Yesterday I realized, to my despair, that I had to do some major editing in certain areas of my book Silver Blood. Cutting, pasting, fitting, dissecting, ect. Or, as I told my husband "I am going to preform surgery!"
It is very difficult to completely remove an element from a book. In my case I had to remove a character (minor but scattered throughout the book) and move information from the middle of the book to the back.
Airith, one of my main characters, falls in love with X-Sayda, the wild daughter of an Outland chieftain. She encourages Airith but then betrays him by marrying someone else for power. After her husband is poisoned (suspicious, anyone?) she decides that she wants Airith after all. By then he has realized what sort of person she really is and refuses her. Though the Witch Queen encourages Airith to marry her to gain power and influence.
Originally X-Sayda is only met or mentioned a few times in the book, her and Airith's past relationship is only hinted at.
Then I realized: "By adding all these extra parts I am making my word count higher than I want. And how am I supposed to make this all time-consistent?"
So I said: "I'll just take her out completely!" Then I realized she was involved intricately in a major part of the book. So....I made her a minor part again. Sigh.
Have you ever had to remove parts from your book/writing or add parts that gave you grief?
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