I'm down to draining blood from my MS. I've line edited, to the best of my ability, and I still need to cut 10,000 words for the word length to be considered reasonable.
Editing techniques I've used so far:
Changing the Physicality of the Text. I've changed the font, arranged the text into columns, and color coded and replaced weeds.
Spreadsheeting. My most amazing, wonderful alpha reader, my husband, spreadsheeted the work and we eliminated repetitive word choice and repetitive plot elements.
Hand editing. I've edited by hand (pen to paper), eliminating excessive character names, unnecessary prepositions, filter verbs, passive verb constructions and unnecessary adverbs. I've stripped dialogue tags.
Now I have to cut into the meat of the story. These cuts will hurt. All the others strengthened the work, visibly and immediately, but this... this will ache. I've been looking for a (new) way to do it.
I recently discovered beat sheets, a screenwriting tool, also recommended by my most amazing and wonderful alpha reader, my husband! I'll be stripping the work down to its beats and choosing what to cut, based on what isn't absolutely essential for the story. This screenwriter recommends 40 beats, although he uses this in the beginning of his writing, after he's plotted a work, and not in the editing phase.
I really love the efficiency of it, as a writing tool. I'll see if it works as an editing tool, as well.
