Scraps on the cutting room floor

This is turning out to be a 10,000 word weekend. When you consider that I both started and first-drafted a significant subplot this week, I expected to feel a sense of accomplishment today. And I do, but concluding that subplot had an unexpected consequence…the character I’d hoped would be the primary antagonist in this novel no longer belongs.

That means what I identified earlier as my second story arc, which would contribute 15,000 words and some important motivation to this novel, is gone. It is now a scrap on the cutting room floor. Those scenes were originally my favorite to write but I’d stalled out recently. When writing the first part of the novel’s climax yesterday (ignited by the aforementioned subplot’s conclusion), I realized all the threads holding the primary antagonist to my story had been snipped. Getting the cart definitively ahead of the horse, maybe that content can be part of a second novel.

So now a kinda bad guy that I’d described as just a third key character is my antagonist. Maybe. The book does not have a stereotypical villain now but I think that could be a good thing. My protagonist still suffers from not-quite-motivating-enough motivation and unclear barriers to progress. This cutting and reshuffling gives me an idea for how to fix that.