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Can’t figure out why this scene still isn’t working?

You’ve written and rewritten the same scene five times and convinced yourself to move on to fix it later but it’s still there, still broken, and you can’t put a finger on what the problem is.

You’re in the wrong POV (if applicable)

Your narrator isn’t the best choice here, maybe they’re overshadowing a more important character or their commentary on what’s happening isn’t compelling enough by nature of their relationship with the story.

Your refuse to kill your darlings

You’ve worked so damn hard trying to fit a square peg of this really cool idea in isolation into the round hole that your narrative became. No matter how hard you shove or how many angles you try, it’s not going to work. Delete it, or move it.

This scene occurs at the wrong time

Maybe it’s a revelation that hits too early or too late, either in the physical timeline or within a character’s arc. Maybe it messes up the pacing, leaving characters either rushing or waiting around for the next scene to hit because the placement of your story beats has left clumps and gaps of action.

This scene throws somebody OOC

It might be a darling that needs sacrifice. Maybe it’s the wrong character to have that monologue or to say that cool quip you thought of, or they’re weirdly passionate about a thing that shouldn’t matter to them/nonplussed about something that should be very important to them. It’s something X would never do but you wrote anyway for the sake of the plot.

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Or some combination of these. My deleted scenes for ENNS’s sequel is officially longer than the existing manuscript purely due to trial and error with my plot.