Scenes That Never Made the Cut
The other day, I was scrolling through some of my cut files looking for some bits of dialogue that I could have sworn existed at some point in the drafting of some of my books. Of course, that led me to reading so many parts of my books that had changed from conception to writing to the final draft.
What fun would it be to read a few of those (very rough and unedited) pieces of writing that never made the final cut or got changed in the book? Yes, authors are humans. We make silly mistakes, bad choices, and sometimes cringe and what we’ve written… but in the end, it’s all fun! I’ve left some spelling mistakes and bad grammar and poor uses of commas, just because it was a first draft and no one is perfect!
Hope you enjoy a few of these cuts.
From Star Collapsed:
At first, I had Kiya’s parents (Nate and Finnley) be the ones to convince Kiya to help keep an eye on Ryder. This later became a sister bonding moment where Madeline comes and shares the information.
“I assume that’s what you expected me to do with Ryder?”
Dad sighed. “We hoped that he would stay out of trouble, but also that he’d see the benefits of Peritia.”
I shoved my plate away from me. “Well, you better hope that this bracelet works because right now, I want nothing to do with it.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” Mom said. “It’s actually better if he stays in the dark right now.”
“You don’t want him knowing about the group of us at school?”
“He’s… unpredictable,” Dad answered. “Right now, he doesn’t want his powers. We don’t want him thinking that we’re coercing him into anything. He has to make the decision to join us or he’s never going to learn.”
I folded my arms. “So, what? You want me to watch over the kid who doesn’t want the powers that I would kill for?”
From Soul Forgotten:
Clara (Finnley) and Nate’s first fight went a little differently the first time I wrote it out… This is just the dialogue snippets I first wrote before I wrote any actions.
[Clara] “I’m sorry. It wasn’t that simple.”
[Nate] “Not that simple? Why couldn’t you just say it?”
[C] “What did you want me to say? ‘Hey, by the way I can read your mind so I know you have powers.’”
[N] “Yes, basically. Why would you hide something like that?”
[C] “You mean like you hiding that you can travel through shadows? I can read your mind but it’s not like you came out and explained yourself either.”
[N] “I don’t go around boasting that I have powers when no one else has them. I’m not stupid.”
[C] “I know you aren’t stupid. That’s not what I meant. It’s just harder for me to explain…”
[N] “I just don’t understand why you didn’t say anything sooner. I wouldn’t have been upset if—”
[C] “You wouldn’t have been upset? No, knowing this makes everything worse. How can you trust someone who knows everything that crosses your mind, even the things you don’t actually say out loud? The things you don’t want to be heard? The things meant to be private? I may have lost my memory but I know damn well that you wouldn’t want anything to do with me because I can know everything about you and you’ll never know the same about me.”
[N] “I was trying to get to know you… I still want to know you, but I can’t read minds. How could I have known about you? If you had let me in we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
[C] “Let you in? Maybe if you actually listened you would have heard that I lost my memory. So, no, Nate. I can’t let you in. Because the first eighteen years of my life are a complete blank. I woke up in a clearing and I have absolutely no idea what or who I am. I’ve been trying to piece it together for the last two months and I’ve gotten nowhere. I gave you everything I could. You were the only thing that I looked forward to and now that’s gone too.”
From The Curse of Broken Shadows:
Back in Gerrart’s townhouse, shortly after he’s robbed, I wanted to include this little snippet of Cason dissing ‘The Night Terror’ because that was just funny. The scene later changed to focus just on the assassin, not the guild, and a little less humor (though in the new version, I like Cason admiring the knife a lot more than his stab at Brela’s assassin name).
Serill shot him a glare for his bluntness as Gerrart shivered, somehow his face contorting into more fear as he whispered. “The Night Terror.” He swallowed. “I don’t know who pulls the strings, but there are rumors that there’s a guild just a few hours south of Dredon. That name has climbed the ranks recently.”
“Not much of a name,” Cason mumbled.
“It would be if you’ve seen his victims,” Lord Gerrart snapped.
Here’s a snippet of an exchange between Brela and Cason. He’s curious about how she always seems to know what is going on but doesn’t understand how she can without magic.
“And if I can’t find the answers, I ask the right questions.”
Valkip raised his eyebrow. “I feel like all I do is ask you questions, yet I never get the real answers.”
