What's the Matter With This Scene? (No, Seriously)

by Gigi

I'm a big fan of writing very messy first drafts. The kind that digress and excite and bore -- and eventually gets at the heart of the story you never knew you had until it appears in all its sloppy glory.

Yes, this approach also means lots of deleted scenes.

Most of the time I'm 100% okay with this. But sometimes... Sometimes I don't get it. There's a scene that I just LOVE, but nobody else gets it. Below is the original opening scene from my first mystery novel. Every single person who read it told me to ditch it, because the book got better right afterwards.

Huh? Really? But I loved that opening! I finally took their advice, and that next version is what got me a writers grant and then an agent. Apparently those wonderful critique readers were onto something...

***

The last thing Rupert Chadwick had said to me was: "Our paths will cross again someday."

Clichéd. Sentimental drivel. Whatever you’d like to call it, you'd be right.

Normally I'd be the one leading the charge to declare succumbing to such romantic drivel beneath a woman. But at the time, those words he uttered had exactly the effect on me he'd intended. They struck me as the most romantic parting words conceivable at the end of an affair.

The problem was that he lied.

I sat down on my couch, inadvertently dropping the rest of my mail and knocking over a potted plant, unable to notice anything besides the newspaper clipping still clasped in my hand – an obituary telling of the premature death by automobile accident of Rupert Chadwick, age 28.

***

Is it too heavy on the romance for a mystery novel? But the dead body of the story is right there, people!

I've learned to deal with deleting that opening (okay, I mean I've mostly learned to deal with it -- I saved one line from that scene for Chapter 2).

Besides my beloved deleted intro, there are a few other things I've deemed worthy of saving in my SAVE FOR LATER file.

I have a habit of informally addressing the reader. It's a style I love in novels -- when it's successfully pulled off. It's a tough thing to do, I realize. In those first drafts of mine, I can be a bit heavy-handed in speaking directly to the reader.

I love some of those lines, though, so they go in that SAVE FOR LATER file. I'm hopeful that they'll miraculously fit in perfectly in some later book where I haven't sprinkled in too many asides to the reader.

It could happen, right?

Well, I can dream.

Martha Bids Keanu Reeves Happy Birthday (aka Deleted Scenes...I'll make it work, trust me)

It's September 2nd. That means I need to bid Happy Birthday to my boyfriend, Keanu Reeves, who turns 45 years old today. But it's also the second Wednesday in post rotation which means I need to say something meaningful about Deleted Scenes.

We can do this, people.

1. I fell in love with Keanu Reeves the summer of 1991 at the age of 13 in a rural Georgia theater to repeated viewings of Bill & Ted's Bonus Journey.
2. I knew his costar, Alex Winter, from a prior obsession with The Lost Boys (the teen vampire obsession long before Twilight and True Blood). But Alex was never meant to be a screen heart throb. Not next to Corey Feldman. Oh yes, in the battle of Coreys, I went Feldman.

3. Corey Feldman suffered from a terrible case of child-star-itis which is probably why he was compelled to star in Dickie Roberts Former Child Star with fellow child star Christopher Knight.

4. Dis all you want on Christopher Knight, he's managed a decent non-reality career including this year's Spring Breakdown with female comic talents Amy Poehler, Missy Pyle, Rachel Dratch, and Jane Lynch.

5. Jane Lynch stars in this year's musical genius Glee! Guess what today is? The re-airing of the Glee pilot!! Even if you watched it back when it first aired in May, and even if you've rewatched it, oh, every day since then, you should still catch tonight's show because it comes with DELETED SCENES!!!!!!! Yes, DELETED SCENES! But wait - I'm not done - Glee stars Matthew Morrison as head of Glee Club.

6. And Matthew Morrison stars in this year's Taking Chances with Kevin Bacon.

Thank you, thank you. I'm here all week.

Exclusive Content (or the words formerly known as Deleted Scenes)

by Lisa Hughey

There’s a new buzz word, phrase really, in the book industry. Exclusive Content.

Exclusive content is an outlet for deleted scenes that don’t advance the plot or that need to be cut if your publisher says, “too long, darling, cut some” as if you’re snipping your bangs not cutting off the hair that took (sob) years to grow.


Now authors put the Deleted Scenes on their websites or blogs (loved Juliet’s from last week) and readers get a secret glimpse, a private peek into the lives of characters they love.



It’s somewhat voyeuristic in nature which makes them all that more delicious to read. And the Exclusive Content I’ve read has always been fun and taken me back to the story I loved--so much so I’m willing to go online and read the deleted scenes.

