I've picked up a piece I haven't touched in a few months (work got in the way). Having read through it again, it is clear to me that there are areas that need developing, but also areas that need cutting to pieces. Because I've been away from it for a while I want to get it into a shape I am happy with before I continue. That way I should have a clearer idea of the plot and characters I want to proceed with. When I picked it up it was 48k words, and after a couple of days I've cut it down to 40k. In particular their are characters (or one character in particular) who I got carried away with, and he is a little verbose. It is part of his character, but it is interfering with the flow of the story and the timely development of the plot. I've reached the decision that I need to cut it to the bare-bones, make it stream-lined and fast paced, but dam it is difficult cutting out some of the character development, and particularly the development of relationships between characters. To be honest, I don't know at the moment whether to just aim for a swift and exciting pace, or keep in (what might be) more tedious elements, and risk boring potential critiquers with them? Thoughts?
Save-as a second copy, and do what you want with it. That way you keep all of that work while you experiment with a rewrite. I've had to do that many times in my writing, and not once have I regretted it. I nearly always like the new version better, and I frequently go back and get ideas from the earlier stuff. Once you have the newer version down, read it through and see what you think. You might end up having to rewrite the story again so it's somewhere in between the two versions, but hey, you'll have learned something and hopefully you had fun doing it!
If it was me, I'd rewrite from scratch, and just paste in the stuff I wanted to keep in the relevant places as I go. Write out a structure plan for the novel, tag in the passages that you want to keep, and where they go, and work from there. It might sound a bit daunting writing the whole thing again, but I've found that it's easier and more fun than trying to fix a bloated mess.
