Death By 'Delete’

Today I get to welcome to Salad Bowl Saturdays a new-to-me writer, Alan Cupp, who is part of the hen house authors at Henery Press. Editing is probably my favorite part of writing (other than reading?), and Alan writes in this blog about some difficulties of editing characters we have come to love, or at least respect.

~ Jim

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As a writer, I often have to kill people. Obviously, this is within the realm of my stories and not those real life individuals I interact with on a day-to-day basis. Although, I will confess the thought has crossed my mind a time or two, usually during rush hour traffic. But you shouldn’t murder people in real life because there are consequences and it’s wrong. So I do my best to avoid it. However, in my stories it’s a safe assumption that someone will most likely end up dead.

The challenging part is killing off a character I originally wrote into the story, only to realize later they really aren’t necessary in my final draft. These poor defenseless individuals die at the hand of the editing process. They never see it coming. One moment they’re flourishing on page fifty-two, connected and confident their existence is serving to move the story forward, only to end up the victim of the dreaded ‘delete’ button.

Whether it’s a character or a specific scene in the story, cutting something out that you spent time and effort to create and develop, is seldom easy. Usually, I attempt to tweak the story some way to justify keeping everything as close to how I originally wrote it as possible. Why? Because it’s already there and it took an investment of my time and creative juices to put it there. To simply scrap it would indicate I am not getting anything back for that investment. By golly, I spent my valuable time developing and writing that scene or character into the story. I can’t just toss it aside now. That would mean I completely wasted my time.

Ironically, there are other areas of my life where I am guilty of wasting my time that don’t seem to bother me as much. For instance, watching the same movie for the thirty-fourth time. How many times do I need to see Die Hard? I suppose the difference is other than my time, I haven’t invested anything else. Whereas a character in one of my stories represents something I created.

Nobody likes to think that something they created isn’t worthwhile enough to keep forever. We tell ourselves it was good and important when I thought it up. How is it that now it serves as more of an obstacle to my story than something that enhances it? It’s a direct reflection on us. Yet, I dare say that everyone, even the best writers, sooner or later have to face the humbling reality that they’ve penned something not worth keeping.

This is why writers have editors. These are those gracious, honest folks who are willing to point out the weaknesses of our manuscripts. Like a sculptor, an editor has to chip away all the clunky, excess stuff that inhibit the full beauty of the finished piece of art.

Ideally, I like to discover as many of the wasted words as possible before the editor gets a hold of my manuscript. For one, it softens the blow of getting a heavily marked-up manuscript back from the editor. Getting a manuscript returned to me that is covered in red is somewhat disheartening. And two, I want to communicate to my editor that I really did put a great deal of time and thoughtful effort into the manuscript. Unfortunately, due to our deeply personal attachment to our own work, we writers are not always the most objective judges. It can be quite difficult to pick up on those aspects of our stories that don’t contribute or belong.

The good news is that usually the longer we do this, the better we get at looking at our manuscripts with an outsider’s perspective. We draw on the constructive criticism and lessons learned in the past. It’s still not easy. When a writer reads through what they’ve written, and it becomes apparent that a particular secondary character or a series of paragraphs or God forbid, an entire chapter isn’t working, highlighting and deleting is still a daunting chore. No writer likes to see the word count of their manuscript going backwards. It means we’re still that much further from our ultimate and rewarding goal of a completed story.

In the end, death by deletion is a necessary evil of writing. I just feel bad for those characters who are tossed aside, rejected because they serve no purpose. Perhaps they all gather together in some deep corner of my mind, waiting for an opportunity to be reincarnated into another character for a future tale of intrigue in which they come to life on the pages of a fully edited and polished manuscript. 

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Alan Cupp loves to create and entertain, whether it’s with a captivating mystery novel or a funny promotional video for his church, he’s always anticipating his next creative endeavor. In addition to writing fiction, Alan enjoys acting, music, travel, and playing sports. His life’s motto is, “It’s better to wear out than rust out.” Alan places a high value on time spent with his beautiful wife and their two sons. He lives his life according to his 4F philosophy: Faith, Family, Friends, and Fun.