Blood Red Pencil would be proud of me. Yesterday I killed one of my darlings, a beautiful scene set at the foot of the pyramids.
“But you just went to the pyramids,” you say. “Why would you cut a scene like that?”
It was a plot-killer with no tension. And even though it was poetic and dripping with imagery, it had to go. And I’ll be honest, it hurt a little as I slashed through the pages with my pen. But it also felt good, kind of like picking a scab.
Okay, that’s pretty gross, but you get what I mean.
I knew that this scene was part of that ooey gooey plot sandwich in the middle of the novel. And as much as you want that tasty gooeyness, (Firefox says gooeyness isn’t a word, but I say it is!) you don’t want the whole sandwich to be gooey, right? Unless it’s baklava, but that’s not really a sandwich.
But I digress.
So just cutting that one scene has done a lot for the action element. And I have an idea for another historical fiction novel in ancient Egypt so maybe one day I’ll get to use some of the fun pyramid visuals that I just cut.
Do you ever reuse scenes that you’ve cut from prior works? Or once it’s in the trash does it stay there?
An old writing teacher of mine said to keep the stuff you cut so that you can re-use them someday. I actually have been forgetting to save the trimmings until the story I'm currently editing. I just today made a subfolder for Scraps!
I think that if you wrote a scene that you like but cut, or if there is one sentence in a scene that you cut, it is worth it to save. Maybe not everything in the Scraps folder will be useful, but if you keep putting the compost in there, maybe you'll eventually get something good out of it.