My Novel Feels Gutted

Me: Hey, Novel. Are you okay?

Novel: You know? I really don't think I am.

Me: Want to talk to me about it?

Novel: Do I want to talk to you about how you're destroying me?

Me: I'm not trying to destroy you. I'm trying to make you better.

Novel: How about we start with talking about how you told me you were going to revise me, then opened a blank document. How is that revision? How are you not just replacing me?

Me: It's still you, Novel! Yes, there's a lot of rewriting, but it's refining what came before even if the words are different. I'm replacing your words, not you. I'm keeping the look and feel of you, the heart of you, the themes of you...

Novel: It doesn't feel that way. Have you even seen what you did with my outline? You hacked half of it away. Half. YOU MURDERED HALF MY CHAPTERS!

Me: Okay. I did do that. But the chapters you have can be longer now. Act I is down to four chapters, but those four chapters take up twenty three thousand words. It originally had eight, sure, but it's actually only lost a few thousand words.

Novel: But the outline lost so many scenes. Did you not see all the post-it notes in the trash? The trash! You're putting parts of me IN THE TRASH!

Me: They were too small to go into recycling.

Novel: (glares)

Me: Look, I simply removed scenes that were either from a cut plot-line or were redundant or which would be better established either as summary or assumption. 

Novel: Assumption? You can't assume readers know something.

Me: Sure you can. When people read two characters are on a hiking trail and one of them is wearing borrowed boots, they can assume the characters had a discussion about where they were going and whether the boots would fit. We didn't need fourteen hundred words about it.

 

Novel: I guess not...

Me: And that arc that got pruned was distracting from the important bits. It made it harder to see what you're actually about, which would make people enjoy you less. You want to be enjoyable, don't you?

Novel: I want people to like me, yeah.

Me: So do I. We have the same goal, Novel. I'm not your enemy.

Novel: Maybe. I'm not sure you're my friend either, though.

Me: If I have to chose between being your friend and making you the best story you can be, I'll pick the latter.

Novel: I guess I can understand that. And I guess I can accept it. As long as I don't have to like it.

Me: You don't. And, for the record, I'm doing this because I love you. Not because I think you're awful.

Novel: Don't push my credulity.

Me: (sigh) See you at work tomorrow?

Novel: Yeah. Sure. What's left of me.

Me: (exiting) Write about faeries, they said. It'll be fun, they said. But did they warn me faerie books are freaking primadonnas? No, they did not.