I stumbled across this site last week and thought it would make a great discussion piece. Too often, writers are determined to add stuff to their stories to make it better. But in all honesty, sometimes, taking it out will do much better.
Check out this site! What do you think?
Deleted Book Chapters
Interesting information. Sad about Dorian Gray though. Removing elements should serve the story, not put society at ease with it's prejudices.
ReplyDeleteDeleting is the best part of revising. It's like your story is one of the Biggest Loser contestants--it starts out with a lot of flab, maybe enough to cause a coronary, and leaves in a size 10, able to do a couple of pushups. I love seeing the slimmer, trimmer version of my books.
ReplyDeleteThis is an area I struggle with, but in reverse. I have difficulty in achieving the word counts I want, which are modest. (@50,000) I don't care so much for long descriptive passages of scenery or appearance nor pointless scenes. I alternate between telling myself that in this busy era, readers don't have time for 100,000 page tomes or I remind myself of shorter works that are very good (Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Bridges of Madison County). If that's not working I fall back on 'to thine own self be true.'
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