: When my story has a powerful phrase but that loses its power when I read it again in the next day, should I keep it or remove it? Sometimes I have a great idea of sentence (usually for

Vote Up Vote Down

Samuel Johnson said

"I would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one
of his pupils:'Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet
with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.'"

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

I seems to me that it is your state of mind which changed, and not the written phrase itself.
There are two possible causes for this.

Many writers use certain tricks to establish a useful state of mind for developing ideas; often, those states of mind are too right–brain to write very well, however — music, brainstorming, e.g. Then, they need to review, embellish, and compile their mess of text and story germs with more left–brain efforts.
A joke may seem hilarious in the prior state, but not as written in the later one.
Sometimes you simply failed to transcribe what the muse gave you, though.
If, when you were initially conceiving the scene of which you wrote, you imagined something that was later omitted in the actual writing, then a re-read could indeed be lacking.
Perhaps you need to add more literary stage-setting so as to empower the delivery of the certain phrase. In such a situation, you augment rather than delete.

Compare

She had only reached halfway for the sword when it was tossed to her hand. She was quick to adjust: the sword did not drop.
The reality of everything intensified as this thought grew in her: The wait is gone; I have it; I have it now.

to

Anxious expectations tingled the palms of her hands. She had only reached halfway for the sword when it was tossed to her hand. Like the crack of a whip, it interrupted her reverie. Reverie was broken, and the old habitual reflexes appeared in the mental space thus vacated. She was quick to adjust: the sword did not drop.
All the others in the room were silent and still. Now that the sword was resting in her hand, she should be calming — she did not. The reality of everything intensified as this thought grew in her: The wait is gone; I have it; I have it now.

Okay, cheesy example.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

+1 Mark, delete it. Make sure you have a backup of your manuscript for the day, you won't lose it. Then delete it and try something else.

Psychologically speaking, a major problem for writers is our own short-term memories and a heavily biased "moment" of how we perceive the real world and the world and characters we are writing. So when a phrase seems brilliant to us, it is often because we are relying on a state of mind or remembered circumstances that is NOT produced by the writing on the page.

It is kind of the "inside joke" phenomenon, without realizing you are telling an inside joke: The context of the brilliance was in your head, not on the page, and by the time you came back and read it: The context inside your head had dissipated, replaced by a series of others. So you read it as readers would have seen it.

It isn't like a joke. The first laugh at a joke means the punchline really did punch you. The next time you don't think the joke is complete garbage, you just aren't surprised a second time because you learned what is coming. With a joke we can still think it a clever twist, interpretation or reversal, there can even be another laugh in it, if it is good enough. But you laughed and that is all the evidence you need the joke delivered an unexpected but logical punchline.

A powerful phrase that no longer seems powerful, or seems trite, is different. Now what you thought was good seems bad, and the reason is the power was in the mental context of when you wrote it, and after a nights sleep that context is gone.

Truly powerful phrases grounded in the context provided by the writing leading up to them will still "read right" after a few days away from them, you will still be proud of them.

Be warned they can get stale if you read them again and again and again in a sitting. That is ALSO a mistake, you are memorizing the scene too much.

Write your scene. Go through it once, and fix any problems. Put it away until you have slept a night (work on something else) then read it and fix any problems. When you can read it through and like it all, consider it done (and do it all again in the future, of course, to make sure the whole story is properly connected).

And pay attention to your mind. Not everything in it is on the page, but everything in it can influence what you personally get out of the page. You have to take measures, through repeated "cold reads", that your mind is not helpfully filling in a bunch of gaps, and making poor writing feel good to you.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

I'm going to echo the leave it for now finish your story crowd. It might actually work later if you can work it into some payoff in the future. I always like to point out things like "Hot Fuzz" which is a very boring opening with a lot of odd dialog... the payoff is in the second half where the dialog becomes funny because it provides a better joke... in some cases, the dialog is only funny on re-watch because you're aware of the way the movie is going to play out.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

I believe it's better to steam through and finish your first draft without constant editing and second guessing everything you've written.

This is because you will learn so much about your novel during that process, and will settle into a style and rhythm. If you reread everything immediately then you are at risk of what you've described - not seeing it with fresh eyes.

As you say, it's like any good joke - it's so funny the first time it sticks in your mind, and the impact can never be had twice. That doesn't make it less of a good joke.

Of course there will be times when your epic, genius sentence actually isn't any good, and does need to be cut. However, I would argue that you, the next day, will be a poor judge of that.

You, sometime later, reading the text with fresh eyes will be a better judge. Members of a writing group will be even better, and a professional editor also.

So my advice would definitely not be to cut it prematurely. Move on, finish the novel and come back to it later to see how you feel about it.

(0)