What to keep? What to cut? #writetip Yesterday I wrote about the first lines of a scene. Today is the day for the last lines. Sometimes a scenes just plain runs on, sort of like a run on sentence. That’s okay when writing the draft, but not for the finished copy.

My trick: read the scene, delete the last two or three sentences. Read the scene again. Are the lines needed? If not, get rid of them for good. Sometimes I remove the entire last paragraph.

I never do this before I have a first draft written. There might be something important in the lines that you don’t discover until the novel is completed. It’s interesting how the mind will plant something in a scene and it will surprise you later when you not only remember it, but need to use it in a scene.