The 30 Percent Rule (Or, Cut, Cut, Cut!)

The Eye-Dancers

January 31

Back when I was in college--more years ago now than I care to admit--I had a verbose writing style. It didn't help that I was taking a course on Victorian literature, either. I still enjoy the great Victorian novelists--don't get me wrong--but clipped and economical, they are not. This all came to a head in a writers workshop I took my junior year.

The professor, a tall, thin, meticulous man, was the physical embodiment of clipped and streamlined. He even talked that way--his syllables somehow shorter, quicker, like a race car crisply rounding a turn.

"Show. Don't tell," he said, over and over during that workshop. Students would cringe at his red marks in the margins of their stories. "Why do I need to know this?" he remarked on one of my stories regarding the physical description of a character. "It is not germane to the story. I don't care." He didn't mince words, and he didn't worry about stepping on feelings.

"Cut, cut, cut," he would say. "The first draft is just that--a draft. And generally a poor one. Sloppy. Cut 20 percent of your words from your first draft. And then, during your second draft, cut 10 percent more. That gets you to 30 percent. You should always aim to cut 30 percent of the fat from your work."

I wanted to debate him. Not all first drafts are the same! Some are a mess that might need more than 30 percent of the words cut. Some are so poor, they need a complete overhaul. Others, meanwhile, are already quite polished, and perhaps need only a small percentage of words removed.

"No," the instructor said when another student pressed the issue one morning. "Thirty percent. Always. Even if your copy is clean and you don't need to remove 30 percent, do it anyway. It is good process. Good technique."

I struggled in that workshop. And did I mention I was reading the Victorians? That did not help matters. But as the semester wore on, I did indeed cut 30 percent of the words from every story I wrote for the class.

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Looking back on it now, my feelings about that class and that instructor haven't changed too much. I never like to adhere to strict, one-size-fits-all writing rules. Every writer is different. Every style is different. We each have our own voice. I don't believe it is good practice to pigeonhole writers or hand down edicts from on high, dictating how the creative process should proceed. You might as well attempt to grab the wind or grow flowers from computer monitors. It is far too rigid a rule.

But the spirit of the rule has merit. Yes, every writer is different. Even the masters can be polar opposites. Compare a Hemingway to a Bradbury, an Elmore Leonard to an Arthur Conan Doyle. There is no one way to write well. That said, cutting at least 10 percent of words from first drafts is probably a reasonable goal for all writers. Because there is no denying that first drafts need work, and nine times out of ten, the bulk of that work requires cutting and deleting.