I control my story…

My story doesn’t control me.

Sometimes I forget this. I’m an improvisor/pantser so that first draft is often over genre wordcount guidelines by thousands and has subplots that end up going nowhere. I almost always have to rewrite the beginning once I’ve refined the ending.

But I control the story. It doesn’t control me. So I let that first draft just come out all crazy and way too long. Then I sit down and do a new outline. What’s my midpoint? What’s my climax? What scene or two max would wrap this up after the climax (instead of writing a whole new intro to the next book at the end of this one because I never stopped asking ‘then what happens’)?

I get nervous sometimes looking at that high wordcount and cutting scenes that I really like, but I am in control of the final story. Just because the first draft came out the way it did doesn’t mean I don’t get to do it completely differently on the next draft. Readers of the final product won’t ever know what it was like when I started. Readers don’t need to know every little thing that happened to my characters between the important stuff—even if I liked those moments a lot.

I took a deep breath and slashed the first book I ever finished, deleting subplots, whole characters, and rewrote the beginning multiple times. I slashed over fifty thousand words once I made a fresh outline of the entire book and got to work tightening my manuscript into a well-paced story (I hope.)

So if you’re like me and get stuck sometimes saying to yourself, “But I can’t change that because that’s just the story” or “that’s what the character does” then be kind to yourself, take a deep breath, and remember that you control your story, not the other way around. Then just sit down and write it differently already.