Comments on: Dead and Un-dead Darlings

By: Karen DeBonis

Karen DeBonis — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 12:38:17 +0000

I love the zooming in and out, Barbara. I keep all my darlings, but never organized them. How do you keep your "private dictionary?" A spreadsheet?

By: dholcomb1

dholcomb1 — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 01:39:04 +0000

save it for a deleted scene to be shared in promo; if you have several, you can share in several places or make one an exclusive.

denise

By: jamesr403

jamesr403 — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 07:32:55 +0000

Excellent post, Barbara! I was just reading the Introduction to Robert A. Heinlein's Red Planet, in which the writer, a Heinlein scholar named Patterson, notes that some of the material (a girl carrying a gun! Oh, no!) removed by the publisher was saved and used in Stranger in a Strange Land. Thanks for a great essay.

By: Barbara Linn Probst

Barbara Linn Probst — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 21:06:02 +0000

In reply to barbdelong. Like you, I often find that when I try to edit an existing thing-that-does-not-work, it STILL does not work! It can be so, so hard to let go of a passage we love that may be well-written but doesn't belong. Sometimes the "outtakes" can be repurposed later, sometimes not. :-)

By: barbaralinnprobst

barbaralinnprobst — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 21:03:32 +0000

In reply to Ontyre Passages. It's so true! We never know, in advance, which "darlings" will find new life and where and when!

By: Barbara Linn Probst

Barbara Linn Probst — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 21:02:06 +0000

In reply to Joyce Reynolds-Ward. I agree with Jenny: I love that! One can also send "deleted scenes" as bonus gifts to people! I for one love to watch deleted scenes from movies!

By: barbdelong

barbdelong — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 19:36:05 +0000

Great post! And I did the unthinkable just yesterday! I copied and pasted a scene that needed work onto a fresh page and edited it!! Oh my gosh! I went the lazy route. When I reread the scene this morning, it still was not where I wanted it to be. I kept too much, I'd hardly call them darlings, of the original material. Today, another fresh page and I'll totally rewrite the scene from scratch. I do have a file of outtakes I call them in Scriv for each of my writing projects. Maybe I can find something worth stashing in there from this scene.

By: Ontyre Passages

Ontyre Passages — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 17:31:19 +0000

Whew! I'm not alone. I loved reading this. What a relief and a joy. There's much that I forget from day to day (hour to hour?), but deleted material stays with me forever. It's keyword triggered, and when triggered leaps before my eyes. Not that I rely on my memory. I have my oldest work stored away. Since 2015, each project developed in Scrivener has a place for deleted scenes. I've used them in other novels, of course, but other times they become a part, or even the key part, of a short story.

By: Jenny Hansen

Jenny Hansen — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 17:19:02 +0000

In reply to Joyce Reynolds-Ward. I love this, Joyce. And what a powerful marketing tool you have created by adding this into your process!

By: Joyce Reynolds-Ward

Joyce Reynolds-Ward — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 16:47:35 +0000

I often repurpose backstories and cut scenes as standalone short pieces to use as promotional material. After doing this with my fantasy series, I started noticing a trend...put up a worldbuilding set of short stories. Someone buys one of those shorts. Then another. And then...they buy the entire series. It's happened often enough that writing outtakes that I won't include in the final novel is part of my writing process.