Don't give it everything you've got

You've spent hours researching intricate details about your manuscript's subject matter.

You've outlined several interesting, original subplots.

You've made some subtle characteristics for your main characters.

You've created cool secondary and tertiary characters.

The natural inclination of a writer who has put time and effort into a story is to use every nugget that he or she has discovered, to express each idea and character that was created in his or her imagination.

But the crushing truth is: it is usually best to leave some of it out. Don't leave all of it out, but don't give your current manuscript everything you've got.

Yes, there are some long stories out there. Very long. The I-read-three-chapters-a-night-and-it-still-took-me-six-months stories. But just because J.K. Rowling came up with successful story that took seven books (or eight movies, depending on your point of view) doesn't mean that more always equals better.

J.R.R. Tolkien had a long story as well when he penned The Lord of the Rings. But he easily could have made it much longer. Instead, he moved some material to the Appendices and others he abandoned altogether. His son, Christopher, chronicled the work that Tolkien did, and some of the effort included the elimination of certain sequences and characters.

I'm sure Tolkien loved some of what he opted to remove. But for the purpose of a better story, he had to streamline portions.

When I worked at a newspaper, I was forced into this. I would cover the state track meet, and be told to write 900 words about it. That is a decent amount of space to write, but it sometimes meant that a good quote from a local athlete did not fit. In order to convey everything that happened, the quote had to be removed.

The same thing happened with my two novels. The Pride of Central, at one time, had more background on which characters had past relationships together, and a little more about Jonas's mother. But these subplots did not move the story at all so I let them go. The result: the back-and-forth between the baseball team's games and the relationships happening in the present between each game had a better pace.

In The Jewelry of Grace, there were going to be funerals in the introduction or the first few chapters for Grace's parents. Again, it might have given more background, but not any that the reader needed. All these scenes could have done is slow the story just as it gets started. With the funerals removed and simply establishing that her parents had passed on, the reader goes right into the wedding of Grace and Adam in Chapter 1.

That's not to say that all of your extra work should go unrewarded. Many of those details you dug deep for will find their ways onto the page, and a new character can spice up your story at just the right time. Discernment is key.

And not using these details or characters does not mean they must be wasted.

That nice quote from the track meet that did not fit in the story could be used later that week in a feature story about that athlete.

The relationships that players and their fans had in their past may not have appeared on the pages of The Pride of Central, and the funerals may have been passed over in The Jewelry of Grace, but either might be used as background or flashback if they fit in my third novel.

So certainly, hold on to each discovery and each creation.

Just don't force yourself to use each one right now.

Next week: Stage fright