My specialty

I love cutting manuscripts down to size—the publishing industry calls this a cut-down. That sounds a bit harsh, but a good cut-down makes a work more, not less. It also makes a too-long-to-be-published manuscript an acceptable size for submission.

Most agents and editors will not look at a manuscript if they deem it to be too long. Depending on genre, maximum word count is typically 70,000 to 100,000 words.

Romance 50,000 to 90,000 words

Mystery, Thriller, Suspense: 70,000 to 90,000 words

Literary and Upmarket Fiction: 80,000 to 100,000 words

Historical Fiction: 80,000 to 120,000 words

Young Adult (YA) 50,000 to 80,000 words

Middle Grade (MG) 20,000 to 60,000 words

I’ve taken 200,000-word novels and brought them to 100,000 words. Here’s what one client has to say:

“Laurie does the hard work to understand what the writer is trying to achieve and guides the process to its intended goal, paring down the manuscript to create an efficient narrative, identifying distractions, honing in the story-telling to a knife’s edge.”

— RPR