This week I'm revising my novel and
feel almost ready to send it out in search of a publisher.
So imagine how silly I feel when I find
I've written an entire long paragraph about a woodstove.
Now this post could almost have been
entitled "Kill Your Babies" because that's what I had, a
lyrical and long description of a woodstove, based on, yes, an
antique parlor stove that I once owned and loved. I adored the
woodstove. I adored the description.
The problem here is that no matter how
beautiful the woodstove was, and no matter how driving my description
might have been...
The woodstove had absolutely no point
in the plot whatsoever. That's right. It didn't perform any function.
Nobody got burned on it, nobody touched it, nobody gained any
realizations from fondling its lovely cast iron exterior. Well okay,
it DID dry my protagonist's clothes.
It didn't even belong to a major
character. The very minor characters who owned it were there for only
one chapter, just serving as a safe place and a way to get my
protagonist back to civilization.
So why was I waxing gloriously on about
it? Oh damn, it hurt my heart, but I clipped the long paragraph the
heck out and threw it away. Maybe I can use it someday in another
book where it WILL be pertinent.
At the same time, I had noticed (see my
previous post, Too Much Tea - Vary Your Scenes) that a lot of my scenes were involving cooking and
mealtimes. Okay, I'm a pretty dedicated cook and foodie, so maybe
that's normal, but I was determined to have some of my characters do
something OTHER than cook or eat food in the revision.
Late at night, having shut off my
computer, I came up with an IDEA. Rather than having a particular
scene happen at the breakfast table, I'd put my characters in the
living room. Firebuck (a secondary character) would be cleaning his
rifle in case the evil faeries showed up. To contrast that, Cath
(another secondary character) would be potting some flowers that had
already shown up on the porch in a previous description. Falling
asleep, I loved the juxtaposition of war and peace and the fact that
it would get me away from the "food scenes".
So what was wrong? Well in an
earlier-written (but occurring later in the story) scene, Firebuck
does tote his rifle around for a bit. Firebuck doesn't use a gun in
the end of the novel. I realized that if I added the gun-cleaning
scene, readers would THINK it was a clue and be disappointed in the
end when they found out it wasn't. Especially since I would now have
TWO scenes with the gun in it. Guns don't work terribly well on evil
faeries. Just an FYI.
Ouch. So there go my guns and
woodstoves. Is my novel better for it? Definitely.
Unless you intend for them to be Red
Herrings, get rid of your extraneous plot items. If you show an item
and wax glorious about it, the reader will expect you to include it
in the resolution of your story. If the item is a weapon, such as a
gun, garotte or knife, all the more reason why your reader will
expect it to show up at the end and be useful. If not, you risk the
possibility of reader confusion and disgust.
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