Deleted Scenes

One of the things I love about buying DVDs (as opposed to simply watching a streaming movie online) is that the DVDs come with all sorts of extras, including deleted scenes and making-of featurettes.  I love movies, so the insight into the broader picture of the final version of the movie is always fascinating to me.

When you're writing a book, there are loads of deleted scenes, ideas, and notes that never make it into the final manuscript.  Cutting scenes and choosing which scenes to include is a difficult, but necessary, part of the process to writing. 

I remember while working on The Double Stroller Hand Grenade--I got super excited about a particular scene, and kept writing with that furious energy that comes when words just flow.  About 15,000 words later, I realized that I'd deveated from my outline in a serious way, and that I had written myself into a corner.  I tried eveyrthing I could think of to keep those words, but nothing worked.  Going back to the fork in the road and deleting those 15,000 was super painful and hard, but in the end I'm glad I did it.

The same goes for the first chapter of my novel This Side of Eden.  I loved the first chapter--thought it was really great, but ultimately, it didn't add much to the story.  My editors told me as such, but I kept fighting them, insisting that the first chapter was important.  I eventually agreed that it was just fluff, and that the book would be much tighter and less confusing without it.

Fluff, indeed, but it was my fluff, and I liked the fluff--and I still like that particular piece of fluff.  So, I'm including what was the first chapter of This Side of Eden below.  Consider this my "deleted scene" and enjoy.  In the comments, tell me about your experiences with cutting chapters and scenes and characters that you really loved, but that bogged down your story.

(Disclaimer--the chapter below comes from an early draft, so the editing and pacing are a little off...)

I think about that one time, that one time when Eden was laying next to me, her head on my stomach.  That time when we talked and talked.  She smelled like oranges—but she always smelled like oranges.  I ran my fingers through her hair and touched the side of her face.  I could feel her smile on my fingertips.  We lay there together and tried so hard not to fall asleep…

            When I was I child, I always pictured my death as something glorious—a metaphysical reality that transcended everything I’d ever thought of or experienced.  Many times, I would daydream about my death, entertaining the idea that I would be some sort of hero, saving someone or sacrificing my own life for the life of another.  I would dream about these things in the middle of class, or while brushing my teeth, or while eating a bowl of cereal at breakfast. 

            One of my favorite dreams (in my teenage years at least) was a car accident that I would happen upon.  Someone would be seriously injured, rain would be pouring down and splattering into little lakes.  I would jump out of my car and rush to the smashed vehicle, my footsteps creating slow-motion splashes in the puddles as I ran, and the rain swirling unnaturally around. I would reach the person who was bleeding and dying; sometimes the victim was my current girlfriend, and in that case I would cradle her in my arms and kiss her gently, caressing the side of her face.  If it wasn't my girlfriend— it was always a girl—I would perform CPR and save her.  The girl would open her eyes and I would help her to her feet, right as a semi truck careens out of control toward us.  I would push her out of the way, saving her just in time and sacrificing myself for her life.

            Always, I would be laying there, in my last throes of life, my current girlfriend cradling me in her arms—Pearl Jam’s cover of “Last Kiss” playing in the background.

            Other dreams consisted of equally heroic acts like taking bullets, or swinging on vines from nowhere to rescue the princess.

            I have no idea what a psychologist would say about these morbid dreams of being a hero, and really, I have no idea why I had these dreams.  Maybe it was some deep desire to be a hero, or to be loved, or maybe just to be seen by others as something more than the run-of-the-mill, dorky little teenager.

            When Eden came into my life my dreams changed dramatically.  We would be in some type of auditorium, full of people—maybe watching a play, or attending the opera, sometimes married and other times simply lovers.  We would be sitting close, holding hands.  I would squeeze her thigh, like I always do, and she would kiss my neck and my ear and then lay her head on my shoulder like she always does. 

The moment would shatter when we would hear the slamming open of the doors and the marching footsteps, as several hooded criminals, wielding large guns, enter the auditorium.  The criminals would walk right up to the stage and stop the performance.

