Several people who have read the prologue of my novel have felt that it was too long, and that the action sequences were too detailed. It was originally 7400 words. I had trimmed it down to 7200 with some minor tweaks. But today I took an axe to it. (Of course, to cut it substantially, I had to do quite a bit of rewriting as well.) But it now stands at 3500 words — 47% of the original word count. That’s slightly more, percentagewise, than I cut my short story “Upgrade” before selling it to Analog. Obviously that worked for “Upgrade.” I’m still undecided if the drastically shorter prologue is better.
And speaking of “Upgrade,” I think I’m going to make that story available in honor of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day.