Deleted Scenes—The Pitfalls, The Upside by Author Beth WIseman

Is there anything more painful for an author than to hit the ‘Delete’ button?  We’ve given life to our characters, created scenes that we know are perfect, and bled onto the pages.  How in the world can an editor see what we can’t and insist that some pages—maybe even entire scenes—need to go? The horror.

But if you’re in the game long enough, it will eventually happen.  My latest release, The Promise, was a literary endeavor that was way out of the box for me, and as such, my editor set the bar really high.  I was crossing genres, and she wanted a really tight story that popped on every page.  But I initially had a mental block while writing the book.

The Promise is inspired by a true story, and I knew that once my character got on a plane to head to Pakistan, all of the real-life events would come hurdling back at me, taking me back to a time that was painful and scary.  So, I prolonged putting my character on the plane.  Instead, I sent a secondary character cross-country, filled the pages with a bit of fluff, and basically wrote about a hundred pages that didn’t help to further the story, but caused it do drag.  In the end, it was delete, delete, delete.  

So, is there an upside when this happens?  At the time, it’s hard to see one.  But looking back, there was a silver lining.  Perhaps the reader didn’t need those hundred pages, but I did.  It was an opportunity to get to know my characters.   In that regard, I can’t consider it wasted time and effort.  

Have you ever written a letter and not sent it?  Maybe it was just for you, a way to vent, part of a healing process, or an incentive to forgive.  Sometimes, deleted scenes end up in the same ‘File 13’ as other projects that weren’t really for anyone else’s benefit, except our own.  

In the scene that never made it into The Promise, I felt like I was sitting in the backseat while my character drove to New York City.  I learned a lot about him, his motivations, hopes, and dreams.  I was a silent player in my own book, watching and learning.  In hindsight, these tidbits weren’t anything that the reader needed to know, but the journey enabled me to incorporate the emotions my character was feeling through other ways that drove the story forward.  

At the end of that trip to New York City, Tate and I parted ways, and I returned to my computer to hit the delete button.  But, we had that time together, and I returned from the adventure with a much better understanding about who Tate really is.  

As authors, we must realize that even the deleted scenes serve a purpose.  As readers, we appreciate when an editor or author has gone the extra mile to keep any unnecessary filler out of the book.

As a reader, how many times have you skimmed sections of books that really should have been deleted or shortened?  And author friends, as painful as the deleting process is, has it benefitted you in ways that I mentioned?

Beth Wiseman is the best-selling author of the Daughters of the Promise series and the Land of Canaan series.  Wiseman has a deep affection for the Amish and their simpler way of life, and while she plans to continue writing Amish love stories, she is also branching out into other areas. In her daring new novel, Wiseman jumps way outside the box. The Promise will take readers far away from Amish country and the small Texas towns of her previous releases to a dangerous place on the other side of the world.  Inspired by actual events, Wiseman believes this is the book she’s been working toward for a long time.  

Wiseman can be found at Fans of Beth Wiseman on Facebook where she interacts with readers. Learn more about the author and her books at bethwiseman.com and on Twitter (@bethwiseman).

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If At First. . .by Author Richard L. Mabry, M.D.

Outside, strobes atop the police cars spilled red and blue over the figures huddled on the lawn. 

From the front window, the lights of the Christmas tree cast multicolored reflections on the snow. 

Inside the house, red bows and green garlands adorned the mantel of the living room. That color scheme continued in the tattered green coat the man on the floor wore and the darkening red stain that spread from the knife handle protruding from his back.

Dr. Shannon Frasier stood transfixed in one corner, unable to tear her eyes away from the corpse. Her “almost-fiancé,” Dr. Mark Gilbert, was beside her, his arm resting lightly on her shoulder. 

This was no way to start the holiday season.

In case you’re wondering where you can find those lines, you can’t, unless you scan the hard drive of my computer. When I started writing my most recent novel of medical suspense, Critical Condition, I planned to set it during the Christmas season. But after writing the first chapter, I decided that wasn’t going to work. So I started over.

When I was writing another novel, Heart Failure, I scrapped 20,000 words after I saw I was headed in the wrong direction. That one was tough to write, but I kept at it and after a number of false starts, several new beginnings, and multiple revisions, I produced a novel I thought was good.

In the past I never gave any thought to how many times an author may have started over, how many drafts and revisions were involved, until the book in my hand was born. But that was before I started writing. Now I am acutely aware of all that. As author Alton Gansky told my group of neophyte writers: “Once you begin writing, you’ll never read a book the same way again.” And I’ve found that to be true.

