What Must Be Kept
My fake-niece Sarah moved in with me when she was eleven. Sarah’s a writer, so she used to show me her stories, and when I was done reading them, she’d say, “What did you love?” I used to think that was cute; now I think it was genius. “What did you love?” and its older, smarter brother, “What must be kept?” are the most important questions you can ask of your beta readers.
Sometimes what-must-be-kept is obvious. Your main plot stays, along with anything that directly moves it. That’s your third rail: touch that and your book dies in a shower of sparks as many readers throw it against the wall because your story has disappeared into a morass of subplots, and they realize they’re not reading the book they signed on for.
Sometimes it’s less obvious, the small moments of enjoyment that make the story come alive. I learned that in an MFA class when we workshopped a story that had some problems but that also had some beautiful writing in it. When the writer brought it back, she’d fixed the problems, but a lot of the beautiful writing was gone. We hadn’t told her it was beautiful, so she didn’t know to keep it.
You’d think you’d know on your own what to keep, but there’s the other side of the coin: some of the stuff you fall in love with really needs to go. As William Faulkner said, “Kill your darlings;” if you really, really love something, you may have over-estimated its importance in the story, especially if you love it because the writing is sooooooo good. (Ego, get thee behind me.)
Trying to balance “What do you love?” with “Kill your darlings” is even more difficult if you’re trying to save a story, say a novel you’ve been working on for ten years called You Again. I was prepared to dump all 60,000 plus words, but then I started reading through and thought, Wait. Maybe some of this should be kept. Like
“Zelda is very persuasive,” Rose said, grimly. “Which reminds me, stay away from her.”
James leaned against the wall by the french windows and tossed Rose’s present in the air and caught it. Her eyes followed it up and down, so he kept doing it. “I haven’t seen her for eighteen years, Rose. I’m not planning on lunging for her.”
“You won’t have to lunge,” she said. “She’s planning on raping you under the tree Christmas morning. Is that breakable?”
James stopped tossing the present. “Really? Good for Zelda. Why?”
“She’s after something,” Rose said darkly. “Don’t trust her. Can I have that?”
“The Zelda I remember was not good at hiding her motives,” James said. “She was more the slap-you-silly-and-ask questions-later type.”
“She’s changed. You can’t handle her, James. She’s inherited my deviousness. And my breasts.”
“Damn,” James said. “I was hoping to inherit those.” He tried to picture skinny Zelda with Rose’s D cups. “Does she fall over a lot?”
“Don’t be jealous, darling, I’m leaving you my balls,” Rose said.
“I’m not man enough to carry them, Rose,” James said. “I’ll fall over a lot.”
I like that for what it says about James and his aunt, but what I really probably like about it is the banter. If it moves the plot, then it might be a must-be-kept. If it’s just me admiring my own dialogue, it’s a darling-to-be-killed. As it happens, Rose is doing something there that moves the plot, so I can keep it, but it was a close call.
Another pothole in the road to must-be-kept is “But I need to explain this” and its ugly cousin “I need to set this up.” I spent 2400 words on James talking to Angela in his law office, after which I spent another 4000 words on James driving to Rosemore, and all of that was back story, endless back story, back story with some minimally snappy dialogue, but still freaking backstory. Six thousand four hundred words, not one of which moved story. Plus, James isn’t even a lawyer any more. Even I could see that had to go. (No, I’m not showing you 6400 words of wretched back story.)
A third one to look for: “Why is this guy in here?” (Or woman, gender is irrelevant.) I had a defrocked doctor name Liam who was necessary for one crucial scene, so I made him the current, younger lover of Rose. I thought long and hard about cutting him, but that wasn’t going to work because I absolutely needed him for that one scene, so then I thought long and hard about what else he could do in the story to earn his keep, which is when it hit me. Liam had lost his license for dealing prescription drugs, which was useless because there weren’t any drugs in the story. What there was in the story was death: murder and ghosts and an in-the-dead-of-winter setting. So what if Liam had lost his license because he’d helped terminally ill people die with dignity? What if there’d been a little uncertainty as to whether the people had been ready to die with dignity? What if he was cold (it’s winter out there) but honest, a really good doctor missing a piece? That’s a character I want in a murder mystery. Liam stays.
But then there was Nora. I loved Nora. Here, meet Nora:
“Hello, Rose,” Nora Inglethorp said, heading for her hostess. “What in God’s name made you decide to have us all here?” She was smiling, looking much the same as she had the last time Zelda had seen her—dark-haired, red-lipped, almost frighteningly vivid–except for the addition of a good thirty extra pounds, all of which seemed to have settled in her stomach. She kissed Rose on the cheek with an audibly affectionate smack and then took off her coat as she turned to face the rest of the Inglethorps by the fire, and Zelda braced herself for whatever the vipers over by the fire were going to do to her.
“Good Lord, Nora,” Malcolm said, malicious delight on his face. “You look pregnant.”
“Hello, Malcolm,” Nora said. “You look old.”
“Junior Barnes should see you now.” Malcolm snickered. “Some goddess.”
Nora frowned, but Mary said, “What?” Her voice was avid, and she leaned closer to Malcolm, eagerness in every pore, knowing something mean was coming.
Bitch, Zelda thought.
“Don’t you remember?” Malcolm said to Mary. “Junior Barnes called Nora a goddess that one summer. The Aphrodite of Ohio.”
“Oh, right, I remember.” Mary nodded, happy for the first time that evening. She smiled in satisfaction at Nora. “He should see you now, Nora.”
Nora ignored her to frown at Malcolm. “You never told me that. Who said it?”
“Junior Barnes,” Malcolm said, with heavy patience.
“Oh, that loser.” Nora dismissed him with a wave of her hand and turned to Zelda and the drink tray.
“He’s a very fine man,” Malcolm said stiffly.
“He’s a chinless moron.” Nora picked up a martini. “I always thought you hung out with him on the fat friend principle.”
“He wasn’t fat,” Malcolm said.
“No, but he was dumb. You looked like Einstein next to him.” She drank half her martini in one gulp.
“I can’t believe you’ve let yourself get so out of shape,” Mary said, blatantly delighted.
Nora smiled at her sister-in-law, and Zelda thought, Oh, Mary, you dummy, and balanced the tray on her hip as she watched.
“I didn’t let myself get out of shape, Mary. I got hit with menopause. It happens very quickly. You go to bed the Aphrodite of Ohio and you wake up the Venus of Willendorf.” She turned back to Zelda. “Another, please.”
Zelda took a martini off the tray and handed it to her.
“Nora, for heaven’s sake,” Mary said.
“Shut up, Mary,” Nora said. “I’m drinking for two.”
Say good-bye to Nora. She served no function in the text so I sent her to Italy where she’s having a marvelous time. You will not hear from her again.
Which brings us to the distinction between “What do you love?” and “What must be kept?”
In the first rewrite, you keep everything you love, cut everything that’s not moving plot, and fix everything that moves plot but that’s not as good as it could be.
In the second rewrite, you kill any darling that’s not earning its real estate in the plot even if you love it.
And then you give it to your betas and say, “What do you love? What must be kept?” and do it all over again.