"You are being held hostage," one of the men would announce in a thick Latin accent, his voice slightly muffled from the ski mask pulled over his face and mouth, "do not try to escape, do not try anything stupid.  If your government is willing to spare you're lives by allowing Cuba to once again export cane sugar to the United States, then you can live."

If we had been attending an opera, even though the performance had stopped, the singing would still continue as dramatic background music to our intertwined fates.

Somehow, while the man is talking, I am I able to slip away and crawl through the rafters and cat walks of the theater.  Before I leave, however, I whisper my love and she nods, knowing what I have to do.  We are, after all, the youngest people in attendance, and the most capable of heroics. 

So I crawl through the rafters, and somehow I would loosen a spotlight, connect it to a long rope and swing it to the stage—hitting one of the masked men and knocking him out of commission.  I swing the light again and knock out another gunman.  The others, by this time, are aware of my presence, so I swing down from the rafters and clobber another gunman, knocking the gun from his hands.  Then I dive for the weapon and train it on another thug, right as the leader fires.  The bullet, of course, will pummel through the air in slow motion and strike me in the chest.

Silence ensues; as people wait for the inevitable spread of blood across my white, button up shirt.  I drop the gun and sink to my knees.  I am sure I would be thinking about the embargo on cane sugar and the injustice of hostage situations, but mostly I would be thinking forlornly about my time with Eden coming to a close.

Faintly, I hear a scream in the distance—Eden is rushing the stage, pushing past the gunmen and sliding in by my side.  Her dress is conservative but sexy, sophisticated but elegant.

She cradles my head in her arms and I feel the hot tears splash down from her eyes to my face—like a warm spring in a heavenly garden, giving life.

Darkness clouds my vision as I stare up at her and smile.  You can't tell someone you love them right there, because if you love them and they love you, words don't matter and the words sometimes just get in the way.  Instead she whispered through her quiet cries, "I'll be reaching for the stars with you…"

"I'm sorry," I whisper softly, drops of blood pooling at the corner of my mouth—but the blood never actually drains down my face because it reminds me too much of vampires, and in my mind, vampires will never be romantic.

"Don't be sorry." She whispers and kisses my ear like she always does. 

"Wait for me," she says so softly I can barely hear.  I smile, but the strain is almost too much.  No pain, just the overwhelming pressure of warmth.

Bright lights and a veil of happiness shroud my vision as the curtain closes on my life.  My daydream ends as I die in her arms, comforted by something strong and unspoken.

Maybe these daydreams were a cry for love, to be needed and wanted and desired.  Obviously, I didn't see myself as a hero, and wanted to be—I wanted to be a hero in her eyes, someone who would give his life for others, knowing that love transcends death.  Morbid and sick as it was, that was my dream.

When I was actually in the last throes of life, when death was staring me in the face, it was not as heroic as I pictured it.  In fact, when the story of my death began, it was someone else as the hero.  And that hero was saving me. 

I am pretty sure that there was no background music, either—just the quiet lapping of water and the rustle of leaves in the breeze.  I had a song on my mind, though, especially at that moment when I saw my wife again.  She was my hero and she saved me.  She didn’t swing on vines, or take a bullet—she was on a sailboat, with furling white sails, marked with splashes of color.

She says, “You didn’t forget?”

I say, “How could I?”

Somehow, the quiet lapping of water on the hull of the small boat disappeared, and I could no longer hear the breeze whispering through trees.  It was just her.

__________________________________

Check out the final version of This Side of Eden on the Kindle, or in paperback. 

That's Just Life

This will be a short post, but I needed to write down.

First, a little background.  Our youngest daughter, Adelaide Bleu, recently discovered her undying love of toothbrushes.  It's weird, I know, but she loves to carry them around--all the toothbrushes in our house--clutched in her chubby little hands.  Hopefully the stage will pass, but for now, this toothbrush fetish is super cute.  (And only annoying on some occasions, like when you have to brush your teeth, and your toothbrush is gone...)

