The Cutting Room Floor
In total, I've probably written over 200 Word pages for this novel. I've cut a lot of it. Huge sections - gone. So why did I write them? Well, two reasons stand out.
1. I didn't know any better. This is my first novel and I'm definitely learning a lot as I go along. Readers don't need to know everything, they need to draw their own conclusions. They need hints, but those hints should be at least a little obscure. No one wants to be told on page 15 that person X is the bad guy (or gal) and they'll kill someone by the end of the book.
2. I needed to complete the back story in my head. For example, in my novel, the heroine has some issues in her childhood that make it hard for her to fall in love. It's part of the conflict and the emotion in the story. In order to flesh out the story, I wrote a really boring section with letters from her parents explaining her whole childhood. It's been totally cut now. I didn't need it in the novel. Instead, I intersperced a few little hints about it here and there through the first few chapters.
So now I'm cutting stuff. Should I not have written it in the first place? Of course I should have. Especially for anything that falls under criteria #2. If I hadn't written the whole boring backstory with the letters, I wouldn't have as clear of a picture of who my heroine is. She wouldn't be the same person. Since I know her history (her boring history), I can predict how she'll react in some specific situations.
Enough blogging - back to editing.
-Patricia
1. I didn't know any better. This is my first novel and I'm definitely learning a lot as I go along. Readers don't need to know everything, they need to draw their own conclusions. They need hints, but those hints should be at least a little obscure. No one wants to be told on page 15 that person X is the bad guy (or gal) and they'll kill someone by the end of the book.
2. I needed to complete the back story in my head. For example, in my novel, the heroine has some issues in her childhood that make it hard for her to fall in love. It's part of the conflict and the emotion in the story. In order to flesh out the story, I wrote a really boring section with letters from her parents explaining her whole childhood. It's been totally cut now. I didn't need it in the novel. Instead, I intersperced a few little hints about it here and there through the first few chapters.
So now I'm cutting stuff. Should I not have written it in the first place? Of course I should have. Especially for anything that falls under criteria #2. If I hadn't written the whole boring backstory with the letters, I wouldn't have as clear of a picture of who my heroine is. She wouldn't be the same person. Since I know her history (her boring history), I can predict how she'll react in some specific situations.
Enough blogging - back to editing.
-Patricia
posted by Patricia @ 9:06 PM
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