How to Make Use of Deleted Scenes

By Michelle Chalkey

Every novel has those scenes that didn’t work for one reason or another. You spend time writing the scene, analyzing it, moving it around, and when it doesn’t make the cut, what happens to that scene you spent your time on?

It gets dumped, deleted.

Deleted scenes, although they’re thrown away, still make up the final product of your novel or story. As in life, we have experiences and situations that we’re not really sure what purpose they serve or why we were put in them. Maybe a part-time job didn’t really work out, and you left it behind after only a few days. That experience, no matter how small, still makes up who you are as a person and what path your life takes from there.

Scenes you take out of a novel may have had some effect on why your characters ended up where they are. They still tell a story in your character’s journey and transformation.

Your deleted writing can live somewhere rather than being backspaced. One of the best ways to make use of your deleted scenes is to publish them as content on your author blog or website. Think of deleted scenes as extras for your published book, just like on a DVD. Fans who wants to know more about a movie or connect to it after it has ended will check out the extras and the deleted scenes.

This is a great way to connect with your fans and to keep them thinking about your book or story after they’ve read it. If you catch yourself backspacing a scene, save it to a Deleted Scenes folder instead. Rather than wasted writing, you have a whole folder of future content.

Here are a few examples of deleted scenes on author blogs:

http://allycarter.com/books/cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-spy/deleted-scenes/

http://www.macteenbooks.com/ya/tin-star-blog-tour-a-deleted-scene-an-author-blog-post-by-cecil-castellucci/

http://nalinisingh.com/extras/deleted-scenes/

Beth Burgmeyer

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