To the writers reading this, I would remind you that there may come a time when, despite all the work you’ve put in on it, it’s necessary to scrap what you’ve written and start over. If that happens to you, don’t worry about it. After all, the finished product is what counts. 

In writing, as in so many other things in life, the old adage is true: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

Richard Mabry is a retired physician, past Vice President of the

American Christian Fiction Writers, and author of “medical suspense with heart.” His novels have been a semifinalist for International Thriller Writers’ debut novel, finalists for the Carol Award and Romantic Times’ Reader’s Choice Award, and winner of the Selah Award.  His most recent novel, just released, is Critical Condition. You can follow Richard on his blog, on Twitter, and his Facebook fan page.

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Writing About the Tough Issues by Author H.L. Wegley

Three years ago, I searched for a plot for book two in the Pure Genius Series. Then a neighbor asked my wife and me to attend a human-trafficking awareness meeting. There we met Dr. Cyndi Romine, who has rescued women around the globe from human traffickers. We also heard from law enforcement agencies tasked with stopping human trafficking. The statistics horrified us. Our county is the worst place in the entire nation for child prostitution. 

When we learned that children were lured from street corners in our neighborhood, from food courts in local malls, anywhere kids gather, I wanted to do something. Using my hero and heroine from Hide and Seek, book one in the series, I plotted a story about the rescue of some girls from an international human-trafficking ring.

You might still wonder, “How bad is this problem, really?” I’ll let my heroine, Jennifer, tell you in her own words, words taken from an impassioned speech she delivers to an audience of high-school students and parents:

There is an epidemic, no, a pandemic of child trafficking. Its dark, evil thread has become deeply woven into the fabric of our society. First came ethical quandary, then a loss of our moral compass, followed by the proliferation of pornography and the view that prostitution is a victimless crime, perhaps no crime at all.

Now we have children being lured by predators into a life they would never voluntarily choose, while others are snatched literally from their own front yards.

The average lifespan of a young girl sold into sexual slavery is less than four years. If she is properly marketed in the right location, she will make four to five million dollars for her owner before she dies. Sex trafficking is so profitable that arms and drug dealers are incorporating it into their highly organized operations.

The average age of girls entering prostitution is thirteen, but it drops every year. Next year it will probably be twelve. For every eighteen year old, how many nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-old girls are required to produce that average? You can do the math. The numbers paint an incredibly evil, ugly, perverted picture …

Can you imagine what it feels like when a young girl who is helpless and hopeless catches a glimpse of what’s in store for her? A sixteen-year-old girl hanged herself with her own shoestrings rather than let the traffickers sell her.

Sell her. That’s an understatement. Children are sold not once, but a dozen times a night for as long as they live. And every thirty seconds, somewhere in the world, another girl is victimized by traffickers. In the United States, every two minutes someone’s daughter falls victim.

Without light and hope, this could be a dark story. But On the Pineapple Express is a thoroughly uplifting story of faith, courage, and love. On Thursday I’ll share with you my approach to writing about dark subjects without letting the darkness overshadow the light.

H. L. Wegley served in the USAF as an Intelligence Analyst and a Weather Officer. In civilian life, he was a weather forecaster and a research scientist in atmospheric physics. After earning an MS in Computer Science, he developed computing systems for Boeing before retiring in the Seattle area, where he and his wife of 47 years enjoy small-group ministry, grandchildren, hiking Olympic Peninsula beaches, snorkeling Maui whenever they can, and where he writes inspirational thrillers and romantic-suspense novels. 

Links:

Web site: HLWegley.com
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/HLWegley

 Amazon Author Page: http://amzn.to/10hubj8

Twitter: https://twitter.com/hlw154th

On the Pineapple Express: http://amzn.to/1bZxiJ4

Blog: The Weather Scribe

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Tweaking a Sentence to Add Drama by Donn Taylor

Who would believe that a subject as prosaic as punctuation of compound predicates could help dramatize the actions—and thus the immediacy and interest—of a novel? Yet, with apologies for the pedantry, that is what I will attempt to illustrate today.

First of all, though, I’d like to suggest that no structure of writing is too small for a writer to pay attention to. When the poet and dramatist Oscar Wilde said he had worked all day on a poem, someone inquired what took so much time in a single poem. Wilde replied that in the morning he put in a comma, and in the afternoon he took it out. The best writers do spend time on small details that others may think insignificant.

I would also like to cite a concept proposed years ago by literary critic Stanley Fish, that the meaning of a sentence is everything that happens to the reader as he progresses through it. The skilful writer can speed his reader up or slow him down, as appropriate to the events being described.

