The story no one sees

Full confession: I'm a 1980's nerd.

That probably conjures images of Star Wars and Transformers, both of which I enjoyed as a child. However, there is another fantasy story that entertained me: The Dark Crystal.

Jim Henson's 1982 tale of a crystal, along with a world and its inhabitants, being split asunder and reunited, has remained a favorite of mine. I watched Netflix's prequel series twice, and recently rewatched the original film.

During this nerding out, I also watched an interview where Henson talked about some of the work he put into The Dark Crystal story. There were characters drawn, sequences outlined, scenes that appeared in a novel, and landscapes designed that never made it to the screen. But Henson did not consider those elements to be wasted efforts. He felt that by creating them, even when they remained unseen, it helped him and the other developed understand the world they invented. Those unseen elements indirectly made the released film better.

A movie is not the same as a novel - they are different types of storytelling. However, authors often have characters and scenes that they create, only to find that something keeps them out of the finished product. The action sequence that sounded good didn't move the story. The secondary character who mentors the main character becomes redundant. The victory speech at the end does not establish anything that the reader didn't already know.

Henson felt that the extra scenes and storyboards still helped him make his movie. For the author, the unproduced extras may or may not have positive effects. I experienced both sides of this in my two novels.

In The Pride of Central, there was a subplot where Maggie is unsure if she wants to spend the night with a boy for the first time. What isn't in the finished book are a couple of scenes where her best friends are pressuring her to do it. I decided those scenes dwelt on Maggie's story too much at the expense of other characters in what was a baseball book, not a romance story. However, the implied pressure and temptation that Maggie is feeling remained even after those scenes were cut. The tension remained for the character.

On the other hand, in The Jewelry of Grace, some of my early work went for naught. Originally, I gave more detailed physical descriptions of Grace and Adam, her husband. But in the end, I opted to go with my usual style of describing only above the neck, and letting the reader imagine the rest. Though I still pictured them in great detail in my own mind, there was nothing conveyed to the reader, intentionally so. The early drafts with more detail, admittedly, accomplished nothing in the final production.

However, there is one way that all of the extra work still matters, whether the reader sees it or not. All of the work keeps you engaged in the world that you have created. Even if aspects of that world go unused, you become more familiar with it yourself. The extra work allows you to become a better tour guide to the reader. You don't just realize what places in the new world you want to show the reader, you also learn which areas not to show the reader.

And, sometimes, the extra work becomes an advantage for later on.

That is why I used The Dark Crystal as an example before, as opposed to countless other films that leave scenes on the cutting room floor. Though Henson did not live to see it, several of his extra creations were used in the television series "Age of Resistance". Some of the character designs that were not used in 1982 were used in 2019. Background to the cultures that could not be included in the original film are weaved into the series.

I hope to do some similar things with portions of my work from the first two books. In The Jewelry of Grace, there is a character named Avery who appears for one chapter. She had a much larger role in the book at first, but ultimately did not fit in with the overall story. but much of what I hoped to have her do in that book may come up in my third novel in a couple years.

But even if it doesn't fit in there either, even if the reader never gets to see the full scope of the character, it will still help me as the reader's guide to this word that I took some time to get to know who she is.

Next week: But what if no one is reading at all?