Know When to Get Brutal

I wish the makers of Supernatural had been brutal when it came to the show. It would have saved a lot of people pain. Love is a tricky thing and as a dedicated writer, you love your book. However, sometimes it’s best to know when to give it the axe. Not to slash out the entire thing, I mean certain parts that drag on. Most readers aren’t sipping on a cocktail on some beach. They’ve got busy schedules and manage to fit in a few minutes in their day to read your book. So you have to make sure you don’t have any unneeded details that cause your book to move at a snail’s pace. Always remember: your audience is impatient.

Of course, as with anything you’ve created, you might be a bit too attached to realize which parts of your book should be cut.

How to spot the tricky parts:

1. It’s Getting in the Way of Your Plot

This is the easiest way to spot something unneeded. Some characters or scenes just won’t fit in your main story because they’re redundant. In my story, I had added a rather humorous character but at the end when I wanted to wrap up his story thread, it was getting the way of my climax. I had more important things to take care off and giving him a proper ending was ruining the flow of events, that’s when I realized, I had to bid farewell to him.

2. Take an Honest Look

Ask yourself for each scene “Does it give the reader some insight about my character or plot?” If not, pick up the axe. For lack of a better example, I’ll take the movie DrillBit Taylor. He’s a conman who’s hired by three boys who are bullied by a psycho kid in school. Although he’s initially out to get their money, he realizes that his friendship with them is more important and gives the bully an ass whooping (I’ve never used that word before and I now I feel like a poser.) I felt like his love interest seemed rather forced on the plot and was there for no other reason than “because all protagonists end up with a girl.” Could the plot have gone on without her? Yes. Would it have prevented people from taking bathroom breaks when the actress comes on screen? Yep.

No one’s going to take a bathroom break during a boring chapter of your book. They’ll simply put it down and never pick it up again, so learn to get cruel.

3. The Objective Outsider

Sometimes it’s best to get someone elseto read your work. They won’t have the emotional investment in your characters that you do. I realized the value of the outsider when I wrote one of my earliest stories and made my sister read it. When she finished my favorite part of the story, the one that I absolutely adored, she went, “I loved everything but what the hell was the point of that scene?”

The outsider will see boring scenes for what they are. When I ask someone to read my work now, I always beg them to mark the parts that get them bored. It hurts my feelings and improves my work.

Adding flavor and details to your plot is essential and it can hurt when you have to throttle your own creation. I, personally, save my additional details in a separate Word document and keep them for my eyes only. It makes the pain a little less.

So, grit your teeth and pick up your scalpels.