Slashing your Darling Flashbacks...

 Have you ever tossed out 20,000 words from a work in progress? Why, and was it, in hindsight, the right move?

From Frank

Yes. Well, over 17K, anyway.

(Some minor spoilers here for River City #3, Beneath a Weeping Sky , by the way).

The first two River City novels ran 66,000 and 68,000 words, respectively. The first "final" draft (ready for beta readers) of  Beneath a Weeping Sky (BaWS) ran a whopping 150,000 words.

Yes, 150K. A little over, actually.

To be fair, the story was more complex. The charact...