You can do it too, he said. Just take the manuscript, hold it upside down, and shake it until half the words fall out. Self-editing has become a major part of the writing process, and we all know that less is more. Pompous and wordy stories never make it past the editor's desk.
Effective prose is lean, tight, and crystal clear.
The standard editorial tricks did help some. But cutting useless dialogue tags and weeding out adverbs served only to slim down the prose , not the story itself. For that, more rigorous measures were needed. Yet for some reason, we think our readers can't reach the same conclusion unless they see the whole thing. To avoid that mistake, cast yourself in the reader's role.