Killing a Darling

I just removed an extended scene from the manuscript that dropped the wordcount by some five thousand words.

And you know what?  The two points between fit together seamlessly.

There are some lovely bits in there, and I'll miss them, but I can always go back to the raw draft and revisit them if I really feel the need to.  But when I read over the pages, I realized that as much fun as it was to write and as clever as some of the lines were, the entire sequence served no purpose except to kill time.  Which is great when you're trying to hit the 50,000 mark by the end of November, but not so great when you're trying to shape it into something compelling.

There's one bit I may have to extract and insert elsewhere.  I haven't decided yet.

Right now, a lot of my energies are being taken up with some other projects of mine, but it felt good to sneak in and do that one simple thing.

Comments

Collin Kelley said…
Yep, sometimes you just have to get a little clarity. About two years ago, I stripped 20 pages out of my novel and it's a much meaner and leaner story. Now if someone will just publish it. :)
June 13, 2008 at 3:45 PM
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