What to cut?

Good morning, Self!

Something that people may have thought about but lumped under the general heading of 'editing', is 'What to cut?'. Since I like to keep the action moving, without loss of character development, I usually try to cut anything that doesn't generally contribute to the story. As I mentioned earlier, I insert a few things that demonstrate that a character has a life outside the story, and I think that lends verisimilitude to the character. After all, how believable is a character who only exists to service the storyline? Isn't it likely that a man or woman who is put into a tight spot and has to get out of it, has a family somewhere? A brother or sister who has kids and invites Uncle Harvey or Aunt Matilda to a birthday party? Or maybe a wedding. Any kind of celebration that may or may not include extended family members.

Okay, those are instances of something that you keep in the story; what about things that you cut? For example, say you are describing a culture that you have created just for the story. Do you put in pages of description of how the culture works? That's called an 'info-dump' and personally, I'm not crazy about them. Sure, it explains why a certain thing has to be done, and why it is important, but does it detract from the story? I can think of very little as tedious as being forced to read several pages of information just when the hero or heroine has to escape from an unfriendly troll or dragon, or merely a murderous human.

What a writer can do to lighten that particular load is weave the information into the story. That's usually a job for 'spear-carriers', but reading a long exposition on the part of a primary or secondary figure is as bad as an info-dump. Instead, a writer can have various characters make off-hand remarks in which they refer to certain points of interest in the culture. Just make sure it's something the character would say under those circumstances. You've got to lead into the remark so that it comes naturally and easily. It may take a few pages of generally pertinent action and remarks for you to lay the groundwork for having a character remark on something important to the story's background that isn't important to the action. If done clumsily, it detracts from the story as much as an info-dump, but if done well, the reader will come away with an understanding of the culture, and the action and story do not suffer harm.

Self, you may wonder why I am spending so much time speaking to you about this, but I have to tell you that it is something that I struggled with. A story-teller has to know that the listener knows all there is to know about a culture or his story is incomprehensible. Making sure the reader knows about the culture is the story-teller's responsibility.

Very well. That will be all for today. I am not an authority on writing, just a writer with a little hard-won knowledge.

Thank you and good day.
Derek A. Murphy