So a few mornings ago, the family was up and getting ready for the day.  I was brushing my teeth with all three kids in the bathroom doing their routine.  Liam was playing with a spaceship, Zoe brushing her hair, and Adelaide doing her best to get a hold of all the toothbrushes.  I wasn't paying attention, and was startled when my oldest daughter started wailing.  Adelaide had apparently seized Zoe's toothbrush, and in her effort to escape the bathroom, dropped the toothbrush into the toilet.

Zoe was upset because this was her new 'princess' toothbrush from the dentist.  Adelaide, bewildered at the strange reaction of her older sister, proceeded to fish the toothbrush from the toilet (which, thankfully, had clean water.)  I quickly pulled Adelaide from the bowl's edge and started washing her hands.  I told Zoe that we would get her a new toothbrush, but that didn't seem to help her despair.  Liam (who is just turning four), put his hand on Zoe's shoulder and said, with the utmost wisdom of a little kid, "Zoe, sometimes things happen, and that's just life."

"What did you say?" I asked Liam.

"That's just life." He said in all seriousness, and zoomed his spaceship out of the bathroom.

Inspirations (1)

“Where do you get your ideas?”  Is probably the question that I get asked most often, when it comes to writing.  (If it’s not about writing, the question is usually, “why are you so weird?”  And my answer to that is always: dill pickles.)

I’ve read other author blogs and been to author events where this question comes up time and time again.  Authors can’t answer the question because there is no real answer.  Mostly, ideas just come.   Stephen King once said that he gets his ideas from “everything,” and as vague as that is, he nailed it.  Ideas are floating around us all and every once in awhile, these “floating ideas” light the creative fires in your mind. 

In my novel, Impish, the ball got rolling with one of the most bizarre true stories that I’ve heard in my life.  I heard the story while I was clerking at a law firm during law school.  One of my fellow clerks, a smart and funny girl with a dicey track record for recognizing social dos and don’ts, recounted her experience in taking the LSAT.

She had to take the test twice.  The first time she sat down to take the test, she was excited and nervous.  She started answering the questions. About an hour or so into the test, she suddenly got that old, familiar signal from her bladder that she would soon have to leave the room.

Now, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of familiarizing yourself with the LSAT, the trickiest part about that test is the time limit.  Most of the questions can be figured out, if given enough time.  But the test is designed to force you to come up with answers very quickly, and even if you are very quick with your responses, it can still be difficult to answer all the questions in time. 

A couple minutes passed for my friend, who tried her best to ignore the calls of nature, when she realized that this feeling that her bladder was going to explode is not going away.  She knew that if she got up to go to the bathroom, she might not be able to finish the test in time, but she also knew that if she stayed, she would soon be sitting in a puddle.  The decision was a difficult one, and in the end, rather than take a quick bathroom break and do her best to finish the test, she calmly stood up, turned in her test, and signed the form that indicated her forfeiture of her score.

A few months later, she was back in the testing center for round two.  Not wanting to face a similar predicament, she emptied her bladder several times before the test even started, and wore an adult diaper, just in case.

Yep, you read that right.  She wore an adult diaper so that she wouldn’t have to miss any of those precious minutes using the restroom.  Now, I know that people sometimes have to do extraordinary things—like that guy in the fantastic 127 Hours— to survive, and I know that there are people who genuinely need assistance with adult diapers (and I’m not poking fun at that), rather, the situation was so awkward that I could hardly come up with a response.

When I asked her, as discreetly as possible, if she actually had to use the diaper, she just smiled, and wouldn’t say.  From then on, she became known in my mind as the girl who didn’t play with fire or go around kicking hornet’s nests, but instead, chose to wear a diaper. 

The summer ended and we went our separate ways, keeping in touch occasionally, but that story stuck with me.  It became one of the seeds that eventually evolved into my new novel, Impish.

The girl who wore the diaper became a central character in Impish—a friend to the guy who accidently sells his soul to hell.  I wanted to capture the academic passion someone could have, and all the eccentricities that would come along with it.

So, usually dill pickles, but in this case, a crazy story about refusing to take a bathroom break during a test.  Check out Impish: A Comedy of Horrors.