A Full Swing

Federer can you teach me to follow through?

I opened the desk drawer to revive an ‘old’ manuscript in order to tackle a storyline that had been gnawing at me. There was one scene in the book that felt misplaced. It has always felt important, but it didn’t connect to other scenes in the book. What does it have to do with anything? I had a reader ask. When I wanted to scream, It has everything to do with everything! Everything! I knew I had a big problem. The idea of losing it has not sat well with me. I’ve literally put it in a cut document five times. And each time, I shook my head, bit my lip. No. I can’t lose it. It’s too important. I have to make the reader see that. So keeping it means I must tackle it. I must face it head on.

I’m not sure why I keep referring to tennis swings in my blog posts (perhaps a desire to get back into playing tennis, which I haven’t done in many years) but I know the problem with this smaller plot. It’s a swing without the follow-through. If it must be (which it must) it needs to have a reason for being. Which means that many more scenes need to connect to it. Many more words need to be written.

This decision to take it on has scared me. If I take one scene that doesn’t seem to fit and flesh it out, will it have the opposite effect? Will it just make more scenes that don’t fit?

Am I thinking too hard? Has anyone had this problem? I have a lot of small plot lines that flow nicely. Many of them, I have added in the editing phase. But I worry that this particular last minute addition, a retro-fit, won’t…well…fit. How do you guys usually take on something like this? I’m all kinds of confused.