Cutting with a hatchet!

[KevinEvans]

Sigh,
This perhaps should go in the angst corner, but it involves writing.

We have finished an entry in to a short story contest, (near future, space exploration stuff) Story came out about 16K words, contest size limit is 8K words.....
Cutting every other word sounds funny.... We are down to about 12K but are still swinging the hatchet. We have already scrutinized every word for it's ability to advance the story, trimmed interesting but nonessential plot lines, and are in the process of sweating down each paragraph to it' optimum size. Our biggest worry is squeezing the life out of the story, that is trying to keep a poblano chili from tasting like tofu. any ideas?

For those interested, the contest is here;
http://www.ralan.com/contests/listings/baenmem08.htm

Note; If we cant get a story that fits the first contest our backup is this one,
http://www.heinleinsociety.org/contest.html

Regards,
Kevin

[KevinEvans]

Now down to 8300 words....
does any one know what is standard for a word counter?
Kevin and Karen

[Murphy's Stunt Double]

Holy Jiminy!  I wouldn't have thought you could chop a story practically in half and still have it make sense.

If I remember from my typing class days, a "word" is standard 5 characters. Not sure if that helps you or not.

[AverageGuy]

Manuscript, a word is five letters plus a space.  Courier new, right unjustified, double spaced, gives you I think about two hundred fifty words a page (with adjustments for any breaks/lines you skip).  But don't hold me to that.  Word probably counts every group of letters, so "a" is a word, but so is "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis."

[meg_evonne]

I was told that editors, agents etc used the official microsoft word count as standard. 

Good for you for the axe, but I'd probably have said----no way and found another contest!  So more power to both of your for your determination!  I hope you win!

[AverageGuy]

I was told that editors, agents etc used the official microsoft word count as standard. 

Some accept it.  But I don't know that it's standard at this point.  Check the submissions guidelines.

ETA: Looking at the link, it asks for an "approximate word count."  Normally that refers to the 250 words/page estimate with standard manuscript format.  If you use MSWord or another word counter, you might want to indicate that.

[KevinEvans]

Well,
we got down to 7955 (Word processing program counter) or 7610 (Character count divided by 6) We did a lot of "he had" to he'd and sub plots died like flies. The real method was to impose a draconian does this word ,phrase, subplot advance the story? the revised story runs cleaner and faster, but we lost stuff we really liked along the way. the first contest is over in May, and the deadline for the second is in June. We will try to find a way to put the stories where you can see them after the results are in.
Regards,
Kevin and Karen

[meg_evonne]

Congrats, I will look forward to reading it!  Out of curiosity, did you feel the final result was better at the shorter amount? 

[KevinEvans]

It is crisper and moves faster, but we had to lose some compelling description in the process. If we bounce at the 8,000 contest we can fallback to the 15,000 word contest that has a deadline a month after the first contest results are announced. Then we can add some things back in.
In related news I sent in my PM for the writing group, and there We will be able to post some of our works in process.
Regards,
Kevin



Happiness is having the spell checker say "No errors found"

Congrats, I will look forward to reading it!  Out of curiosity, did you feel the final result was better at the shorter amount? 

[Murphy's Stunt Double]

Be sure to double check for homophones. Spell checkers are notorious for missing those. If you spelled the wrong word write, it doesn't care.

(heh, yes, I did that on purpose.)