Trim your draft by ten percent and watch it glow

When I first finished my draft of a 75,000-word novel, I felt triumphant. Days of furious typing had yielded a complete story—wow!—but then I faced a humbling reality: it felt slow, muddled. That’s when I remembered my “-10%” rule. I pulled out my trusty word-count tool and saw I needed to remove 7,500 words. At first it stung—those were my babies!—but I went through, identifying every padding phrase, redundant adjective, and meandering paragraph. I merged long passages that strayed from the plot and split up ones that tacked on backstory. By the time I finished, the story had a new energy—the pacing snapped. It felt leaner, tighter, and hard as a diamond. That brutal 10% trim wasn’t contraction; it was an expansion of what really mattered.

Count your draft’s words and jot down your 10% cut target. Then dive in, hunting for padding phrases—“in order to,” “there was a”—and gut them. Rearrange paragraphs for flow, merging or splitting as needed to keep only the most focused scenes. Notice how your story’s energy and pace sharpen with each slice. Give it a try tonight to see your prose snap back to life.