I've been doing the deed over the last few weeks, eliminating Z____ and D_____ from World Leader Pretend. It's a little bit, I suppose, like losing old acquaintances, people who were important to you in college, but who got haircuts and became Wall Street brokers.

Losing them has been less painful than I imagined, my only concern is with how it's effecting the rest of the story. What I'm worried about is this: Z_____ and D______ were sort of my foil for the forward motion of the story. That is to say, throughout the middle part of the story, the reader reads on because they want to know what X_____ will do about the fact that Z______ and D______ are in rehab and that D_______ is pregnant with either X______'s or Z________'s child.

Without this, the story seems to lose some of it's punch--granted X______ is having his own new little love affair, and he also has his schizophrenic sister G_______ to worry about--but it's the thing that's far away and that he's ignoring that seems to be driving him to the online seclusion he buries him throughout the book.

Anyway.

Clearly, I'll have to revisit this once I finish the hacking. Perhaps, I'll end up leaving some of it in. Give the reader just enough information to know what is going on without spending 80 odd pages on Z_____ and D______ in rehab.

Labels: Writing Process