I excised two major characters from one of my stories last night. They were the inspiration for the story in the first place; they were immature; they were mischievous; they set the opening scene of the tale; and now they’ve been chopped.
It was painful, cutting every part of the story they appeared in, but now the story’s roughly 1,600 words shorter. It’s tighter. It reads more fluidly. The pace isn’t lagging quite so much anymore.
But I’ll miss them.* They were cool.
*I’ll miss them until I insert them into a brand-spanking new story, that is. I’m trying to convince myself that these characters are merely on hiatus. They’ll be back, in some incarnation or another…
Lisa L. Hannett 