Writer's Blog: Weaker in Context

Let’s start off with the good news: another one of Mind Blind’s endings has been fully written! My wordcount currently tops 670,000 words in my private build, and this only includes parts that are coded! My feelings of accomplishment are so profound and excitable as to require exclamation points to end of my sentences!!

The bad news: I deleted Chapter 4’s new phone call with Hope. I loved this scene. Adored it. Button got to be vulnerable/angry/sad clown, and Hope got introduced earlier. I was excited. Jazzed, in the way that actually had me doing jazz hands over my keyboard. (Seriously. I wildly gesticulate when excited.)

Until I did a playthrough.

. . . And that scene? The scene that had made me tear up because yes, I’d somehow manage to hit the perfect mix of poignant and funny? The 8,000-word scene that took me days to code in all its glorious variations?

Yeah, that scene sucked.

Independently, it was fine. Great, even, which is why I’d been so happy over it. But when read as part of the chapter’s larger whole? It didn’t work. At all.

Having a phone call with Hope made the entire chapter drag. It felt lethargic. Nick’s condition, and Button's desire to see him, no longer came across as a priority—instead, Button (and thus, the reader) was being lured back into Chapter 3’s family drama. Hope’s presence diminished Nick’s, and dude is in a coma so it’s not like he could give me much to work with in order to take front stage. Having Hope in this particular chapter, without bookending her presence between lighter scenes, simply didn’t work. It turned an emotional scenario into a soap opera.

There was also the issue that Hope’s call could be immediately followed up with a second phone call from one of Button’s three possible chauffeurs (should you choose not to visit Nick). Since Button can reject two offers before settling on a ride from Lev, this meant that the bulk of Chapter 4 was just . . . a lot of phone calls. Which is not something I’d ever want to read and was horrified to realize that I’d written. A superhero inspired mystery, and the protagonist spends half a chapter on back-to-back phone calls? It was boring.

Last but not least (and perhaps most importantly), I realized that Hope’s prior absence had been important. The Wiseman family, regardless of Button’s unique relationship with either parent, is broken. Hope not being present on page emphasizes her physical absence, whereas introducing her at this point in the story meant that she became overshadowed and ultimately diminished by the high-intensity scenes before and after (Aeon’s explosion and Button’s later farewell at Nick’s hospital bed).

I attempted a few variations to fix the problem, but the end I was left with a single hopeless conclusion: Hope had to go.

(Hopeless conclusion, heh. See what I did there?)

Cuts like these, which require deleting passages that I’m genuinely excited about, are always the most difficult for me to make. I fight tooth and nail to keep them in, because gosh darn it, I like that particular sentence! But editing requires that every single scene be in service to the larger whole—no matter how good a scene may read individually, sometimes it doesn’t fit within with forest. And today, I had to cut down a redwood.

That being said, I’m working to incorporate aspects from Hope’s now-deleted conversation into Chapter 5! When Button comes down to converse with John, they’ll find him already on the phone with Hope. Button will then have the option of making their father hang up or explaining the situation to both parents at once. 

Honestly, I feel like exploring how Hope reacts to the reveal that Nick is inside Button’s head will be even better than the original version. She’s gonna have so many mixed feelings. Additional bonus: I’ve already written versions of Hope’s reunion with Button during this most recent ending, and thus can add in some sweetly poetic mirroring between the Wiseman’s family “shadow reunion” (where Nick is technically comatose and Hope is in Milwaukee) and their later, in-person reunion at game’s end.

Chapter 4 2.0 will be updated later tonight, along with a list going over what changes I did keep (there are still a lot!).

Chapter 5 will go up as soon as I’ve finished writing the new Hope-inclusive variation.