Lately, I've been thinking about a piece of advice that made no sense to me in 2006. I was at the Iowa Summer Writer's Conference, and Sandra Scofield was my teacher/mentor. Anytime a writer complained about a piece of story that wasn't working, Sandra said, "Cut it."
She said it was even feasible that an entire text might need to be cut. The writer would then start over. I was SHOCKED.
I thought, "There is no way."
I thought, "I write well enough. I won't ever have to cut so drastically."
I thought, "I will not take this advice."
I was wrong.
I have blogged about this before. I remember trashing an entire chapter of SPOTD (the fishing chapter) and later recreating it. That was the right move. Though I struggled a lot with the chapter, more than one reader has mentioned that chapter as a favorite.
As I am writing Lio and Lamb, I find myself revising and cutting in equal measure. My touchstone questions are, "Do I need this information?" and "Can this be said more simply?" If the answers are no and yes, respectively, I cut.
It's not hard. I put all "my darlings" in a doc called "cut lines," so I'm really not getting rid of them. I'm just shuffling them away. Like my old tee shirts, piled in the hall closet, waiting to go to the thrift store. But not yet. Not until I realize I don't really need them.
Matt Bird gives the same advice in The Secrets of Story. In his chapter on revision, he shares several notable drafts of movies that were drastically changed, for the better. I will note, however, that his advice is to set aside a draft for a week to let it settle, then to go back and fix it. My drafts settle for months at a time. A lot of the drastic changes and fixes that he advocates do happen over time, without having to scrap much.
No comments:
Post a Comment