Editing

Drama is life with the dull parts cut out of it.—Alfred Hitchcock

There is editing that is basically rewriting, where you clarify, and correct mistakes, and improve the quality of the language. That is really important. Often you can’t write something well until you have written it badly, to at least get the idea down. Then you can see where things are stilted, or take longer than they need to, or whatever it is that needs fixing.

What I am writing about now is something else though, and that is deciding what goes in and what doesn’t.  I remember when I purchased my DVD of The Lord of the Rings, there was the decision whether to get cut or uncut, and I went with uncut, and wow, it really dragged. I did not finish watching it. It’s not even that those scenes would be boring in and of themselves, but inserted into the narrative it makes the movie boring.

In the finished product you have scenes that happen, and get written or filmed. Obviously there would be things that happen and do not end up captured, and also, there are things that could happen that do not.

Mainly the things that don’t happen at all are conversations, where people could hash things out, but they just don’t get the chance, or they need to talk about something else instead. Figuring out thing like this was a situation where the journal writing was handy.

For example, there is a scene where basically what needs to happen is that Gerard needs to make peace with the fact that other people die. He’s fine with his own mortality, but living when other people die is a real problem. There are a lot of emotions there, and there are a lot of things that they could say to each other, but then that would be an overly long conversation, and it would lose a lot of its impact.

In my journal I went over all of the emotions, and all the questions and answers, and the ones that were left were the ones that were most key in getting him to where he needed to be—they made the point the best, or they were the most pertinent. The other things did not end up being said, even though they were totally applicable.

One takeaway from this post could be that if you have an important conversation coming up, it might be a good idea to write it all out first, and see what your main points are. Mental clarity is a beautiful thing.

There are also things that happen, but you only hear about them. This conflicts with another axiom, “Show, don’t tell”, but I found there were some cases where seeing more deaths wouldn’t help, because there was already so much of that, and also, for the main characters, all they could do was hear about it, and it was already past and they were left with that feeling of shock and disbelief and helplessness, so then the reader has that feeling too. There is so much that is out of control in life, that element needed to be in the story.

Also, there were scenes that happened that did not get written. Some of them I have a certain fondness for, but they don’t fit. In between two scenes that do get written, Jane and Gerard have a conversation about what he wishes he had done differently, but she points out that they don’t know that it would have worked, because there are so many variables. It’s an important conversation for them to have, and the content is true, but it just doesn’t fit.

Another thing that doesn’t get written is that Jane paid for Sophie’s stuffed rabbit. Her mother couldn’t afford it, and Jane at that point felt like she would never have anyone in her life again, so being more invested in her patients and in other people’s relationships made sense, but the scene doesn’t really tell you anything. Jane’s caring but her life was really sad for a while. Sophie’s mother was poor. These are things you already know. The origin of the rabbit isn’t that important.

That leads to one more scene that could have been written, but wasn’t, because I did send my mind there, and I know how it went down when Frank found the bodies. Although there is some sweetness to it, it is terribly sad. Here’s the thing, in terms of the information that is given, anything that you learn from that scene is well established in the next two scenes, and those scenes have elements of hope to them that this scene wouldn’t. And if that scene was shown, it would subtract from the impact of the next scene, which should be high-impact. So really, that scene would just be gratuitously sad, and I try not to be gratuitous.

I mean, on one level the whole thing is gratuitous. No one is begging me to tell the story, and you could negate the need for every single scene just by never starting. But then, once you’re going to do it, there’s a lot to be said for doing it well. In terms of some of the jokes, and the things that are just nice moments, do they need to be there? I guess my rule of thumb is whether they keep the pace right.