How long is long enough?

Last week’s issue was the business of ‘murdering darlings’. This week I’m looking at the carnage and wondering – to use yet another metaphor – whether I’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

The main victim of last week’s murderous rampage through the third draft was the opening of the new story, where I took four chapters to get to the first real tension, although I thought the discerning reader would see the story’s inexorable decline into noir and be prepared to wait. There was merit in some of those early scenes, but in the end they just weren’t justifiable and out they went.

There’s no doubt that the 4th draft now gets going faster and rattles along, but when I sliced away at the rather turgid middle section as well I noticed that the final word count had shrunk by an astonishing 15,000 words, from 99,000 down to 83,000, and I began to wonder whether I’d been too enthusiastic.

I checked around. How long is too short for a thriller/crime story? My previous two had been over 100,000 words, which is probably why this one felt a little thin. But other opinions were reassuring : anything between 70,000 to 100,000, said someone whose experience I respect.

What I need to do now is step away from the text for a day or two and go back to it with fresher eyes. Have I thrown the baby away? Which fragments of the erstwhile opening chapters need to be included, to add depth without length? Sometimes all it takes is a remark or a look or a thought to enrich the reader’s view of the scene, and that will be my task for the next re-write. I also need to look out for anywhere further on in the story where reference are made to passages that are now lying on the ‘cutting room floor’.

I suspect that by the the time I’ve added in one or two potentially dramatic and useful scenes and fleshed out the opening details just a little more I’ll be up to the 85,000 word mark, exactly midway between the parameters suggested by expert colleague. Let’s hope so. I’m getting to the stage now when I never want to see this manuscript ever again.

Apart from any other considerations, a slightly shorter book will make for faster and thereby cheaper production, especially proof-reading. After the embarrassment of inadequate proof-reading in one of my previous books, I’ll be doing whatever it takes this time to get that the stage of the process properly covered, even it costs a lot.