I had to scrap a whole chapter towards the beginning of the book I'm working on. It killed me to have to do it. It was a long scene that added an important bit of plot, but it was flat and didn't really add anything else to the story.
I tried to rewrite it twice but nothing helped. I finally gave up and resigned myself to a complete rewrite. It took me two weeks to get up the guts to cut it, then another week to start writing. But once I started, the scene just flowed. It was like magic! Then I had my beta reader (my husband) take a look to see what he thought.
"I don't know if I like it," he said.
I was crushed. "What do you mean you don't like it? Is something wrong with it? Did you really like the old scene better?"
"No, it's a really good scene. I just feel bad for the character. It's funny when you pick on the comic relief guy, but picking on her, it's sad. It's just not fair. She's had such a crappy time and this just makes me feel bad for her."
"Thank you honey, that's exactly what I was going for!"
Yay! *little happy dance* I love it when a scene comes together! The only regret I have now is not writing it sooner.
Have you ever had a scene or even a paragraph just flow through your fingers onto the page? It is the best feeling ever!
I remember when I was doing my first novel the first time (the computer it was on crashed and I had to write the whole book over), I wrote about eight pages at one go, a combat sequence between the hero and a hideous monster. I don't think I've ever had so many words just flow like that since. It does feel good.
ReplyDeleteWe had an all nighter last November that I didn't think I'd stay longer than two hours for, but I ended up staying there over five hours because the writing came more easily than it ever did that month. I can tell what parts I wrote on that night because most of it was my best work (and also all the parts where I go "When did I write this? Did -I- write this?")
ReplyDeleteI know how you feel about cutting, though. I always made the excuse, "I don't need to cut so much, I'm writing this for me, not to publish" so it's been a bit of a blow realizing that yes, I have to start over quite a bit. It's always for the best though, I've never had a bad experience from cutting or editing.