Now back to compound predicates: Elements of these are connected by coordinating conjunctions, usually and. Thus:

Light from the Jeep's headlights moved at right angles from the highway and then disappeared.

Book Trailer: http://youtu.be/doMqtrIKOMw

However, the sentence cannot be written this way: 

Light from the Jeep's headlights moved at right angles from the highway then disappeared.

The reason is that then is an abverb, not a coordinating conjunction, so it cannot connect the two elements of the predicate. (Yes, I know that sentences written this way appear in many poorly edited manuscripts, but that does not make them grammatically correct.)

However, another grammatical rule says that a comma is often used to mark an omission. In this example, and.

Light from the Jeep's headlights moved at right angles from the highway, then disappeared.

For fiction, this construction has the advantage of suggesting passage of time between the moving and disappearing.

The principle I’m proposing: Use the and to rush the reader through the sentence to suggest continuous action, but substitute the comma for and to make the reader pause, suggesting a time lapse or at least separation of the predicate’s two actions.

Here is an example from my suspense novel Deadly Additive:

The man hesitated, then spoke.

The comma forces a pause, dramatizing the man’s hesitation. That dramatization is lost if the sentence is written with the and, rushing the reader through to the second action:

The man hesitated and then spoke.

Here, from the same novel, are other examples in which I chose to force a pause for dramatization or to show a separation of the two actions. Also provided are the same sentences written the other way, with the and. It’s not that those are wrong. It’s just that they lose the dramatic or illustrative quality of those with the comma.

He nodded toward the eastern mountains, then threw a glance at [his companion].

He nodded toward the eastern mountains and then threw a glance at [his companion].

He held up the guilty document, then thumbed through her other receipts….

He held up the guilty document and then thumbed through her other receipts….

[The victim’s] twitching grew into violent convulsions, then subsided into stillness.

[The victim’s] twitching grew into violent convulsions and then subsided into stillness.

"Fools!" Contreras permitted himself the one exclamation, then asked for details.

"Fools!" Contreras permitted himself the one exclamation and then asked for details.

The rifle held steady, then wavered.

The rifle held steady and then wavered.

The guard came to present arms and back to port, then stepped aside.

The guard came to present arms and back to port and then stepped aside.

He worked his fingers to restore circulation, then shook hands with [his rescuer].

He worked his fingers to restore circulation and then shook hands with [his rescuer].

Deliberately, he touched his forefinger to his lips, then gently pressed it to hers.

Deliberately, he touched his forefinger to his lips and then gently pressed it to hers.

This is a small distinction, and one that may be meaningless to speed readers. But small distinctions like this make the difference between mediocre writing and good writing.

Donn Taylor led an Infantry rifle platoon in the Korean War, served with Army aviation in Vietnam, and worked with air reconnaissance in Europe and Asia. Afterwards, he completed a PhD degree at The University of Texas and taught English literature at two liberal arts colleges. His previous novels include a mystery, Rhapsody in Red, and a suspense novel, The Lazarus File (spies and airplanes in the Caribbean). Poems that he published in various journals over the years are collected in his book Dust and Diamond: Poems of Earth and Beyond. He is a frequent speaker for writers' groups and has taught poetry writing at the Glorieta and Blue Ridge conferences. His current teaching crusade is to promote the writing of good-quality poetry that's accessible to ordinary readers. He and his wife live near Houston, where he writes fiction, poetry, and articles on current topics.

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Upcoming Release Spotlight: The Chase by DiAnn Mills

Description:

To the FBI it's a cold case. To Kariss Walker it's a hot idea that could either reshape or ruin her writing career. And it's a burning mission to revisit an event she can never forget. Five years ago, an unidentified little girl was found starved to death in the woods behind a Houston apartment complex. A TV news anchor at the time, Kariss reported on the terrifying case. Today, as a New York Times bestselling author, Kariss intends to turn the unsolved mystery into a suspense novel. Enlisting the help of FBI Special Agent Tigo Harris, Kariss succeeds in getting the case reopened. But the search for the dead girl's missing mother yields a discovery that plunges the partners into a witch's brew of danger. The old crime lives on in more ways than either of them could ever imagine. Will Kariss's pursuit of her dream as a writer carry a deadly price tag? Drawing from a real-life cold case, bestselling novelist DiAnn Mills presents a taut collage of suspense, faith, and romance in The Chase.

Book Takeaway:

The reader sees that God is faithful and just.

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