Sometimes you shouldn’t write it. No, really. There are parts of every story that you shouldn’t put on the page. Sometimes they seem so attractive, so fun to write, so interesting a part of the story. But you have to just. Not. Write. Them. Cut them if you’ve written it. But how do you tell what you need to cut?

The first big clue is that you can’t write it. Sometimes writer’s block is right about the situation. Sometimes the problem isn’t that you can’t think of anything to write, it’s that’s the space you’re trying to fill in ought to be empty. I’ve had this happen a number of times. I sit down, I think, “What is going to happen next”, and I realize I don’t have anything happening next. I may have planned to fill that half-day in with characterization or nebulous plot, but when I actually set out to write it, I realize that I’m trying to write filler. It’s not always true; sometimes what I’m writing is just hard. It is, however, worth considering.

The second clue is that whatever your outline says, the words you’re writing feel aimless and empty. You’re doing characterization, but you can’t shake the feeling that the story is stalled. You’re writing a fun fight scene, but it feels empty. If the story feels empty, it probably is. Sometimes there’s a bit in there which you really do need, but if most of the writing is superfluous, take out that essential bit, put it in a place where it’s surrounded by meat instead of fluff. Chuck the rest.

Ask this question at all times: ‘How is this relevant to the story’s tension?’

When I was writing the third draft of Why Ought I to Die?, long before I even had that title, the story had several months and multiple fight scenes before the final version’s commencement. I didn’t, technically speaking, remove all those events. The general outline of the third draft’s opening is still in the background of the fifth draft (though many details and some events certainly aren’t). Why isn’t it front and center, though? Wouldn’t the reader find it interesting to learn how Penny was captured, the time he spent as a bottom-ranker, how he was screwed up to the point of desperation the story opens with?

No.

Why do I say that? Because those story beats, while certainly capable of bearing some tension, are not sufficiently relevant to the meat of the story. How Penny arrived is irrelevant, because it doesn’t really affect how he’s going to get away. How Penny lived while he was begin prepped for his first gladiatorial fight is irrelevant, because the fact is that he did get prepped. How Penny was made desperate is irrelevant, because quite frankly he’s not nearly as desperate as he’s going to get. Simply put, the story was never about his arrival; it was about his escape attempt. Thus, what little innate interest Penny’s arrival might have would be thoroughly lost when the reader realized what I would have known all along: most of it doesn’t matter to the story (not to mention that knowledge would have made it excruciatingly painful to write). I could have written a story that made those parts of the story relevant, but for the story I wrote, those scenes didn’t matter.

Fight scenes, for me at least, are a tempting distraction. Get me in the right mood, and I can write thousands upon thousands of words of hack-and-slash. I’ve got at least one now-defunct story attempt that contains ten-thousand-word-plus long passages whose entire premise is ‘big fight, now go’, with only enough concession to the whole ‘character’ thing to give names to some of the combatants. They were fun to write: I wrote one fifteen-thousand-word sequence prior to its place in the plot for pure entertainment (15K and barely started, actually). But I’ve learned an important rule: ask whether this scene matters.

If the fight scene doesn’t matter to the central plot of the story, it doesn’t belong there. Worse, everybody else knows it doesn’t belong there, including, probably, you (even if you haven’t admitted it yet). A good fight scene, complete with reversals and interesting interplay and maybe even some magic, that can be an enthralling way to set up and resolve plot points, to characterize your leads and side characters, to build inter-character relationships. However, a fight scene that leaves the characters where they started, in terms of plot and character, is a dead fight scene. I’ve got one of these waiting around to be deleted in my current story draft. I wrote several thousand words, but about the time I finished the final word, I realized that everything the fight did that mattered could be accomplished by saying, “Having slain the orcs in Location A….” The extra steps weren’t even entertaining, because the fight’s intrigue was gone the instant you realized it was a foregone conclusion.

All elements of the story derive their interest from one of three places: their innate content, their connection to the plot, and their connection to the characters. Every element of the story must be able to justify the time it takes to read on grounds of these three.

What do I mean by ‘innate content’? This is the weakest of the three, but generally covers stuff that’s interesting to read on its own. Humor, for instance. That’s not to say that any element of the story will truly stand on its own. If it’s part of the wider story, it must be considered in light of the wider story. Thus, while the reader may keep reading a particular section of the story because it’s funny, awesome, or otherwise innately interesting, that section of the story should still be better in light of the rest of the story, should still enhance the rest of the story. Perhaps the humor changes the tone of the surrounding work by preventing it from being unbroken darkness; perhaps the landscape (interesting for the beauty of the description) is the setting of an upcoming part of the story. If the section is interesting on its own, but doesn’t contribute to the rest, it should be cut as a distraction, a wild goose chase- even if you recycle its parts somewhere else.

Generally speaking, if an element of the story does not have a strong connection to the central plot, the reader- and you- will realize it’s not worth reading. The plot, in most stories, is what is impelling the reader to move from point A to point B to point C, to keep reading. If the paragraphs he’s reading aren’t part of that plot, he’ll have much less reason to stick with them. Don’t take this to mean, however, that the story must be a straight line from beginning to end. Sections of the story can lack immediate and apparent connection to the plot, so long as you convince the reader that there is a reason for those sections to be there, that there is a reason to care about them. Like all promises, you have to follow through on what you promised, but this allows you to maintain reader interest even through apparent detours.

Characterization usually connects to the reader as a means of making the main plot stick to their hearts and as a part of the main plot. I refer, of course, to the characterization of actually important characters; characterization is in this sense a subsidiary of ‘plot’, albeit in the actual writing process there’s enough apparent difference to justify the distinction. If you using part of the story primarily for characterization, take care that you aren’t being inefficient. Could this section also fit some plot? To be honest, most of the time the answer is yes; most of the time, in fact, doing characterization in the midst of and through plot works much better than doing it on its own. It is by their actions that we know them, after all, and the plot-actions they take will be significant both to them and to the reader.

In conclusion, make sure that every part of your story is doing a job. Sometimes you’ll have to kill your darlings. Sometimes you’ll realize that the part of the story that you’ve tried three times to write and can’t get working is actually something you just need to skip altogether. Regardless, pay attention and be prepared to cut, not just add.

God bless.