Your Novel Is Too Long … Now What? 3 Steps to Fix a Bloated Manuscript
This one is for all the revisers and drafters who worry about overshooting their genre-recommended word counts.
A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a writer during one of the Open Houses I did for Seasonal Group Coaching. This writer said they were struggling with revision—their story was bloated, meaning the word count was too high.
I think of a bloated manuscript as a symptom of a root problem, sometimes more than one. To fix it, we need to understand the true cause.
So before you a) freak out, b) lose hope, or c) start hacking, let’s apply some strategy and come up with a list of differential diagnoses. (My old Physician Assistant hat is showing. )
And don’t worry, we’ll talk about where to put all those precious words you cut so they’re not actually gone.
Step 1: How much actually needs to come out?
Before declaring this a hopeless disaster, first get factual.
What’s the current word count?
What is reasonable for your age category and commercial genre?
How far outside the ballpark are you?
A manuscript that needs to lose 5K or even 10K words has a very different problem from one that needs to lose 40K or more.
Knowing how far you are from the goal can also help you determine whether you’re dealing with a structural issue or a craft/prose-level issue.
If you need to lose 25K or more, I’d start by assuming there may be a structural issue and investigate there first. We might be talking about reworking a significant piece of the novel—the setup, a subplot, an entire act, maybe more.
If you’re only 5–10K over, the problem might live more in the craft and prose.
Regardless, once you know how much you need to cut, the job is to figure out where those words are coming from.
Step 2: Diagnose the source of the bloat
Think of the two main categories responsible for bloat as story-level problems and craft/prose-level problems.
But first, you need to figure out where to look.
Start with a story structure assessment
Begin by assessing your manuscript for structural issues because cutting sentences won’t fix a wonky foundation.
If you’re familiar with story structure, map out the major turning points in your novel. If you’re not familiar with story structure, this is a great time to dig in and learn it!
It’s fun. Soon, you’ll be assessing every movie you watch and book you read and thinking, “Oh, that’s the midpoint!” or “Oh, that’s the first plot point!”
Your kids and partner will constantly roll their eyes at you; meanwhile, you’ll become a stronger storyteller. :)
As a very rough guide, look for:
Inciting incident: 5–15%
First plot point: around 25%
First pinch point: around 33%
Midpoint: around 50%
Second pinch point: around 67%
All Is Lost/third plot point: around 75%
Climax: around 85–95%
Resolution: what happens after
These are, of course, ballparks, not commandments. It doesn’t matter if you’re off by several percentage points.
What matters is that you can see the shape of the story—where the action happens and where it sags.
Say, for example, you assess your structure and discover your inciting incident—the thing that upsets the character’s world and pushes them into action—doesn’t happen until 25%.
Or maybe the first plot point—where the character chooses to engage with the conflict head-on and enters a metaphorical or physical new world—doesn’t happen until 40%.
Well, now you know where to focus your revision efforts.
You’ve probably got too much setup. You need to get to the action faster.
Possible causes of structural bloat:
Scenes that aren’t earning their place. They don’t meaningfully move the narrative forward, complicate the conflict, or deepen our understanding of the character in a way that increases our investment in what happens next. Pro Tip: Is your protagonist actively pursuing a goal? If not, that might be the issue!
Repetitive scenes or beats. The character has essentially the same conversation, realization, argument, setback, etc. more than once.
Scenes that are too single-purpose: More than one thing can happen in a scene! If one scene delivers information, another develops a relationship, and another introduces a complication, could you do all three at the same time?
Conflict that isn’t escalating. Things keep happening, but the protagonist isn’t really moving toward their goal or getting farther from it; they are not paying higher costs or being forced into harder choices. This can create a very long middle without actually advancing the story.
Subplots that don’t sufficiently impact the main story. Interesting isn’t necessarily essential.
Too many POV characters. Every POV requires page space: setup, context, interiority, goals, conflicts, arcs. Ask whether each POV is necessary to the overall narrative engine.