But, regarding my own work, I have a problem. I don’t have any deleted scenes. And no, this is not to suggest that I write a beautifully clean, fully-formed single draft (if only). No Jack Kerouac here. I have a ‘Leftover’ file for every book I’ve ever written. Pages and pages of notes, random thoughts, cut lines and paragraphs, but no full-fledged scenes. I do occasionally go back and cull a line or a paragraph of description from the file but by and large it’s just a jumble of sentences usually fragments, separated by line breaks.

Clearly, I do chop from my manuscripts. So why don’t I have any Deleted Scenes? I’m too stubborn. If I like a scene for it’s emotion or it’s setting or the plot advancement or because it reminds me of how good of a mood I was in the day I wrote it...I will revise and tweak and labor over every sentence until the scene works in the book. It may take (whimper) five or six passes to get it right, in which time, I’ll have added exponentially to my ‘Leftover’ file but I will, by damn, have a completed scene that finally works in the manuscript.

My 'Leftover' file does not resemble a miniature meal to be re-heated later, it's no chicken piccata with a smattering of capers and a few tablespoons of sauce with a side of steamed broccoli. My 'Leftover' file looks more like a decimated Thanksgiving meal, plates littered with the bits and pieces of turkey, chunks of celery from the stuffing, and smashed sweet potatoes divested of their crispy melted marshmallows, all mixed together into an unappetizing mess that no one wants to re-heat.




So deleted scene? No. Do I have absolutely brilliant snippets of dialogue, snappy repartee or hard wrought similes (sometimes I’ll come up with a great simile that fits the scene and the tone and the plot perfectly....I’ll smile over my cleverness and then whack that puppy with a thunk of my fingers on the keyboard because it suits everything except the character’s voice, dammit) or even pieces of scenes written from an alternate character’s POV? Yes.

But nothing that would qualify as ‘exclusive content’.

Lisa

ps. I had an ending, but I deleted it. :)

Gene Pool Tour 4

L.G.C. Smith

This week I’m ignoring our designated topic to write about the journey I’m embarking on Wednesday. I’m going to England, mostly, though dipping a toe into Wales and an elbow into The Borders of Scotland.

The best part is that I’m going for seven weeks.

You read that right. Seven weeks. Excess is my middle name.

In November of 2002 my parents, my sister, Sarah, and I took the first of what we call our Gene Pool Tours of Britain. We have a lot of English, Cornish and Scottish ancestry, so we decided it would be fun to see where umpteen generations of our forebears had lived. We started by visiting the parishes that bear our surname in England and Crowan Parish in Cornwall where some of my mother’s family came from.

The following autumn, my mother and I went back to Cornwall and tracked down her ancestors in churchyards between Hayle and Penzance. The photos here are from that trip. That’s a picture of my mother at Tintern Abbey.

Three years ago, my parents and I went again, this time to the Southeast and Cumbria. We visited places our ancestors had lived, almost all of which have silly names like Bletchingley and Dorking. I find myself maybe not quite proud, but sort of impressed that both my parents have ancestors who lived in Dorking. This, I suppose, makes me a double dork. But perhaps everyone already knew that.

Gene Pool Tour #4 will be a family trip, too. My parents and my sister and her daughter are coming, as well as one of my cousins, the brilliant and talented writer and artist, Natalie Sudman. We’ll have a week in the Midlands (don’t ask – it has to do with my dad and his time share points), a week in Yorkshire, and a week in Northumberland checking out the homelands of the seventh-century Bernician dyna

sty that inspired my Warlord Kings series.

Mom, Dad, Sarah and the Leezlet (that’s my niece) leave the tour at the end of September. At that point, Natalie and I will rendezvous with a trio of ultra-stupendously brilliant and talented writers, Alicia Rasley, Judith Stanton, and Lynn Kerstan for a week in a small village in County Durham. After that, Natalie and I will wend our way southwestward toward Cornwall, conducting a loosely structured Stone Circle and Used Bookstores Detour. Then comes a week in Cornwall within spitting distance of the houses our great-great grandfather and his cousins lived in a hundred and fifty years ago.

Despite all the coming and going and toing and froing, a journey like this is, above all else, a pilgrimage. I’ve been dreaming of this trip since I came home from the last one with new questions and ideas. I’ve studied: history, Old English, Welsh, church history, archaeology. I’ve poured over maps. I’ve formulated hypotheses about everything from who Æthelfrith of Bernicia’s mother might have been to why having loose ligaments might be of benefit to hard rock miners.

It’s almost time for the magic of walking new paths and meeting new people, time to listen to the voices my preparation has invited. Some may be the whispers of those long dead. Most will come from the wild array

of accents and opinions of 21^st century Brits. For the next two months, I’ll be sharing what I hear.

