, in the rhythm of what remains. Strip the filler and your voice can ring.
Your measurable next step: after trimming a scene, read it aloud and circle three lines that still sound like you. Put them on a sticky note near your desk to remind you your tone is intact.
On the days trimming feels lonely, remember the reader is your collaborator. You’re removing anything that keeps them from you—like clearing a path through brush so they can walk with you faster, steadier, closer.
The work of cutting is an act of care, not an act of loss. You’re not throwing away; you’re making room.
Your measurable next step: text a writer friend one sentence about what you cut today and one sentence about why. Share wins and grief. Let someone see the work.
Cut to serve the living book—and keep what you love safe in a place it can be useful later.
Results on Readability
After the 5,000-word cut, the book read faster without being thin. That was my subjective take, so I looked for numbers to back it up.
I measured three things: average scene length, how quickly test readers reached the end of a chapter, and basic readability using the Flesch Reading Ease score (a common scale where higher numbers often mean easier reading). I also asked two early test readers—often called “beta readers,” meaning trusted readers who give feedback before publication—where they stopped in the draft.
Here’s what changed after trimming:
- Average chapter length dropped from 2,600 words to 2,150.
- Flesch score nudged from 73 to 78 without flattening style.
- Test readers reported stopping at chapter 12 instead of chapter 9 on their first sit.
- Skim points decreased; both noted fewer places they “lost the thread.”
One concrete example: a confrontation scene went from eight pages to six. Before, the character argued, left the room, and came back to argue the same point. After, the argument sharpened and ended with a choice. One reader messaged, “I didn’t put it down at the door this time.”
Numbers don’t tell the whole story, but they can take emotion out of the decision. If the data says readers move through chapters more steadily, your cuts did their job.
Your measurable next step: pick one metric to track for the next week—average chapter length, reading time, or readability score. Write down your baseline today and your result after three trimming sessions.
I also watched how scenes flowed. Before trims, transitions needed glue: extra sentences to explain why we were moving from a kitchen to a car, from a text to a decision. After trims, the last line of a scene more often pointed to the next scene’s start.
The improvement wasn’t because I wrote new lines. It was because I cut the lines that got in the way of the forward pull. The chain between beats grew visible once I scraped off repetition.
Your measurable next step: for one three-scene sequence, rewrite the last line of scene one and the first line of scene two so the cause-and-effect is explicit. If you can’t connect them cleanly, consider whether you need both scenes or if one can carry the load.
Readability also lives at the sentence level. Trimming hedges reduced cognitive friction. Readers aren’t counting syllables; they’re processing choices. Fewer detours meant fewer chances to drop the thread.
I kept a simple habit: one pass for cutting fillers, one pass for verbs. It took ten minutes per chapter and paid back time in fewer confused comments from early readers.
Your measurable next step: make a two-pass checklist for your next chapter: “Cut hedges” and “Strengthen verbs.” Spend five minutes on each and note your new word count.
The last result I noticed was energy at the end of chapters. The trimmed chapters ended with cleaner images and higher tension. I didn’t manufacture cliffhangers; I removed the soft landings.
A soft landing is the after-paragraph where you explain the scene’s impact. Cutting that paragraph lets the reader feel the impact instead. You create momentum by honoring the moment and moving on.
Your measurable next step: in your next chapter, delete the final paragraph and read the ending aloud. If the punch is stronger, keep it cut. If not, replace the paragraph with a single concrete line that points forward.
There’s a bigger readability win too: trimming creates trust. When a reader senses you won’t waste their time, they relax and follow you deeper. Trust is built one kept promise at a time.
Kept promises look like this: if the scene hints at an answer, the answer appears soon; if the book promises a chase, you chase. Cutting the parts that argue with those promises makes the path satisfyingly straight.
Your measurable next step: list your book’s top three promises in one sentence each. In your next pass, cut anything in a chapter that doesn’t serve those promises.
One last note on metrics. Readability formulas are tools, not dictators. Use them to spot fog, then decide with your ear and your gut.
The proof you want is a reader turning pages. If they text you at midnight, you’re winning.
Your measurable next step: recruit one early reader for a single chapter. Ask them to tell you where they paused and why. Trim that spot and check again.
Track one metric, one connection between scenes, and one end-of-chapter punch; let those guide your next cuts.
Decision for today: choose one chapter and cut 10 percent of its words by removing repeats, hedges, and soft landings—then read it aloud to confirm the pace improved.
Tags: editing, revision
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