I’m going to make a bad writer confession: I rarely delete scenes. Especially not entire scenes. (The good news is that it’s infrequent enough that I can post them on my Patreon as fun extra scenes without overcrowding it!)
Also, to note: now that I’m pursuing a traditionally published project for the first time, this is likely going to change. There will be much screaming about this later, I’m sure. This post will surely age well. Look forward to this brick joke!
Rewriting and editing don’t necessarily mean deleting things wholly, though that is often part and parcel of cleaning up a project for print. Which is why I have very infrequently deleted whole scenes. Paragraphs, lines, dialogue? Sure, absolutely! But entire scenes?
I’m a terrible example of sunk cost fallacy. If I get so far into a scene that I would call it a scene instead of a couple of paragraphs, then like hell I’m giving it up! True, I can shit out a couple thousand words a day, but it doesn’t mean I want to toss them out the window all willy-nilly. Those words are valuable to me, the writer. (And that’s a problem, I know.)
But when I do delete scenes, I have never rewritten them. If I go so far as to delete a scene, then the whole idea gets tossed out, substituted for something else.
It took me three tries to introduce Hammond and Rory in my latest project. The first, they were going with Vivienne, the main character, to a new housing complex to clear out some uppity (and confusing) house spirits. Then, I was going the route of introducing them via Hammond’s day job—a ballroom dance instructor.
The first was a good example of the storyline itself; it is, after all, a series about hunters of the supernatural, cleaning up various problems for the city where they live. The second was a good example of character-driven plot. We could be introduced to Hammond as an exception to the other supernatural hunters (though he moonlights as one).
And neither worked.
They both would have served purposes in the story. Every bit of story that you write ought to reveal plot or reveal character, and I have an example of each, funnily enough. But it doesn’t mean that every line that reveals something is good, or important, or needs to stick around.
“Kill your darlings” is a phrase often used to describe writing, but many people also attribute it to characters. While that should be true, it should also describe the process of being able to mercilessly rip out and destroy the bits of your story’s guts that just don’t serve the bigger picture.
Considering I have a 237k manuscript to look at, I’m going to be doing a lot of that in my future. So this is an advice post to myself, too.
