Look, I'm no stranger to revisions. I'm on the third draft of my novel and have dumped many scenes, sub-plots, and decent turns-of-phrase into the literary graveyard. But this cut I'm undertaking now--removing a love interest character entirely from the draft--it hurts.
I liked this character. She gave my protag a extra layer of emotional depth. She had some lines/scenes that landed well among beta readers. She was a cool girl!!
But, if I'm being honest with myself, she confused the narrative more than she added to it. A few workshop peers and mentors tried to tell me this, but I was bull-headed about it for the longest time. Now, I'm trying to get over my ego.
I'm not here for advice, just want to commiserate. Feel free to tell me about any characters you've flung into the void; we can pour one out for them together <3
Oof, that hurts, especially when betas liked her too. One tiny thing that helped me: I keep a “character morgue” file and shamelessly cannibalize cut characters for future stories. Your cool girl might just headline another book.
Yep! I do this too! Their story can still be told 😊
I love this idea. Whether they get used in the future or not, it will make me feel less guilty. (I know I shouldn’t feel guilty for treating a fantasy character badly but I do. In my current project I kill off a character later in the book and every time he is in a scene I feel like apologizing to him).
We treat them as people and watch them come alive; of course we’re sorry for the bad things they’re going through.
wait… do other writers not apologize profusely to their characters? No? me neither…
Do you also apologize to your cats when you're making them food and they get too antsy?
I feel like these two behaviors are the same coin.
You got me there, pal
Agreed. Maybe she was just in the wrong story
That is the best part of writing. Ideas you can use elsewhere.
I cut three characters from my second book, which I just finished revising last night!
It sucked, but it was needed
Cheers for finishing your revision!
Tysm!!
What made it needed?
Added nothing to the story, too much bulk and distracted from main story.
I'm not sure why you have to delete this character if beta readers liked her. How did she confuse the narrative? Was she a second love interest that was never going anywhere?
Even second love interests are nice to have!
True, but if it's obvious the MC won't get with her, then she would be kind of superfluous.
I did a love triangle where one person didn't even know it was a triangle, she just liked a guy and didn't know guy and other gal were a thing. The fact that it's a hidden thing is part of the plot and therefore third-wheel was an important character.
You can justify a third wheel even if they're never going to win. Which is good because she's my favorite elevated NPC in the story.
If she has other things to do in the story and is a major part of it, then that kind of subplot is fine.
Honestly, the friendship between the two gals is more important to the narrative than third wheel being into the guy. She's not even that mad at him.
Yeah so it should be fine. Focus on the friendship. Maybe play up the obliviousness for laughs, so her friend is like, ...you know we're dating, right? She knows there's no threat.
Shouldn't a good writer make that non-obvious though?
They should, right. But they will need to give space in the story to explore a possible relationship with that other person. If they're not, then yeah, they'll have to cut that character or give her a different role.
Legitimate question. How do you take a character out of your book completely from a 3rd draft? Especially a love interest? I would think that a love interest is fairly entwined in the plot.
A small character in one or two scenes? Sure. Taking someone out in a second draft? Doable, but still. a huge pain in the butt.
RIP 🪦🪦🪦⚱️⚰️
I call that death by deletion.
While I wanted to post something somewhat similar.. more about asking for people's experiences with a similar situation than advice on what I should do.
I'm also struggling if I should remove a POV. I had conflicting opinions from different Beta readers... I have two versions already set up swinging back and forth between them.
I'll share some of my process, in case it helps:
- As mentioned, this is revision number 3. I really, really just want the book to be done. Keeping Dead Cool Girl in the MS would mean I'd have to justify her place in the narrative by weaving a bunch of character arcs together and blah, blah, blah--basically, too much work. Cutting her is painful, but quick, and I am honestly a lazy person.
- Like many folks, my revisions involve whittling down word count. Easy way to do this? Get rid of superfluous side characters.
- While several betas (workshop peers--do they count as betas?) liked Dead Cool Girl, 2 out of my 3 instructors said she had to go. Ultimately, you've got to decide which readers' opinions you trust more. For me, this was easy, as I was in a hierarchical feedback situation (MFA). Might be harder in other contexts.