Something To Ponder On a Friday

Hey all - it's me, Sophie, checking in with an apology and a little tidbit for you to ponder.

Today's guest couldn't be here. Because I, um, forgot to tell her it was her day. My fault completely.

So instead, I am bringing you a favorite of mine, and while he may not be aware that he is our guest, Daniel Woodrell is here with what has got to be the best analogy for publishing in the world:

From Daniel Woodrell’s GIVE US A KISS: “Here and there chunks of land have been cleared by that type of person who has no quit in them at all. Clearing a farm in this terrain often takes generations of bickering and blood blisters to get it done, and these hillbillies stuck with it. As a reward for their diligence, they got to give a go at squeezing a living from chickens and hogs and stony fields of red, feckless dirt.”

Fast Forward...or How Alex Skarsgard Has Turned Me Into A Squeeing 13 Year Old Girl.

--Adrienne Miller


I like to think I’m a responsible adult. I hold down a steady job. The kids get to school on time. I can even cook a little.

But every once in a while something comes along that proves that I am nothing more than the quivering pile of girl hormones that I was back in freshman year of high school.

Exhibit A: Alexander Skarsgard.

Sure, I like True Blood. I was glued to the whole first season. And yeah, I thought Eric Northman was attractive. Cold but attractive. A little cliched with his flowing blond hair and that big vampire throne. A little ‘really, isn’t it going overboard putting pale makeup on a Scandinavian?’

But this season? Wow. Um. Wow.

I wish I could say what the difference is. More tight t-shirts and less red velvet backdrops? More charming smiles and less tented fingers? I don’t know, people. I just don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s working.



Now I dutifully TiVo every episode and watch it from start to finish. And then I go back to the beginning and fast forward so I can watch the Eric scenes again. And again. And again.

Bad day? I know a scene that can lift your spirits. But...you should probably send the kids out to play first.

Need a little pick me up? Gotcha covered. Just hearing him whisper, “Trust me,” to ought fix you right up.

I don’t want to pull anyone else into this, but lets just say that this 10th grade level insanity isn’t just me. Oh no. From what I hear, this new found obsession is bordering on a cultural phenomenon.

Of course, there are only a couple of episodes left this season. So maybe in September I’ll be able to get back to my real life, or at least free up some memory on my TiVo.

Then again, maybe not.

Julie deleted many a scene between books 2 and 3 of the Art Lover's Mystery series...

(To the right: me, fellow Pensfatales Sophie Littlefield, and Ann Parker on tour in Arizona. Thanks to Lesa Holstine for the photo!)

Readers of the Art Lover's mystery series (written under my pseudonym, Hailey Lind) may have noticed that Josh-the-boyfriend was pushed back to a rather ignominious position as a "guy on the phone" before being shoved out of the books for good, all off-stage. I've heard from plenty of readers who wondered what happened to him...and while rummaging through the file of my many, many "deleted scenes", I came across this one.

Originally, the third book was going to entail a trip to Annie's home town in the Central Valley. The following scene opened the book:

“I wish I could go with you, Annie,” Josh murmured in my ear.

“I wish you could, too,” I lied. In marked contrast to most of the men in my life, the one who held me in his brawny arms was reliable, sweet, and refreshingly uncomplicated. I really didn’t deserve him. Josh Reynolds, contractor extraordinaire to the San Francisco Bay Area’s rich and upwardly mobile, had no flaws at all.

The one and only problem with Josh was that he was so...reliable. Sweet. And uncomplicated.

Josh and I had been dating ever since he had swooped in and saved me from celibacy last fall. He was like my very own white knight in denim, little gold earring, and tie-dye T-shirt. For a simple, straightforward kind of guy, Josh was remarkably tolerant of my somewhat checkered past. Which was a good thing because my normally quiet life as a legitimate faux-finisher was occasionally punctuated by high-drama incidents, like when I was busted for drug smuggling last fall.

But lately I was beginning to feel like I represented Josh’s Walk on the Wild Side. Even more sobering, I was wondering whether Josh might not be my very own Walk on the Mild Side.

“I have to stay and keep on top of the construction, otherwise we’ll fall behind schedule, and I’m not getting paid for falling behind,” Josh explained while he cleared the table of the remnants of the 3-course vegetarian feast he had lovingly cooked for me earlier in the evening.

