Set This House in Order deleted scenes

 

SPOILER WARNING: A couple of the scenes referenced below give away plot details, so if you haven't finished reading Set This House in Order yet and want to be surprised by what happens, you should come back here later.

The manuscript version of Set This House in Order that I initially submitted to HarperCollins ran 713 pages. After two rounds of editing, the length of the final draft had dropped to 611 pages. That may seem like a big cut, but in fact there were no major changes to the story; almost all of the edits involved tightening up the language or eliminating redundant passages.

A certain amount of repetition is inevitable in a long story, especially one that is told from multiple points of view. Because of the way Set This House in Order is structured, there were a number of scenes, particularly in the first half of the novel, that both Andrew and Penny logically had to comment on. Sometimes this wasn’t a problem: when Andrew and Penny first meet, for example, their perspectives are different enough to justify two chapter-length descriptions of the action. More often, one in-depth narration was enough, and I had to decide which protagonist’s version of events would be more interesting to read, and how to cover the other POV without leaving any glaring gaps in continuity.* As much as possible I tried to make these decisions in advance, but in some cases my only option was to write a scene from both angles, see which one worked better, and pare back the other.

Only a handful of cuts were things I was actually sorry to see go: cool bits of business that, for one reason or another, just didn’t fit. Below are links to three of them; I've also included a before-and-after comparison that shows what the editing of a typical passage was like.

*An example of a scene where I struggled with this is the one where Andrew tells Penny she’s a multiple. This is such a pivotal moment in the story that Andrew has to say something about it, but Penny’s viewpoint is much more compelling, and aside from filling in a few blanks (e.g., explaining how they got from the parking lot to the park), Andrew doesn’t have anything to add. My solution was to play up the fact that Andrew is only helping Penny as a favor to Julie. Describing a chore is almost as tedious as performing it, so Andrew quickly gets bored—hopefully before the reader does—and cuts to the conclusion: “Lots of other stuff happened, but the important thing is, I got it done.”

When Andrew met Julie: first draft

The size of the geography

What became of Irwin Manciple

Andrew tells the police what really happened to Warren Lodge

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