Now, a bonus. You thought after the last video that this class was all over. And so it is, as far as the topic of writing about sex without writing about sex is concerned. But I wanted to add a little bonus. The bonus is about brevity. because gravity, or rather, the lack of it is one of those things that cause books center mandrel press to be rejected.

The authors use too many words to say what they have to say. Sometimes like it's to say, Get to the point man or woman. Even when we do accept a book that someone has submitted to us, the book we finally publish is usually a fair bit shorter than the book The author centers. When I'm editing a book, even a well written book of the short we might want to publish. I typically remove between 20% and 30% of the text I start with, so if you send a 60,000 word By the time I've edited, it will usually be between 42,040 8000 words. That doesn't happen because I'm looking for shorter book.

It happens because the author has not done his or her own editing with sufficient force. They haven't tried to say what they want to say effectively and clearly, in no more words than they have to use. That's what I mean by brevity. I want to tell you how I learned this lesson. Because it would be nice to be able to claim that I've always been the skilled professional writer, I want to help you become nice, but not true. I had the same sort of experience as almost every novice writer has.

The same as you've had if you've already been sending out your novel experience, known as rejection. Reaction hurts. You know that if it's up to you, and you may very well have responded to rejection in the same way as I did. The publishers, obviously an imbecile, the agent doesn't recognize stock quantity when it's right in front of her. I'm too good for this market. It's their loss.

Well, it wasn't their loss, it was mine. And if you've been saying it's their loss, it isn't their loss. It's yours. agents, editors and publishers have no difficulty in finding authors they want to work with. If they didn't take my book, my article on my story, your book, your article or your story, there were plenty of others they could choose from. The initial problem, in my case where I was going wrong, was that I wasn't given them what they wanted.

I started the market quite hard and I looked in detail at the sort of book that that agent represented or that public You're accepted. I'm not going to say I changed what I wrote because I didn't. But I did change who I sent it to. There was no point in sending historical mystery to an agent who only represented writers of dystopian fiction set 1000 years in the future, that I had a stroke of luck. I was so young and so arrogant. I didn't really know just how lucky I'd been.

I'd sent an article to Good Housekeeping magazine, I'd studied the articles they published, and I knew that mine was on a subject that interested them. And I worked on it and worked on it, and worked on it until I was satisfied that it was as tightly written as it could be. Because if anything was clear, it was the good housekeeping. didn't accept longer articles than the articles needed to be. That way wasn't a single word there. That didn't absolutely need Be there.

In my opinion, I wrote a covering data sign that places soon on blog with another envelope that had my name and address in the correct poster giant. I knew they weren't going to reject this article because it was perfect for them. But I also knew I had to send return postage, and then I waited. Sometimes in the past, I'd waited for months. Sometimes I never did get a reply. But this time, the reply came within the week.

The postman handed me what was obviously my return postage envelope. Equally, obviously, it contained my article. I could tell that just from the feel of the envelope and how thick it was. They'd rejected it. I knew that because that's what happens when somebody reject something, they send it back. I'm talking here 30 years ago.

This is long before the days when you would email your submission to an agent or a publisher. I can still remember By that moment of cold fury when I hold the envelope across the floor, Good Housekeeping editor was a complete fool. She didn't recognize a great riser when his work was in front of her. How the devil had she ever managed to get that job, she was obviously sleeping with the owner. I was so upset, I left the envelope on the floor. I walked across it when I was going somewhere.

I didn't pick it up until I was about to go to bed that evening. Even then, I almost threw it in the bin and opened. But then I thought, better see what they have to say. I read the first sentence in the editors letter, then I read it again. I still feel emotional when I remember that moment. Because what she said, This genius editor with an eye for talent, started with the words.

We'd like to publish your article. I didn't quite know how to react. Good Housekeeping, wanted to publish an article written by me. Oh, but hold on, if they wanted to publish it, why send it back to me? Because there it was attached to the letter. And so I read on and I was plunged right back into despair.

Because what you said in a second sentence was, we'd like you to reduce the length by 30% 30%. That was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. I have written this article as tightly as I possibly could. So how in the name of heaven was I supposed to get 30% out of it hopeless. She'd raise my hopes. Own is a dash them again.

And then I read the next sentence. In it, she said, I'm sending our article back to you with some notes and where I think it could be cut without losing any of the meaning. I looked at those notes. Of course, it was ludicrous. There was no possible way. I could reduce the word count by 30%.

And then as I read each note, I thought, hmm, and Well, I suppose and if I, and then if I, maybe it's just possible I could get the word countdown. I don't know how you operate, but I'm at my most creative in the morning quite early in the morning. In fact, evenings aren't good for me and bedtimes are impossible. So I left it to the next morning. Following her notes, I got the word count down by exactly 30%. And this is the key point.

When I read it, losing 30% of the words have not changed the meaning at all. About 20 years ago, I had a follow up to Because by now I was used to writing in as few words as possible. And I did something that is actually against the law. So I'm not going to tell you who I did it for. And I'm not going to tell you what the institution involved was. But a friend was in despair.

She was looking for she was she was she had applied for she had written a dissertation for a master's degree. In a particular subject, I'm not going to name that subject. She needed that master's degree in order to stay in her job. And the university vote she'd written it out a maximum number of words that were permitted, and she was over it. And she didn't know what to do because just like me all those 10 years before with good housekeeping just like me. She has given up, she knew she'd written it as tightly as possible, but she couldn't write it any better than that.

So I said, Come down for the weekend, bring it with you. And we sat at my computer. She gave it to me on a desk because this was what we used. Then. I fed it into my computer, and I started going through her dissertation, sentence by sentence and each sentence, I rewrote taking about 30% of the words out. And at the end of each sentence, I said, does that sentence didn't say what you wanted to say.

And at first, she was very reluctant, but she would say, Yes. All right, then. Yes. And I did the next sentence and the next and the next and each time she had to agree. Yes, it still says what I wanted to say. And by the end She was happy.

But she was also 10,000 words under the limit under the maximum that the university accepted. So she said, Well, now I need to put something else in and I said, Hold on. That's a maximum. You don't have to get there. You've said everything you want to say you said it. 10,000 words inside the limit, you'll be fine.

And she was she got her master's degree. She kept her job she retired now. Now I want you to take part in an exercise. There's a downloadable file attached to this video. What we've done is to extract some passages from novels published some time ago, because in the past, they place less emphasis on pace and brevity. novels written in the 19th century.

Were far longer than novels written today. Just read people like Dickens and Trollope novels written in the 19 40s The 1950s were a lot longer than they are today, perhaps not as long as in Victorian times, but still longer than we accept today. All right. So we've taken some of those extracts. And what we want you to do is to rewrite those passages in a way likely to be approved by a 21st century editor. And not just any 21st century editor, me.

There's an email address on the assignment. If you send Your completed assignment to me, I'll tell you what I think and how I think you're doing. The reason this should be helpful is that that's what happens when you become good enough to interest an agent or an editor. They start writing back to you. It isn't an acceptance not yet. But you're on your way the first time.

You got a letter back, got an email back saying this isn't quite for us. But if you were to do this, then Perhaps that's when you know that you're over the cusp and you're about to become a publishable writer. Good luck with the assignment and good luck with your writing.