Last week, I took my daughter to see the new Disney movie, Frozen, and a new fan was born. Since then, everything has been about Frozen. We’ve sewn an Elsa dress, and the latest fun was to download the album from the movie. We paid extra for the extended album, and were rewarded with a lot of songs that were cut from the original movie, complete with explanations from the writers.
It’s interesting to see how much effort is put into songs and scenes that didn’t make it into the final movie. Not just the occasional scene, but whole storylines and plot devices. I always thought that since movies are storyboarded in advance (plotted), that they didn’t change much from the original. But I guess that, like writers, some directors are pantsers!
I usually end up with quite a few deleted scenes from my novels. I’ve included some from Reckless Rescue here, and some from Twin Curse here (Warning, spoilers!). And as I write Reckless Recon, I’m quickly creating a lot more!
I’ve written out scenes for this novel several times, then known there was just something wrong with them. After writing a lot at the beginning of the month, I’ve hit a difficult spot again. I had several days when I just couldn’t write, and I’ve realised that the story was just going in the wrong direction. Now I will have to backtrack, create a few more deleted scenes, and then go forwards again in the right direction.
Perhaps, if I plotted, I wouldn’t have these deleted scenes. But sometimes these moments, these unused scenes, help me learn more about my characters and the storyline than the right scenes do.
Do you like watching the extras on a movie to see the deleted scenes? Do you delete whole scenes from your own writing, or do you go straight through without stopping?