The Write Stuff - Writing Tips To Help You Complete Your Book. Tip #5 - Let It Go!

Sometimes we create something that we love. It could be anything—a plotline, a character, or a turn of phrase, for example. This thing isn’t just good, it’s great. It’s perfect. It might be the best thing we’ve ever created. We love it.

But then you rewrite your book and suddenly your perfect thing just doesn’t fit anymore. The plotline is now unnecessary. The character has become redundant. Your brilliant phrase was in a scene that’s now been deleted.

But you love this thing. It’s perfect, after all! So you leave it in, or find a new place for it.

But something’s wrong. The plotline you saved feels tacked on to the rest of the story. The reprieved character is difficult to shoehorn into scenes and lurks around like an interloper. You can’t find a satisfying place for that genius metaphor. The more you try to fix what feels off, the more you frustrated you get. Why can’t you make it work?

Let it go. Be brave. Be ruthless. Some might say “kill your darlings” but this implies that the beloved element is dead. In most cases, it’s not. This just isn’t its time or place.

If you try to retain something that truly doesn’t belong any more you’ll do a disservice to the work as a whole. Your focus in telling a tale is always the story. If any one element becomes the focus it will pull other things out of shape. Even if it’s not obvious in the end, something will just be wrong. It might not be obviously so, but you’ll feel it and so will your audience.

Maybe your perfect thing will fit again in a later rewrite or even a later book. A storyline I removed from Book Three in my series is the plot for the first half of my upcoming Book Six.

This even goes for titles. I’ve retitled books late in the process because the focus of the story had shifted, meant the original, perfect, title no longer reflected the rewritten work. I didn’t kill the old title. It’s still there, waiting in the wings for its time to shine.