Day Five: Throwaways and Add Ons
January 23rd 2010 12:52
Today you're going to make two lists.
The first list is a list of scenes you want to add to your novel. These scenes must add to your novel in some way-they must develop your characters, help your readers understand your world, or advance the plot. You've already got a full first draft, and anything you add to that needs to be worth the extra padding.
The second list is a list of scenes that you want to remove from your novel entirely. These are the scenes that don't add anything to your novel, or which could be replaced by scenes that get the same point across better, or the scenes that spend time on something you've already talked about when that time could be better spent showing something else. Your novel may be short (50-65K) or long (110K ). If it's long, you'll definitely need to rework or delete scenes to make room for whatever you want to add. Don't sacrifice your story, if it needs to be said, it needs to be said, but try to find scenes that you can make shorter or delete without hurting your novel.
When listing scenes, give the scene a title and describe it in two or three sentences. You can also do it in chapters, but for this you'll find that actual scenes are probably better. Once you have these lists, you're done for today. Tomorrow will be the last day of this workshop.
The first list is a list of scenes you want to add to your novel. These scenes must add to your novel in some way-they must develop your characters, help your readers understand your world, or advance the plot. You've already got a full first draft, and anything you add to that needs to be worth the extra padding.
The second list is a list of scenes that you want to remove from your novel entirely. These are the scenes that don't add anything to your novel, or which could be replaced by scenes that get the same point across better, or the scenes that spend time on something you've already talked about when that time could be better spent showing something else. Your novel may be short (50-65K) or long (110K ). If it's long, you'll definitely need to rework or delete scenes to make room for whatever you want to add. Don't sacrifice your story, if it needs to be said, it needs to be said, but try to find scenes that you can make shorter or delete without hurting your novel.
When listing scenes, give the scene a title and describe it in two or three sentences. You can also do it in chapters, but for this you'll find that actual scenes are probably better. Once you have these lists, you're done for today. Tomorrow will be the last day of this workshop.
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