Topic: Purpose for Revising

Question: What should you aim for in revising your work?

Answer: “When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt;  revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done. If the first draft runs 4,000 words, your second should go about 3,000. If the first is around 3,000, you can still probably get it down to about 2,500 by tightening up the nuts and bolts. The object here isn’t to shorten for the sake of  shortening but to speed up the pace and make the story fly along.” Stephen King. “The Horror Market Writer and the Ten Bears.” P. 228. November 1973.

Comment: I think you’ll agree that Stephen King is a model for how to establish pace in writing. RayS.

Title: The Writer’s Digest Guide to Good Writing. Thomas Clark, ed., et al. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books, 1994.