What to Omit, What to Add

By Susan


Last night, my older daughter, her best friend and I went to the premiere of The Hunger Games. It was a first for all three of us—a midnight showing— yet we'd been planning and looking forward to this moment since we'd all three read and devoured Suzanne Collins' first book of the trilogy with the same name over a year ago.

As the lights lowered and the noise surrounded us, I made a conscious decision to think about the story structure as we paced through the film. How did the screenwriters incorporate the back story? What about the nuances of the relationships, and the details of the plot points? Would the movie be true to the novel that both my twelve-year-old and I loved so much? As the movie unfolded, I noticed small changes—details omitted, scenes altered. Bits were left out, the depths of relationships were minimized, and the action, rather than the internal character struggles, carried the story forward in a balance of both compassion and killing (it is—after all—a movie about teenagers forced to fight to the death).

Yet overall, the movie was a smash: true to the novel, telling in its complexity, and cast with superb actors to carry the narrative.

It made me think about my own manuscript and the suggested edits currently in my hands, given to me last week by my steady, blunt and brilliant agent, Leigh Feldman. What to omit? Where to minimize? And when to alter?

It also made me think about another movie I'm looking forward to—Blue Like Jazz—a new film based loosely on the memoir of writer Donald Miller. By his own admission, the movie contains many scenes and even plot points critical to the film that never happened in his life. Yet in the quest for a good movie, he chose to rewrite his own history for the screen—building his life into the framework of a story. The book was one thing, and the movie, which opens in April, will be a completely different animal.

Don Miller has spoken candidly about both the memoir and the movie. In admitting he'd written the book for himself, as a rolling narrative of his own journey through his faith, success, and failures, he agreed to retell his story in order to create a product fit for the screen. I suspect that the movie will contain the soul of his memoir, and the tone of his struggles, if not the plot point specifics perhaps expected by die-hards who love books and expect the movies to follow suit.

Sometimes, the choice of what to omit alters the story and transforms it into something different—as will be with Blue Like Jazz. Yet sometimes, as with The Hunger Games, the changes are small. Time-saving, detail-minimizing, and story-shortening avenues to the same destination.

And for my story? After my first round of Leigh's suggestions, I removed an entire subplot storyline, cut full paragraphs of musings that detracted from the heart of the story, and rebuilt a character's arc based on her active participation in the civil rights movement of the 1960s rather than her thoughts on the movement itself. It altered the story in ways I would not have seen without Leigh's brilliant nudging. I liken these edits to the way a filmmaker would slash my story for the screen—making it stronger by breaking it, polishing it by cutting out the ruminations, and finding a way to tell a bigger story for a broader audience instead of seeing life only through the eyes of the protagonist.


It will be a better story because of my attention to the details of my edits. I'll maintain the soul and the tone of my story without compromising the core plot. Yet as it shifts beneath my hands, I think of only making it the best possible novel I can write. The same way, I'm sure, Suzanne Collins and Donald Miller looked at their books-turned-cinema. Make it work and make it better. But make every tweak count.

The Story of your Life

By Susan

Today, I am thinking about my story.

I’m not talking about my work in progress, I’m talking about my story. The story of my life, the story of your life.

I just finished Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. He talks about your life as a story, with the same character arcs, growth and development as you would see in a screenplay or a novel. What are you doing? he asks. Are you leaning toward comfort and ease in your life, or are you taking on challenges that stretch your comfort zone, making you a different person at the end than you were at the beginning?

It made me think about my story. Right now, my story is busy- busy running children hither and yon, busy working, volunteering, busy avoiding swine flu. I’d like to think that it’s getting me somewhere, taking this protagonist of mine (Susan) from point A to point B. I’m trying to make it a story that I would like to read one day and say, “nice story” and not say, “Whoa, boring. What’s the point of this?” As Miller says, no one wants to read about a man striving to buy a Volvo, then buying the Volvo and driving off the lot. The reader wants some action, some conflict, and some resolution. Are we giving that to our own lives?

We make our characters go through all kinds of machinations. They get their hearts broken, experience loss, and experience triumph. Sometimes we "kill our darlings" as Stephen King says. Sometimes, we map out their entire lives and then, when we sit down to write about them, they have other plans. They veer off and do crazy things we didn’t expect or want. Sometimes they are right, yet sometimes we, as the god of their creation, are right all along and truly do know what’s best for them.

Look at your protagonist: your protagonist must want something deeply, and overcome conflict to achieve it. They must be willing to sacrifice something great for this thing that they want, the greater the sacrifice the better the story, in a way. They must change throughout the story, from cruel to compassionate, or from angry to accepting.

I changed some things about my WIP this week, taking 30,000 words and deciding that as much as I love the characters I have drawn, they are my back story. My true protagonist is emerging. She is someone that I saw early on as a side character yet now it is her story that is capturing me- her struggles, her conflict, how she will change as the story progresses. I see greater things for her than she sees for herself. I have decided that she is the story now. I, as her creator, am smiling on her.

And I am going to take her places that she never imagined. She will tell this story now, and she will live it. Will she fight me? Or will she dance along willingly on her new journey? Just as our lives take us unexpected places, I imagine she will go somewhat reluctantly as I throw things at her she is not prepared for. But will it make a better story? I think so.

At the same time, I am looking at my life, as a mother and as a writer. I don’t want to seek the path of least resistance, I want to push forward through things that may be uncomfortable but that will make me a better lead character in my own life. When you think about it, there is no other way.