Thursday, May 04, 2006

Le Scene Butcher

I had yet another epiphany at work yesterday. Non work related of course. My work is not prone to epiphanies. It's easy and requires very little thought. I'm pretty sure I could do my job with my eyes closed, except for that unwritten rule of 'thou shalt not sleep at work, or appear to sleep at work, or thoust shall receive a pink slip'. This epiphany was strictly writing related.

You see, I had written a scene that took place in the garden. It relayed some pertinent information and set up a choice the heroine had to make. Then I had to deal with the issue of getting her back to London. Which is all well and good until I realized with a solid smack to the head that to cut down on the page count, I should just have the scene that took place in the garden take place in the carriage on the way to London, thereby cutting out unnecessary pages and basically killing two birds with one stone.

However that also meant changing the scene that was written in between the garden scene and the leaving for London scene. It had to jump up, change a bit, and include a little more information. So while I increased my page count by 4 more pages, by the time I get finished butchering the scene, I should be able to cut at least that.

All in all, a good day's work.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really like today's visual.

Melissa Amateis said...

Sigh...I've been using that butcher knife lately, too. I cut 10,000 words from my manuscript last Saturday.

jlmack said...

How do I make this sound good without sounding like I'm some kind of freak?
I'm a culinary student who has done heaps of editing; I really like butchering things.
I can pretty much butcher anything, be it literal or figurative.
If you need a hand, let me know.
Can't wait to read some of your new work!

jlmack said...

That is... if you ever need any MEAT butchered... hahaha.