The Missing Scenes

I don’t know if other authors write scenes that they never intend to put into a novel or not. I do—regularly. I suppose that is because I’m a “method” writer. Instead of just telling the story, I have to hear the characters speak and experience the action.

Consequently, when something happens that must remain hidden from the reader in order to keep the mystery and suspense, I find it necessary to write the scene so that the characters’ actions are authentic, correctly motivated, and believable.

In some stories, there is just a single scene that must be written only to be revealed in snippets of dialog or thought. In some, like The Daughter and Devil’s Run, there are several. I may not share the scene with the reader, but I must live it before I can continue with the story. If I cannot lose myself in the story I am trying to tell, I have no chance of staying engaged enough to finish. If I find myself going through the motions, I quit—at least for a while. I have even abandoned a novel completely. After all, how could I expect a reader to remain engaged if I can’t?

These missing scenes are important, and often intense, even horrific. Like in real life, horrors that characters experience are referred to, but not detailed. For example, soldiers who have gone through the trauma of combat seldom talk about it. Yet, to understand a person, we must know a little about the life-changing events that they have survived.

Horrible violence, sickening gore, and intense sex might be part of a character’s past, but I see no redeeming benefit for including them in my stories. To tell the truth, I can’t write such things, even if I intend to relegate them to the cutting room floor. So, the scenes may be missing, but they are not invisible. We do glimpse them, if only in reflections.