“No?” He shot her a glare as she shrugged. “Maybe you just haven’t asked the right questions.”
Because we always love when Brela and Cason flirt and distract to get their hands on the throwing knife, here’s a little snippet that was cut where Cason actually won it back.
Besides, she was the one with the knife.
Oh, right. The knife.
That blade they were fighting over that was no longer in her hand.
Cason broke away, a feral grin on his face as he waved it in front of his face. “Looking for this?”
The final version had Brela losing her voice after the celvusa attack in the desert, but this original scene between Oni and Brela had a few different takes before I scrapped it completely for The Silent Treatment.
“I didn’t believe it when I felt the power at the wall. I didn’t want to believe it when Elias asked that question. I could see it in his eyes and I didn’t want it to be true.” The black sand trembled. “The celvusa are a myth.”
Brela swallowed. “Not anymore.” She unsheathed Night Carver and held it in her palms. “I need to know, Oni. It came to Gerrart’s home when I found the dagger. I’ve seen it sitting in the distance and hiding in shadows. It spoke to me in my dreams, asked me a question in the ancient language.”
He studied the dagger, first with smell and then a crystal finger over the obsidian in the hilt. “Your father’s blade has power, but the celvusa is not bound to it.” Eyes flashed to hers. “What did it say? In your dream, what did it ask you?”
Her heart stopped. “The same question you asked me eight years ago. What are you?”
There’s a scene after the shadow temple that ended up being from Cason’s perspective, but initially I told it from Serill’s… and with a much different conversation going on, because Cason was starting to get a little suspicious.
His stomach bottomed out. “They still exist?”
“At least one survived long enough to exist in our lifetime. I dismissed it when she mentioned having used shadow-cursed objects to hide before, so someone had to be around to make those objects, but it makes me wonder…” Cason trailed off and then shook his head. “She’s the Veil Scholar now. It makes me wonder what more she’ll do with her freedom.”
“You think she’ll come back here and look for shadow-kind?”
The captain darted a look toward the three assassins. “I think she’s been spending a lot of time drawing and studying the shadow magic in that notebook. And I think that she and Oni have a few extra secrets they didn’t share with us.”
“You think Oni knows a shadow-kind who might be alive?” Serill blinked and then shook his head at the ridiculous thought. “It’s her job to keep that knowledge alive, Case. I’m sure Oni was just trying to help since the wall breaking affects everyone.”
“You don’t believe me?”
Serill gave his friend a pointed look. “Do not put words in my mouth that you know I would never say. I am not doubting you. I am merely pointing out that the last time you were this close to someone, she betrayed you.” The prince sighed and stared toward Brela. “Is that why you haven’t asked her to come back to Aelstow with you?”
Cason stiffened.
“She’s not Era,” Serill continued. “I’ve met both, and the way Brela looks at you is not—“
“I know,” his friend replied quickly, rubbing at his chest. “It feels so much different with Brela, and that scares the hells out of me. That shard and my fire… I can’t explain what it feels like, because it doesn’t make sense.”
Finally, when Cason and Brela raid the Anfroy camp, I had her falling victim to the hellthorn a lot sooner than she did in the final version. I think the final book has a much better payoff ;)
And then her knees gave out.
Cason dove, knees slamming into the rug to keep her head from crashing into the table filled with empty glass vials. Thank the gods she had enough sense to clutch the satchel to her chest, preventing the vials from making too much noise.
“Four hells,” he hissed, hand supporting her neck as he lifted her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed and glazed, skin pale. His gut clenched. It wasn’t rain that coated her skin, but a clammy sweat. “Brela, what’s wrong?”
A weak smile twitched on her lips as she sucked in a gritty breath. “I suppose now might be a good time to tell you that thanks to this shard in my chest, hellthorn is poisonous to me.”
What do you think of these? Sometimes it’s nice to get a behind the scenes look at some of the stuff that didn’t quite make the final cut. Books change so much from the first draft to the final work that you guys see, and it takes a lot of work! One thing I’ve learned is to keep all of my deleted paragraphs/chapters/scenes because you never know when you might need to steal a bit of brilliant dialogue that works better in a later scene than it did when you first wrote it… and because it’s always a fun journey to see how far you’ve come from your first draft!
