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Got told to kill my favorite sentence in a short story. Writer was right.
I was workshopping a piece at a local group in Austin. An older writer said my opening line about the rain was too poetic and I needed to cut it. I argued for ten minutes because I loved that sentence. Next draft I swapped it for a simple image of a wet dog shaking itself off. Got accepted at a lit mag two months later. Has anyone else had a beta reader point out something that hurt at first but proved out?
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josephs264d ago
honestly i think you might've given in too easy. sometimes you gotta trust your gut especially if that sentence really captured something. bet that old writer was just stuck in their ways and couldn't see the bigger picture.
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susanm224d ago
Used to dig my heels in every time, but honestly letting go of that line opened up something better in the whole piece.
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