Removing entire scenes from your manuscript that don't pull their weight in advancing plot, character, or theme.
Scene cutting is the revision practice of identifying and removing whole scenes that fail to earn their place in a manuscript. A scene might be beautifully written, but if it doesn't move the plot forward, deepen a character, or reinforce a theme, it's dead weight. This is one of the most painful but necessary steps in revision, and it's where the advice 'kill your darlings' hits hardest.
Every scene that doesn't serve your story is a scene where the reader's attention drifts. Cutting weak scenes tightens pacing, sharpens focus, and makes the scenes you keep feel more essential. It's also one of the fastest ways to fix a manuscript that feels 'too long' without losing what makes it good.
Editor Maxwell Perkins guided Fitzgerald through extensive cuts, removing scenes that diluted the novel's tight focus. The published version is famously lean for a reason.
Editor Gordon Lish cut Carver's stories so aggressively that entire scenes vanished, transforming expansive drafts into the minimalist style Carver became known for.
Tartt reportedly cut hundreds of pages from the manuscript during revision, removing scenes that expanded on secondary characters but slowed the central mystery.
Time invested doesn't equal quality. Save the scene in a separate 'cuts' file if it helps you emotionally, but don't let sunk cost keep bloat in your manuscript.
Before deleting, check if the scene carries any setup, backstory, or character detail that other scenes depend on. Migrate that information elsewhere first.
The hardest cuts are good scenes that don't belong. A well-written scene can still be wrong for the book if it stalls momentum or pulls focus from the main thread.
Wait until you have a clear sense of your story's final shape before making major cuts. What seems unnecessary in Chapter 5 might become essential after you rewrite Chapter 12.
Pick a chapter from your current project and list every scene in it. For each scene, write one sentence stating what it accomplishes for the story. If you can't name a concrete purpose (advances the plot, reveals character, develops theme), mark it as a cutting candidate. Now look at your marked scenes and ask: could the chapter work without them?