Writing something out and then realizing you needed it

Might be an indication that something's off-kilter, or simply an indication of faulty memory.

I've done the same thing. My first draft is pretty long and it's hard to remember what's needed where. I was about to change the timing of a revelation when I realized I needed to keep it the way it was otherwise the rest of the story's timing would be off. Very annoying, since I liked the new approach.

Maybe a compromise solution would work? Something between the old and the new?

Hey, this way you get to kill your character off twice!

But this means you may have to find a nasty and nefarious way to kil someone else!!


For every cloud..

In the past when I wasn't sure if I needed a particular section, I've submitted a different draft to two friends. If either of them mentions it in their feedback, then I need to look at it closely.

Hopefully you didn't delete the text entirely. That has zapped me more than once. Now, I keep a 'cutting room floor' document in the same folder with every project. If I need to remove more than a couple of sentences I cut/paste it into the CRF document. This has saved my skin more than once.

It does not help with power outages though...

Before I get going all gonzo on the rewrite, I do a very quick read through of the whole story, making notes, and here's the kicker, and it is very hard; WITHOUT CHANGING A WORD!! I know its hard, but you refresh yourself with plot, subplot, quasi-plot, plot left hanging, etc.

You're probably smarter than I, ms, but I think if it were me, I would approach the subplot with the same basic expectations a reader would have of the main plot. If it idles too much in the beginning, it won't hook right (IMO). Unless, that is, you're using the subplot for downtime between action sequences or major plot movers. In that case, maybe you're worrying too much about the beginning subplot crawl? Without reading it's hard to say. But, just a few thoughts I had.

EF: a battery backup? Jus' sayin'

I was once persuaded, by an editing god, that my ending for a 160,000 word novel needed changing, to a happy one, for the intended audience. I think that the highly qualified and esteemed lady thought it merely involved slight alterations to the last couple of chapters.

I knew different. I'd spent a year of my life writing the story, and the ending, the main character's death, was the relevant thread starting with the very first paragraph.

Being under severe time pressure, I couldn't possibly do the proper re-write, it would have taken months, so I meekly complied and revised as much as I could to try and make sense of it, blindly following stupid 'orders' from an editor who had merely skipped through my manuscript.

That it all ended in tears, was inevitable.