Todays Lesson in Writing: The Writer’s Button Box
In Twilight’s Child (Rewrite) I ran into a problem/opportunity, they can be indistinguishable. I had removed an entire subplot. In brief, the Protagonist, Alec Thisbe, has a sister who was a “seventh son,” the seventh son of the seventh son down seven generations.
Yes, she is female and I have changed the rules to reflect that mortals, as opposed to the Fae, got it wrong. Every firstborn of her family line back seven generations was female, so she has the innate ability to use Fae Glamour (Magic).
I wrote her subplot because my protagonist for this first novel is a Changeling, an immortal Fae left in the crib in the place of a mortal child taken as a hostage in the Tithe to Hell.
I deleted the subplot because I had toyed with writing for a younger audience. I have changed my mind, so his older sister is in, and her dalliance with Puck is back in.
Now, I had thought I deleted those scenes, and it would have been a real pain in the tuchus to rewrite. I just pulled them out of an early copy of the novel.
Every thing I’ve written has had scenes or paragraphs deleted. I have a file where I keep those old versions. I consider it like keeping button box. Because I am old as dirt, I will explain for those who do not understand the reference in this throw away age.
My mother and grandmother kept buttons off old clothes or spares when they had to buy buttons in a box. When one of us kids would lose a button, an event so regular as to be the norm, they would have a source of buttons to make repairs.
My writer’s button box came to my rescue.