Spent 3 hours trying to fix a scene where my character just stood there, then realized cutting the whole paragraph fixed everything

Has anyone else wasted half a day agonizing over one weak sentence when deleting it would have been faster and cleaner?

3 comments

3 Comments

Read something the other day about how writers waste so much time on "polishing the wrong parts" of their drafts... it really stuck with me. Like, I'll spend an hour tweaking a single word when the real problem is the whole paragraph doesn't even need to be there in the first place. Had this one scene where my character was supposed to be thinking really deeply, and I kept adding more and more to make it feel profound. Finally cut the whole thing and the story actually moved faster without it. Sometimes we just need to trust that less really is more, you know?

james_campbell1224d ago

Oh man, the "polishing wrong parts" thing hit me hard too. So guilty of that.

hunt.nora23d ago

Makes sense but also feels like overthinking a hobby.