Is There One or Should You Cut It?
I’ve often read the advice that a novelist should be able to summarize their novel in one to two sentences. This made me start thinking about scenes and chapters.
I asked myself if I knew the point of a scene, and if I didn’t should I cut – yes the dreaded word cut – the scene from the novel? It’s easy to get attached to a scene for many reasons but if there is no point, then I ask you what is the point? J
I challenged myself to go through my latest novel and write one sentence describing the point of the scene.
Taking this one level deeper, and adding a new column to my spreadsheet, I tried to reduce the sentence to one word that described the scene.
This did a couple of things for me.
- It showed me what to cut. Ouch.
- I helped me organize my chapters into a theme.
The second item was a surprise and created a new way for me to look at organizing chapters.
How do you decide it a scene is needed or not?
Thanks for reading . . .
Creative Story Editors 
You are very brave!! : )))
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Thank you!
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That’s a great technique! I’ll be trying this in the future.
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Gwen, I hope it works for you too.
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Very interesting scene wrangling idea!
I still use the old standard – does this scene move the story along? When I have to cut a scene, I stash it for later. You never know when a favorite culled idea will work someplace else.
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Great reminder to store a scene. I once wrote a scene that took three novels to find it’s place. You just never know 🙂
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It took me a while to get the hang of fitting a scene’s point into one sentence, but once I did the scenes seemed to come out much better. I’m intrigued by the idea of reducing a scene to one word– although I might already do that since I enjoy titling my scenes. 🙂 It surprises me sometimes what my subconscious comes up with!
As for cutting them? I’ve got a few on the chopping block right now. It’s encouraging to know that I might find a place for them elsewhere!
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Great you got the scene into one sentence. It is hard. Harder than I thought it would be. But it does tighten the scene. And cutting. Always an ouch.
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