Does your novel need to go on a diet?

Everyone likes big books, you can't lie... yeah, I went there. Seriously though, an author tends to write on the 'meaty' side of things during the first draft phase. We write with a ton of adverbs, repetitive nouns, prepositions, verbs, its, and and, the list goes on.

All that makes for a chubby novel. One that needs a hand to cut those extras from it's diet and trim down to a sexier sized manuscript. Yes, I know your novel isn't going to sport an itty bitty yellow polka dot bikini at the beac...