Too much setup or backstory built into the structure. The story may simply be starting too early. Ask: Why does this story kick off on this day? What makes this day special? Have a concrete answer.
Worldbuilding that has become story. Especially relevant for fantasy. You’ve developed fascinating history, politics, magic, cultures, etc.—but how much of it actually belongs in this narrative?
What if the structure looks solid?
If the structure is doing its job and your major turning points are falling roughly where they need to, it’s time to look at how you’re delivering the story on the page.
This is where we move into craft and prose-level bloat.
Keep an eye out for:
Exposition/info dumps. Excessive backstory, worldbuilding, explanation, or description.
Emotional exposition/interiority dump. The character feels something, and then we spend paragraphs explaining why they feel it, what it means, and how they feel about feeling it.
Overwritten description. Settings, appearances, movements, or objects receive more page space than their narrative importance warrants.
Overtelling. Explaining something the scene has already allowed the reader to understand.
Repetition. Saying the same thing twice in slightly different ways—especially emotion and interiority.
Dialogue that circles before getting to the point. Greetings, pleasantries, repeated arguments, and conversational filler.
Over-choreographed action. Every glance, shrug, step, turn, reach, nod, and sip doesn’t need to make the page.
Then we can get even more granular and look at the sentences themselves. And, personally, this is where I struggle most!
Telling when showing could be more efficient
Sometimes we use too many words to explain what a character thinks or feels when a specific action or detail could communicate the same thing faster—and with more impact.
Telling:
Stacy hesitated to open the email. It could be good news about her manuscript, but this rejection would be hard to handle.
Showing:
Stacy hovered over the email, Re: Your Revise and Resubmit, then closed the laptop.
Too much distancing/filtering language
Common offenders include: felt, heard, saw, noticed, watched, realized, thought, wondered, seemed, and appeared.
These words aren’t inherently bad. But overusing them can add distance between the reader and the character—and extra words to the sentence.
Instead of:
She heard the door slam behind her.
Try:
The door slammed behind her.
Weak verbs instead of strong verbs
Sometimes one precise verb can replace several words.
Weak: She walked quietly into the room.
Strong: She crept into the room.
Wordy sentence construction
Sometimes we (ME) use twelve words to say what six could accomplish.
Look for sentences weighed down by unnecessary prepositions, articles, filler words, and roundabout constructions. Sometimes called “glue words,” these little words are necessary—we can’t write without them!—but too many of them can clue you in that the sentence could be more direct.
Wordy:
There is a house at the edge of the lake where all the kids go to party when school ends for the summer.
Better:
There’s a house at the lake’s edge where kids party when summer begins.
Even tighter:
When summer hits, kids party at the lake house.
Step 3: Match the solution to the diagnosis
Don’t use a line-level solution for a structural problem.
If you need to lose 30K, tightening sentences probably won’t get you there. Look at scenes, subplots, POVs, and narrative structure first.
If the structure is sound and you need to lose 5–10K? Now you can start examining exposition, repetition, description, dialogue, and sentence-level efficiency.
Big cuts first. Small cuts second.
Cutting one unnecessary 2,000-word scene is more efficient—and usually better for the story—than painstakingly shaving 200 words from 60 scenes.
You’re not trying to make the book smaller
So when you’re facing a high word count, the goal isn’t simply to cut words.
The goal is to identify what the story needs so the reader stays engaged with the characters, their problems, and the tension of what happens next.
And once you know what’s creating the bloat, revision becomes much less OH GOD I HAVE TO CUT 30,000 WORDS and much more: Okay. I know what I’m looking for.
One more thing
Every novel needs a cuts file, AKA the revisor’s security blanket!
This is where you dump all those scenes, sections, and pretty sentences you’re taking out of the novel.
See? They’re not gone. They’re just in a different place. And if you decide later you need something deleted, well, no harm, no foul.
Sometimes knowing you can put it back makes it a whole lot easier to cut it in the first place.
