In writing a novel, you find yourself writing a scene for which you had great enthusiasm, You expect that it’s going to be an integral part of your book, either providing additional action or a solid emotion impact. As you progress through the book though, the book matures, growing new appetites and developing new dimensions. Then, in a later draft you return to the scene, now finding it dull and disconnected from the new directions of the book. It just does not work anymore.
But no problem. You adapt it. You change perspective. Maybe you add, remove or replace a character. But the scene still doesn’t work. You now force in some emotion and a touch more action. Still no good. And you do this repeatedly. And in the end, you hate reading the scene anymore, because, despite your best attention and effort the querulous scene still does not fit in with the new direction and motif of the book.
So what do you do?
You could keep the scene in the book anyway. After all, it reflects substantial work and effort on your part in the supreme effort to make that scene right. But despite this effort, it winds up being the weakest scene in the book. Yet, if you strike it, then it’s as though the scene never really existed, and all of your commitment of time and effort committed to its resuscitation is washed down the tubes. I hate to do that. I spend a lot of time developing the scene. I hate to give up on it. But the fact is, it’s broken, and I can’t fix it.
Well, what’s the alternative?
Withdraw the scene from the book, but don’t delete it. Removing the book’s weakest scene automatically strengthens the overall work. It’s easy for a reader enjoying your novel to lose interest when they come upon a scene that falls flat, pulling them out of the story and making them uncomfortable.
However, that discrepant scene’s content, action and emotion might still be of value. I keep a word processing file that contains snippets, original ideas, isolated paragraphs, and scene fragments that I thought would be important, but ultimately found no place in the book. I drop the discarded scene in the snippet file. I draw on those snippets, not using them as intended, but modifying them, adapting them to fit into another scene. These snippets wind up being the foundations of scenes that I have not yet written. Maybe there’s an emotional reaction that can be pulled from a snippet to create an additional scene, or perhaps there’s some action that could strengthen another chapter.
This approach has helped my mindset. I no longer feel like I am throwing away the work that I’ve done on the weakest chapter of the book by losing that chapter or losing that scene. Instead I feel like I’ve just pulled it from where it is ready to draw from its components to help create another, better scene.
The point of the book is to put your best work forward. Remove the weakest scene, saving its best parts for later and move on.
