When writing a novel, the last thing you probably want to do is delete any of your work. You’ve likely spent significant time getting your work to its current length and erasing any of it might seem counter-intuitive. However, recognizing what sections of your book might not serve the rest of your writing is an incredibly beneficial skill to learn as an author. 

It can be difficult to part with any of your writing but to craft a truly memorable story, there needs to be an even balance between action, exposition, and descriptions, a cohesive narrative, and continuous relevance. For example, if a chapter is primarily full of detail and not enough action, or vice versa, it might be a good idea to delete parts that don’t add to the narrative’s flow. 

Likewise, you may read a chapter and feel like it might not hold the same narrative relevance as other parts of your work do. Taking out large chunks that don’t serve the larger story, develop characters, or support themes can help ensure your narrative doesn’t lag. If readers become bogged down by too much fluff, it may distract them from an otherwise well-paced plot. 

A simple way of cleaning up your writing is to watch for, and delete, any significant redundancies. It can be beneficial to refamiliarize readers with a setting or characters and the plot moves forward but removing any verbatim repetition or excessive restating is important. Likewise, you may want to delete redundancies with any themes in your work. Most readers enjoy piecing a novel’s themes together. Making sure any themes, or components of a larger theme, haven’t been written elsewhere increases your writing’s subtlety. 

To help with this process, it’s also always useful to turn to a friend, fellow writer, or editor. They can edit with fresh eyes that may pick up on segments that might not fit, something that can be hard to do when reading your own work. Overall, deleting parts of your novel may seem scary, but can be a vital step in crafting a clean, well-paced experience for your readers.