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Q&A Should "plot" or storyline be the main determinant of what goes into a story?

In writing a screenplay, I created a bunch of scenes, with about twice as much material in total as I needed. So the job was to cut things down to size. In so doing, I found that a number of scene...

3 answers  ·  posted 9y ago by Tom Au‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T04:16:22Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/17366
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Tom Au‭ · 2019-12-08T04:16:22Z (almost 5 years ago)
In writing a screenplay, I created a bunch of scenes, with about twice as much material in total as I needed. So the job was to cut things down to size.

In so doing, I found that a number of scenes (and not all the ones I expected initially) seemed to fit together, while others didn't. Then the trick was to identify and kick out (in the terms put forth on "Sesame Street,") "One of these scenes is not like the others, one of these just doesn't belong, tell me which scene is not like the others before I finish my song.")

In so doing, I cut out scenes that I found interesting (on a standalone basis), but didn't fit the plot well, while upsizing other scenes that I initially found "annoying," because they did support the plot.For instance, there was initially a "throwaway" scene involving the company receptionist, until I made her the confidante of the heroine.

Is this a good thing to do, or should I try harder to find a way to retain interesting scenes?

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2015-05-20T15:23:14Z (over 9 years ago)
Original score: 6