Anatomy of a Scene Cut

With all the talk of self-pubbed, new platforms, the old regime of NY, I thought this week about a couple of things. One, just two days ago, I clicked on a self-pubbed book by a woman I know peripherally in the blog world. I was stunned by the number of egregious errors (we're talking missing commas, periods, quotation marks, spelling) because she clearly SPENT bucks on her website. But more and more, with access to crit groups, editors, and so on, I think those sorts of books will continue to exist, sure, but maybe . . . less so? I don't know. Readers will start to separate wheat from chaff.

However, if I was going to forget about that sort of writing for now, and just talk about a book FREE of those sorts of errors (for the most part, as no book is perfect), the ONE quality I see in books that have not been edited, gone through workshopping, whatever, versus those that have? BLOAT.

Yes. Bloat. And there is no Manuscript Midol except a good editorial eye.

So I thought about my last two crit meetings.

Three weeks ago, I brought a scene that was (I think) well-written. It was moving. It had "a" purpose (to show man's inhumanity). It was set in the aftermath of Hiroshima. It had some sentences and word choices I really liked. The only problem was the scene existed to show that inhumanity of mankind . . . but I didn't NEED the scene. There's enough inhumanity populating the book to begin with. And two, that singular purpose ALONE was not enough to keep the scene. It did not advance (1) storyline, or (2) any of the characters.

Scene is gone.

LAST night, I brought a scene in which a doctor performs an autopsy on his best friend. Group was divided into three in favor of keeping the scene. And this ruthless cutter in favor of "perhaps" excising it. It does not advance the story much, except to show further deterioration of society in body counts and the inner workings of a hospital lab. But it represents the ONE time in the novel when the doctor/man of science has a breakdown. So far, he has been sleepless, exhausted, blank-eyed at times, he has made love with the intensity of a man on the brink . . . but he has NOT fallen apart. He didn't fall apart as a child with cancer. He didn't fall apart when his father died in Chernobyl. He has held it together, and for that reason AND the idea of his being forced to do this autopsy, which goes beyond what ANY of us could likely handle, the scene stays.

And when I thought about the two scenes--and which one I kept and which went to Manuscript Heaven, I thought about bloat. And I thought about writing as CRAFT. And I realized that some writers perhaps don't understand the purpose of editing. It's not just i's dotted and t's crossed. You could say this blog is about the anatomy of a scene cut, but you could also call it the anatomy of a (hopefully) page turner. There should be NO scene that is purposeless, that exists because you are just so damn fond of your character that you want to show him or her in a certain scene just because you are enamored with the humor of the scene, or the location, or the dialogue, or the . . . When editors and writers talk back-story dumps, chances are that's a lot of it. ("I need this scene so the reader finds out that as a child, my main character lost his left big toe in a hunting accident and never forgave Dick Cheney.")

A good editor or crit partner will BE your Midol. They will rid you of bloat. They will force you to think of each scene, heck, each PAGE serving one purpose. Forward motion.

Thoughts?