That was another thing about dating Josh: normally I wasn’t a huge carnivore, but now that I was dating a vegetarian I had begun craving meat. The other night after Josh had wooed me over a sumptuous dinner of chickpea-tofu stew I found myself making a beeline toward Oakland’s famous Everett and Jones’ barbecue for an extra-large order of spicy baby-back ribs. Halfway through my surreptitious feast I looked down at the caveman-sized platter, my own sauce-covered hands, and my growing belly and wondered how I had gotten so out of control. Seemed like it was time –past time-- for me and Josh to have a little Talk.

But until I worked up the nerve it was easier just to leave town.

The series took off in an entirely different direction, but I always felt like we gave good old Josh the short end of the stick. Ah, well. The funny part is that I kept this scene, as though it could ever be used elsewhere.

Writers are nothing if not stubborn optimists.

Rachael Deletes A Lot of Scenes

Hahahaha.

Oh, hi.

Hahaha. Ha.

Excuse me. It's just that this topic is so flipping funny. I can't take it. It's like a joke. Except the punchline... Oh, it's killing me. Just killing me. Stop already, okay?

Deleted scenes.

Okay. Here's the set up for the joke. I have a book due in seven days (that sounds longer than a week, right? Right!). I'm almost done! I'm figuring it will be right at about 90,000 words, which feels good. Feels right.

When I sold this book (in paragraph form, as part of a package deal), it had a bit of underlying suspense. You know, not heavy romantic suspense, but there was a Bad Guy in it, so I wrote the book with a Baddie. Killed him off at the end with lots of gunfire and ka-blammo action. Good stuff.

But I didn't like it or him and it didn't feel natural and it was, worst of all, OBVIOUS.

So back to the drawing board.

I came up with another Bad Guy, only I made him a her, and changed the whole book around. Major rewrite. Maybe it was a bit better, but it still wasn't working. You know why? The book wasn't meant to have a Bad Guy. It was meant to have some knitting and lots of romantic tension, but it wasn't meant to have guns and pipe bombs, damn it.

And thank GOD my agent and I figured that out in time and that my editor, god bless her socks, agreed.

So now, after the biggest edit of my life, DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY WORDS ARE IN MY "CUT FILE?" You know, that file that Sophie talked about yesterday, that file that we create where we dump all those scenes that we're too sentimental about to simply throw out (in case we need them again--as if we EVER would)?

There are 60,000 words in my CUT file. (That's roughly 240 pages or so.)

60,000 words comprising scenes that used to be in my manuscript that aren't any more. Do you know how much I loved some of those? I lost a scene where her brakes lines have been cut and she carooms down a hill and crashes into the front of her brother's bar. I lost the scene where she SHOOTS HIM IN THE LEG because he scares her by coming into her bedroom in the middle of the night (I loved that scene).

Deleted scenes. Oy. Yeah, I know about 'em. I know ALL about 'em.

Ha! Ha.
Now excuse me while I go gibber in my corner over there.

Save For Later - the Second-Biggest Lie

By Sophie


The biggest lie told by many grown-up ladies is not, in fact, "oh my gracious, that's the most astonishing man-tool I've ever encountered." That's just a little warm-up lie we use for practice before we get around to the hard work of bearing children. At that point we have to roll out the serious artillery, because - as every mother knows - lying to your kids is an art that takes practice and dedication and finesse.

Here's the thing. Kids want things. They want stuff from the moment they get out of bed in the morning ("where are my ankle-zipper jeans - doesn't anyone ever do laundry around here?") until they lay their precious heads on the pillow at night ("I'm already mostly asleep - can't you bring me a glass of water so I don't have to wake back up?")

Most times, a heartfelt "hell no" will do the trick. But sometimes their pleas merit a bit more robust response, like when they actually have a point, when what they are asking for is within the realm of reasonable.

Often, however, it just ain't convenenient.

Which necessitates The Mother's Lie: I'll talk to your father about that.

...And get back to you, is the implication there. As though when Bob walks in the door at the end of the day I'll be like, "Honey, Junior wants me to join the Academic Boosters like all the moms who care about their children's educations. What do you think, yea or nay?" - or "We're out of milk and toilet paper - do you suppose one of us should run to the store?"


....when I know darn well that I won't do anything of the sort. Yup, I'll talk to your father about that is the circular file of parental responses.


Which reminds me of the 2nd-most-oft-uttered lie around here, which is called into service any time I have to cut big chunks of text:


I'll use this section later.


Now I have to pause here to say that I feel kind of bad for Juliet, because what follows is cribbed directly from discussions we've been having on the road (we're in between cities on our book tour - Sunday was Phoenix, Thursday is L.A. etc.) Once I'm done here she won't have a darn thing to say, because we're in complete agreement on the subject.


