The 8 Fates of Okteveos has completed its second edit and author J. Tordsen has been tracking word counts throughout the process.
The following table shows how the book’s word count has evolved through the writing process.
| Section | Draft | Edit 1 | Edit 2 | Change Edit 1/2/Total |
| 1 | 24,112 | 22,098 | 23,013 | -2014/+915/-1099 |
| 2 | 4,392 | 5,286 | 6,453 | +894/+1167/+2061 |
| 3 | 3,086 | 3,397 | 3,471 | +311/+74/+385 |
| 4 – 5 | 5,243 | 5.457 | 5,884 | +214/+427/+641 |
| 6 | 2,789 | 3,248 | 3,255 | +459/+7/+466 |
| 7 | 11,730 | 12,602 | 14,483 | +872/+1881/+2753 |
| 8 | 2,517 | 2,957 | 3,287 | +440/+330/+770 |
| Total | 53,869 | 55,187 | 59,846 | +1318/+4659/+5977 |
Section 1: The first section is consistently the largest part of the book, however, during the first edit, a massive 2000 word chunk was deleted to move the story along. In the second edit, some detail was added back in but the overall length is about 1000 words down from the original draft.
Section 2: This section grew by nearly 50%. Detail needed to be added consistently as the other sections took shape.
Section 3: It was the least developed story in the draft. After the first edit, very little needed to be added to it.
Section 4 – 5: Section 4-5 are combined for a very good reason in the book. While not a lot of detail needed to be added, it need to be added consistently like section 2.
Section 6: This section was probably the most developed part of the book. Edit 1 involved some corrections but by edit 2, the story was polished enough where it only needed a small edit.
Section 7: This is the second largest section of the book and where a lot happens. It also needed massive edits to tell the story properly.
Section 8: The rest of the book leads up to the events at the end so, any changes here almost require changes elsewhere in the book and vice-versa.
As you can see, the book started out smaller and grew as the story was refined. Most of the time we hear about authors “over-writing” a manuscript and the tug of war that happens between the editor that wants to cut it down and the author who wants to keep every word. This is not how J. Tordsen writes.
“For me, the story has always developed in editing. The rough draft is, well, rough. While I am not afraid to cut out entire sections out of a story to make it flow better, on the potter’s wheel of writing, I only start off with enough clay to make an ashtray before adding clay to build up the story into a vase. I have a short story I wrote decades ago and I have revisited that story many times over the years to re-edit it. With each edit, it got better and more detailed. If anything, I under-write a story.”