I honestly have some half-baked thoughts on the value of "random" beta feedback vs. workshop peer feedback (MFA or not; there are some excellent online writing groups). But that's a convo for another day.
So if you had just made the character arcs in the first place you wouldn't have needed to cut her?
Well, to be more accurate, this character I'm cutting serves the same thematic and narrative role as another character in the book.
She represents a past that the protagonist isn't willing to relinquish. That would be an important role if another character weren't doing that already. Like I said, she's superfluous.
I could get into more detail, but I'm not sure how useful or interesting that would be for you.
Less of a character (though it still counts) and more of a chapter. For the second draft of my book, I wrote a chapter that was very connected to an already written one.
For context, and for the first draft, the heroes were supposed to spin a wheel with many activities on it. If the wheel landed on something, it was eliminated. The last one left would activate a door and they would go to a place related to said activity.
For the second draft, I wanted to incorporate the other 10 activities more, and so I had it so that the heroes had to do a talent show gauntlet related to them, and if the host liked their performances enough, then they could move on to the door with the final activity.
It was…very boring to write. No character progression, nothing about it impacted the rest of the story, and it wasn’t even that funny either. It felt like writing for the sake of having more content than I needed. I figured that if I was bored, then the readers would be too. And so I deleted that chapter, and never looked back.
I like to shelve my stories for a few months before re-reading them for a similar reason. I've cut a ton of sci-fi mechanics paragraphs/scenes because, while they were fun to research, they were NOT fun to read.
Hell yeah. That's what you like to see. Kill. Them. Darlings.
Man, that sucks.
I just finished my first draft a couple of weeks ago, and I’m already thinking about subplots and possible characters to eliminate
I put them aside for a future story. Or I repurpose the parts of them I liked into a character who does remain in the story.
There's one character that I could remove if a nuclear option is required by the end, but I really hope I don't have to. I like her too much.
Is it a word count issue for you, or a plot issue?
Mostly a word count issue tbh, and I'm not at the draft where that truly matters yet. So there's a lot of mileage to cover before I even consider it. But it is true that the plot could be streamlined by removing her. It would come at the cost of many other things, though, like originality and depth.
I feel this. I'm in a narrative efficiency phase with my writing right now, so I'm privileging tightness over originality. In time, I might get self-indulgent again--and I don't mean that in a negative sense; some of my favorite stories to read are full of cool-but-pointless fluff.
Best of luck to you!
Thanks! Can I ask what genre you're writing?
Just did the opposite. Ended up bringing in a periphery character because it added depth and intrigue to the story. I feel your pain though - I’m a hoarder and hate making cuts, have a really tough time letting go.
I had a major block for almost a year because I introduced some disposable characters for an action scene and it wasn't working. I took out one to simplify the stakes, replaced another with a callback who ended up getting more development, and it all clicked together pretty quick after that.
I prefer to ‘relocate’ my darlings instead of killing them. Just because they’re not needed in this story doesn’t mean they’re not going to show up in another work.
Give her her own story. Even if it’s just for you/funsies. If you love her a lot, find a place or story where she belongs!
Know this all too well. Wanted to kill a character who was the MC's best friend from childhood. Due to a deliberate decision of the MC, his best friend gets caught in the aftermath and is lethally wounded: raise stakes, give the MC a motivation, yadda, yadda. But I ended up being so emotional about it that I changed the plot and let the best friend survive. And honestly? It was the better option as it gave me a whole new set of character interactions and balanced the friends group (of now four, previously three) out and turned an already heavy-handed plot into a lighter one.
I cut a character from my main novel project years ago. My best friend tried to get me to keep him, I loved him, but he was just kind of redundant.
Well, I ended up finding him a new home and he became a much deeper character when given room to breathe and found he became a greater force in the new story.
Sometimes it's necessary for the story you're working on and to realize the character's full potential. But it is definitely hard as fuck.
this is a make-believe character, something you made up, right? exists only in your writing?
You mean, did I kill a real person? Nice try, FBI!
no, not fbi, I was being facetious, I find it odd that anyone would 'grieve' eliminating a character from a manuscript.