I’ve seen the discussion of ‘unnecessary’ elements of stories come up in various ways across online writing communities. A common critique style (that’s incredibly easy to misapply) says that everything in a book should be ‘necessary’ to the story. But how do we decide what ‘necessary’ is? The most common mistake when applying this critique I’ve seen is the idea that only Plot matters when it comes to story. That slower, quieter scenes need to be axed for hookier, higher action moments. And in some cases this can be useful (starting a novel with a high energy scene can help prevent unnecessarily long info-dump openings that bog things down) but if we pared out any scene, or sentence, or word that isn’t high-energy Plot additions to the story, we lose more than we gain. Pacing isn’t only about picking one and sticking to it, varying pace to fit both the genre, the stage of the story, and the emotion of the scene.
But, how do we apply the ‘Necessary’ test in order to make sure our Manuscript is efficient in a more holistic way than just asking if every scene/sentence/word is ‘necessary’?

Efficient Storytelling: Everything should be Doing Something

Instead of axing anything that doesn’t move the story forward, take a step back and consider what it is that piece *is* doing, and whether it could be serving multiple purposes at once, to make your work as efficient as possible.

Consider these additional categories:

• Plot/Action: These are scenes/sentences that describe what happens in the story, the overarching narrative of on-page movement and decision-making.
• Character: Any scene/sentence that reveals something about your character. This can be physical description, backstory, motivation, worldview, opinion,, feeling, relationships, etc.
• Setting/World: Anything that fills in the world that the characters occupy. This can be physical/literal, like describing a setting, establishing a social hierarchy/rules of decorum, defining new/unknown words, etc.
• Worldbuilding: It’s important, even for non-speculative work! Worldbuilding isn’t always describing a magic system or what consistutes as a robot in your world. It can also be things like what people think of a certain social group, who’s-who-ing, describing the layout of a frequented space, and more. Anything you tell the reader about the story world is worldbuilding, because it focuses your reader on the section of the world you’re playing in.
• Theme/Purpose: Anything that deals with the central themes or ultimate purpose of the story. Theme can work on two levels: the singular ‘thesis’ style theme you might be used to from English classes, a single sentence that encapsulates what you want readers to come away with; and the collections of themes that the story touches on, usually one word or phrase like ‘Belonging’ or ‘Discrimination’ or ‘Coming-of-age’. Sentences where a character deals with these central themes or even speaks the central Theme explicitly can be easy to spot, but Theme can be included in much more subtle ways.
• Bonus: Style. If you are going for a particular style with your writing, it may be useful to pay attention to moments that are meant to contribute to that style. A long, relaxed scene of characters reading novels together and having a quiet conversation may feel out of place in a sci-fi thriller, but a historical fantasy with a cozy tone may need those scenes to achieve its style.

Every scene in your MS should deal with at least one of these factors, and the most efficient scenes expertly weave multiple story elements together in every scene. Characterization is something that should be in every scene, but that doesn’t mean drop random back story everywhere, it means the characters should be judging and reacting to the events around them in a way that reveals more and more about their character while serving other purposes. Because of this, be cautious with scenes that only deal with character, sometimes they can drag unnecessarily. It’s more efficient to imbue characterization throughout various moments instead of dedicating specific scenes to characterization.

Much like the ‘necessary’ evaluation, common writing advice is that every scene should move the plot forward. This does not mean that every scene needs to be a high-action plot heavy drama. Sometimes the plot moves because we learn something new about a character or the world (that will come to be important) rather than specific actions and choices.

To Evaluate the Efficiency of your Manuscript:

1. Assign a color to each of the above elements, and go through your MS color coding every sentence based on what element it engages with. Some sentences may contain multiple!
2. For every scene: write at least a sentence about its purpose. This can be as simple as “introducing X character” or “MC learns about world”, or it can be highly complex. Try to engage with the story elements you find in those scenes, and consider what would be missing from the story if the scene was omitted.
3. Pay special attention to: New information (world or characters) that will be needed later, character introductions and pivotal relationship scenes, minor plot developments that are needed to support the major plot.
4. Now, go through your MS and look for weak areas. These will be long stretches dealing with a single element at a time (or not properly fitting into any category), or scenes that you struggled to describe the purpose of. DON’T DELETE ANYTHING YET! Consider how you might add other story elements to those scenes, and how you might tweak them to support some aspect of the story that could use some help. Remember: Everything Must Be Doing Something, so make the scenes not pulling their weight more important. Or, if it truly doesn’t add to the overall narrative, or doesn’t do so in a way not already covered, remove it from the MS and put it in the cut lines graveyard.
5. Do another full MS reads with the changes. Does everything still work as intended? Were any cut lines/scenes actually vital, and need to be added back in?
6. Rinse and repeat as necessary. You can even do this for a single scene/chapter, if you already know it needs some work.

Happy editing!

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash