Adventures in Gobi Land

Editing and word count - some food for thought

It is impossible to be an advertising writer and not hear ‘Can you make it crispy?’ And holy Gobi do those words rile up a writer. ‘It’s copy, not manchurian,’ one mutters and gets on with it. Surely it is time feedback is prefaced with a trigger warning.?

But over the years after working on numerous query letters and synopses as part of my submission package to literary agents, a new respect (and dare I say, even love) has emerged, for not just crisp writing, but the art of ‘crispifying’ as well.

I have two learnings about editing (poets are exempt, as are my fellow pronouns working advertising copy). First: you can always achieve a sensible word count. To bring down the walls of Constantinople you must keep banging your head against it. (Spoiler: it eventually fell.) Second: it isn’t about killing your darlings; it is about cold blooded honesty.

The writer’s caught-in-the-headlights moment arrives when faced with the word count demand of the synopsis. In Synopsis Land, every word’s existence is a miracle. 250 words is the harshest I’ve come across. 500 words and above is suspicious generosity — the agent a worthy candidate for a sainthood. To summarise a 85,000 word novel in 300 words, 84,700 words need to be edited. When you face a stark choice — meet the word count or leave — when grace and mercy cannot be counted upon, that’s when you discover who will yield first, you or the wall. This is also part of writing a novel, this is also part of the work. Dismantle a Christmas tree with all the lights and glitter and pack it in a matchbox. There is no choice — it must be done. And in that is the learning, if it must be done, it can be done. If you bang your head enough times a brick will fall.

Hold on, that was the fun marathon. We still have the query letter. (What am I saying, there are no fun marathons in writing — want some glucose?)?

Literary agents demand query letters to be of Euclidean precision - no quantum fluff here. To be fair, they give you the answer paper with the only request that you follow it. Uncodified rules further lay down the purpose of each paragraph, each sentence, and the number of sentences in a paragraph. But never before has an answer paper led to so much teeth gnashing.?

Query Land greets you with a harsh welcome: if there is no truth in the writing to begin with, you cannot edit a truth into it. At Passport Control the writer is challenged: What is the essence of the story, where does the story really lie? The battery of questions is unrelenting. The plot, sub plots, complex characters, ingenious plot twists, harrowing conflicts, sweeping protagonist arcs, revelatory antagonist downfalls; all the dopamine releasing turns of phrases, high concept theme expositions — phew, hope you got all that — all this is great in the main manuscript. But to mine this and extract the purest truth, the answer to 'what is it all about’ (and to say it in ten words) takes more than editing chops. It requires courage. It is an investigation that demands unflinching honesty and if done well, one either leaves in tears and a hollow tale… or in tears that the story held its own. The synopsis is an inquisition.

In advertising copy and a fiction novel, the scale and context of ‘make it crispy’ is different. But I believe the writer’s way out is the same. Know the heart of the piece and write around it. And with that clarity, ten words can be made five. I believe it is only a question of effort. Come on, the Spice Girls managed to make two one.