Monday, January 31, 2022

This Pruning Business by Priscilla Brown

 

 

www.books2read.com/Where-the-Heart-Is

A contemporary romance set mostly on a Caribbean island.

The subtropical plants in Cameron's small Caribbean garden are threatening to take over the house. While he has neither the time nor the interest to bother pruning, Cristina's hands are itching to sort it out. Back home in temperate country Victoria, Australia, she loves to spend time tending her large garden with its flowers, bushes and trees. He might have to learn how to help with the pruning...


Yesterday I spent the day pruning. In the morning,  I cut off dead twigs and overlong branches from the two bottlebrush trees to keep them from hijacking the garden path, and trimmed the geraniums who believe it's their right to take over the border. While I was working in the garden and filling the council's green organics recyclable waste bin, I kept in mind the pruning I planned to do at my desk in the afternoon.

Editing my work-in-progress, I am looking for 'dead wood' -- twigs and whole branches. If I 'prune' a scene out, I need to be sure its removal will make a significant difference to the story. The scene where the two main characters, by now well-known to each other and to the reader, are having a nice time at a lakeside picnic reveals itself as a branch. I admit I rather liked this scene, but neither their dialogue nor actions moved the story on, so into the recycle bin. Twigs such as starting paragraphs or adjacent sentences with the same words unless included for emphasis need trimming.

This pruning business, in the garden and on a developing story, is for me satisfying and enjoyable. 

Best wishes, Priscilla


https://bwlpublishing.ca

https://priscillabrownauthor.com 

 


3 comments:

  1. Interesting thoughts. I prune my stories a lot but there is also sometimes the need to prop up the prose and add rather than prune.

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  2. I like the pruning image to qualify editing. When you remove all the not-so-pretty stuff, only the good stuff remains. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love this comparison. Pruning is hard for me as you indicated. Sometimes it is a really nice scene (branch) but it just doesn't fit (as in it sticks out at an odd angle across the sidewalk :). Thanks for the thoughts.

    ReplyDelete

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