Looking to cut words from your novel?
Go to the search window in the upper right corner in Scrivener.
Type in “so”. Hit enter.
Look at your binder. Did a bunch of scenes disappear?
No?
You’re about to drastically lower the word count in your book.
“So” is almost never needed. it’s a strong word, an intensifier. Used often, it becomes what’s called an “expletive”, an empty word that weakens sentences because it adds nothing.
“So” go through every scene in your binder. When you open them in the editor, you’ll see every “so” highlighted.
Make sure you have a snapshot of every scene before you edit!
Now delete them.
“Then.”
look at the binder.
Lots of scenes?
Start cutting the “Then” uses. WARNING! If you have characters from the UK, they often signify the emphasis of a question by ending it in the word “then”. Kind of like “So desu ka” and “so desu ka, neh” in Japanese.
“You were late?” is emphasized in parts of the UK by ending the sentence in “Then”. “You were late, then?”
Those are the “Then’s” you can’t cut.
“very”. A lot of writers use this word very often. Let’s cut it.
Believe it or not, writers can easily cut up to 15,000 words from a novel deleting words of this kind.
Compile a list of filter words/expletives and keep them in Evernote, so you can reference them while editing.
Cutting “expletives” is the other major rule that writers must learn, like filter words. Learn this rule and apply = published.
Ignore this rule = rejected.
