Burroughs vs. King

Recently I've been editing Lords of the Bitter Dark, a portion of Through the Groaning Earth--the sequel to Escape from Devil's Head.

While doing so, I pondered Stephen King's admonition from his book, Stephen King: On Writing , which suggests that during an edit a writer should tighten his manuscript by deleting approximately 1/3 of what he wrote.

Many of Mr. King's novels are quite lengthy, so I can just imagine how big those manuscripts were before one third of the words were tossed out. Perhaps Mr. King is so verbose that he can afford to toss out large chunks of his manuscript, but if I started doing that my stories would be missing critical parts and wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan and John Carter Warlord of Mars. When an editor asked him to revise a manuscript, he would always make sure that it came back 10 or 15 thousand words larger. You see, in those days, authors were often paid by the word--so by increasing the size of his story he ensured that he would get paid for the additional work he was putting into the novel.

My editing style tends to fall between that of Burroughs and King, leaning slightly toward the Burroughs end of the spectrum. Though I do delete a line here and there, I usually end up adding more than I'm taking out. I find that by doing so I'm able to clarify my writing and ensure that I leave all the necessary clues for my readers.