(Though that's the perk to being the Monday girl: everything's fresh snow. I get to make tracks in any direction I want and there's nothing any of the other Pens can do about it. Which makes me feel gleeful...kinda makes me want to yell "Die Hard, Die Hard, Die Hard!" facing due West toward the outer limits of the city where a certain Pen can only jump up and down in impotent fury...ah, love that!)


What were we talking about...oh, yeah. So writers write merrily along, building and shaping the story as they go, and eventually the day comes when they put that last period in place and go on a celebratory bender only to come back in the cold dawn and realize that it's revision time. Which means fixing what's broke and, when things are too broke to fix - or, more often, too irrelevant to fix - yanking sections out.


And that hurts. It hurts and burns and makes us feel all empty inside, because, see, it's always the sections you loved the best that have to go. Even if it was boring prose before, the minute you have to yank it out, it all turns brilliant. It's like when the quiet boy in your math class falls hard for you in seventh grade and you spurn him for several months until the day he realizes he actually loves some other girl and suddenly he's the cutest boy in the school and you will die without him. Yes, it's just like that.


Sometimes, cutting out that section makes the words and sentences left behind seem lifeless and dull, and you begin to panic because you've just removed the only bits that ever elevated your story in the first place. But wait, it's okay, because you've got this Word file you've started. If you're me, it's called Save For Later or some equally helpful thing. Just knowing it's there, tucked side by side with the manuscript on your hard drive, lets you resume breathing and revise another day.


But do you ever come back to the file?


No. Never. NE-VER. Not in a million years. Not if you were told to increase your word count from 80,000 to 800,000,000 - even then, you would never return to that sad little file. I don't really know why it is - and maybe the other Pens can figure it out - but those words are tainted now, and their file home is really a quarantine, or more accurately a tomb. Like the haunted house of childhood nightmares, words go marching in, but they never come out again.


I just re-read and realized that today's post might be one of the most extravagantly, irresponsibly directionless things I've written in ages. I apologize...see, my book just came out and its launch turned out to be a little more demanding than I expected. I'm playing the Newbie Card and hoping for forgiveness...

Not Quite a Foodie

By Jennifer Haymore

(Today we welcome PensFatales friend Jennifer Haymore, author of A Hint of Wicked as well as Highland Obsession, written as Dawn Halliday. Jennifer's giving away a copy of A Hint of Wicked - be sure to post a comment for a chance to win!)

As much as I dream about being a food connoisseur, I am not a foodie. I have friends who grind their own wheat. I have other friends who can whip up a gourmet kid-friendly meal sans cookbook for their own family and ten guests without batting an eyelash. Some of my friends can taste the subtlest difference in a flavor of wine (and I know so little about wine, I cannot even say what kind of wine they can spot the differences in…).

Yes, I’m jealous. I wish I was at one with the universe of truly good food and drink. But frankly, give me a piece of bread and a slab of cheese, and I’m good. Add some avocado, and I’m in gourmet heaven.

Perhaps I should blame my parents. Not only were they vegetarians, but when I was growing up, my mom believed popcorn with a dash of Brewer’s yeast made a good dinner. Oh, she had her moments. We baked a few cakes in my forming years, and when she was feeling really ambitious, we’d make a loaf of bread. And we made cookies often. Still do, in fact. Sugar cookies with frosting. My kids have grown to equate their grandma to that kind of cookie. Result: I can bake a damn good cookie, but an actual meal? Uh…

I’ve sort of given up on my desire to be a gourmet. For now, I’m sticking with the labels “mom” and “writer.” Frankly, the last time I tried to cook something spectacular (a Moroccan lemon chicken dish with quinoa), it took an hour or two, and the result: I loved it, my husband thought it was okay, my kids thought it was spectacularly gross. So for now, while I try to meet my writing deadlines, I am keeping my focus on simple but healthy, easy meals that won’t result in whining children. Lots of fruit. As many veggies as I can get away with. And straightforward, easy-to-cook main dishes that everyone will eat.

But I’m always looking for new options. Our limited meal list does get old after a while, you know? What are some of your simple favorites?

Jennifer Haymore grew up on the Big Island of Hawaii, where she surfed, learned how to fly airplanes, raced bicycles, and developed a love for sailing. She was an avid reader and completely destroyed her eyesight by sneaking a flashlight under her covers and reading far into the nights — making her mother wonder why on earth she couldn’t get up for school in the mornings…

You can find Jennifer in Southern California trying to talk her husband into yet another trip to England, helping her three children with homework while brainstorming a new five-minute dinner menu, or crouched in a corner of the local bookstore writing her next novel.