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My old writing teacher said 'never kill your darlings, just put them in a cage' and I thought it was dumb until it saved my whole story
Back in a community college class in Boise, my teacher Deb told us to stop deleting the scenes we loved even when they did not fit the plot. I ignored her for two whole stories and just hit backspace on anything that dragged, then wondered why my endings felt thin. On my third try I kept the cut scenes in a separate doc called 'the cage,' and when I got stuck I pulled one back in and it fixed my whole middle act. Deb was right and I wasted a lot of good writing being stubborn. Do you guys save your cut scenes or just trash them for good?
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claire_wells878d ago
Oh wow, my friend Jen did the exact same thing with her novel drafts and now she swears by her "graveyard" folder. She pulls old scenes back in all the time and says half of them end up fitting better than she ever expected. Trashing stuff forever just feels like throwing away free ideas.
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