Final edits and Scenes

The “almost” final edit lives on. I am beginning to think this is my way of putting off submitting anything. Although, in fairness, I do the same thing with painting.

When I finish a painting, I hang it in the dining room. Where I often get up, in the middle of a meal, to go and fix or change some aspect of said painting. It’s a great diet plan actually, but this is often how I end up overworking a painting and that is not a good thing; with a painting or a novel. The important thing is, you find the method that works for you.

Right now, I am stuck on my listing of scenes. I found an error, so I must go back and check every scene. This may seem like a throw-back to the Obsessive Compulsive gene that runs in my family; however, since I found other errors, it’s just a good move.

Early in this book, I was dividing scenes off and was doing it fairly well but I could not have given you a definition. Now, I understand, a bit better, what I am doing. (Always a good thing.)

The first two definitions are “time and place.” If you shift place, you have shifted to a new scene. If time jumps (it was Monday and now it is Friday) you are in a new scene.

Another important aspect is that “something must change.”

In checking the purpose of each of my scenes, I have found a scene that serves no purpose to my plot. I like the scene. But, it is a “moral lesson” type of scene and children don’t want to read lessons in their spare time. It would be iffy even if it had a purpose to the book. So, I have copied the scene out of the book and saved it to its own file. Maybe I can find a purpose for it in a future book and reword it. If not, it will hurt less to delete it a year from now, when it is not so close to being my baby.

There must be a reason for a scene to happen, or it is just taking up space and possibly, and you do not want this, boring your reader. So, go and make a chart (yes, the chart thing again) and divide your scenes to one row for each scene. Some scenes are half a page at most, some are several pages.

Again, see Beverly Brandt’s plotting, at: http://www.beverlybrandt.com/spreadsheet.htm
And my Blog of 08-07-17 Keeping track of facts in your novel.

You want that work to be the best it can be, so chart it out and really look at those scenes. After you know what your scenes are, and you can do this by printing your work out and drawing a line at the end of every scene. What is right, is whatever works for you.

But, they must:
Do they take place in one time and place?
Do they fulfill a purpose?

Each scene is a miniature story:
Does each scene have a beginning and a finish?
Is each scene absolutely necessary?
I am off now, to find more scenes to edit or cut. It may hurt, but it will make my book that much better.