Are Your Words Pulling Their Weight?

Are your words pulling their weight?

Recently I talked about major surgery on the manuscript, reading it through and analyzing scenes as to whether they advanced the plot.

I’m about 2/3 of the way through the WIP now, with a goal of cutting about 10,000 words. I’m still looking at words that aren’t pulling their weight. Sometimes it’s an entire plot thread, sometimes it’s too much rambling, or dialogue that’s more like “real speech” with all the hemming and hawing and qualifier words. People...