I’m about to finish revising a book. Yay! A huge thanks to my beta readers, whose critique proved invaluable. Among other things, Sarah caught the fact that I’d forgotten about the word “slither” for several consecutive chapters in a book that features snakes. Oops.

Sometimes, revising means fixing awkward prose to improve scenes. Other times, scenes end up cut entirely. The below is something I added to chapter 17/18 of the latest draft. Which ended up making the chapter too long, so it got the ax one day later. C’est la vie.

Anise Street is a middle grade fantasy about Dylan Frenkel, a boy who unwillingly moves to a strange town and finds solace in making stranger friends–and purpose in hunting monsters. His parents do not approve of these coping mechanisms, though he always has their best interests at heart.

After his mother’s heirloom silverware set is stolen by trolls, Dylan drags his magically-inclined friend Deja deep into a cave system on a recovery mission. They discover that the silver was stolen to serve as weapons against invading monsters and volunteer to help fight in exchange for its return.

This scene’s purpose was to show how much the troll thieves have come to trust the kids. Gorm leads them to something secret and precious while Knut sees that some of the silver is returned, even before they fulfill their end of the deal. I liked the worldbuilding enough to preserve it, but I hit on a better way to communicate these ideas in the book.

Draft preserved for posterity here: