New Excerpts !

Susan's been cleaning the basement (she does that once every five or six years, whether she needs to or not). She's found some old drafts of novels and has identified scenes from the Cutting Room Floor that she'd forgotten all about.

These may not be as interesting as she things they are (Susan's a writer, which means she has a flawed sense of proportion), but, one way or another, they're . . .

(12/2005) Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor: from An Exchange of Hostages: Old Drafts

Check out excerpts from the next Jurisdiction book, WARRING STATES: Interview

Scenes related to Prisoner of Conscience (Avon Eos, 1998)		Scenes related to  Hour of Judgment (Avon Eos, 1999)		Scenes related to The Devil and Deep Space (Roc, October 2002)
Sapper sequence, first draft		Monolith and Captain’s Mast		The Devil and Deep Space Preview
Sapper sequence, second draft		Jennet ap Rhiannon		The Devil and Deep Space Snips
Mergau Noycannir, 1		Kerenko Flashback
Mergau Noycannir, 2		Psychotic Fugue, With Autocrat		FAQs —
		After Hours Staff		Exchange of Hostages
FAQs essays		Ghost Chapter		Prisoner of Conscience
The Infamous Linen Document		The Sauna		Hour of Judgment
Firstborn and Eldest		Secured Medical		Angel of Destruction

What's Going On Here?

Throughout 2001, and into 2002, I posted a different block of material "from the cutting room floor". Some of this unpublished material has been shared at conventions and online discussions like the Compuserve Science Fiction Literature Forum, but most of it had never been made available before.

Unpublished scenes?
How does that happen?

During the course of making a movie scenes may be filmed that are subsequently cut from the finished process — left on the cutting room floor. Sometimes out-takes and other "lost" or deleted bits are the typographical errors or false starts of the movie world; sometimes they contained important plot or characterization elements that had to be discarded in the service of the formal structure of the film, the kind of story the director was trying to tell, or for any number of other reasons.

It happens in books too.   TOP

Sometimes a scene or sequence is written that has to be rewritten or discarded as the writer gets a sharper focus on the direction of the story. Sometimes a scene or sequence is interesting, but doesn’t have an important enough piece of the action of the novel to warrant including something that may distract a reader or slow the story down. Sometimes the story just plain ends up taking a sharp left at Pittsburgh, meaning that the beautiful map of Akron, Ohio just doesn’t have a place in the text any longer. 

And yet there is that beautiful map of Akron, and there are people out there who like maps and are interested in looking at them whether or not the road trip ended up going through that part of the world.

In this special section of my website I've shared my maps of Akron, and Santa Fe, and Royal Oaks — background information on characters and events, scenes that contain information about Andrej Koscuisko and Jurisdiction that I think is interesting (or sometimes just plain fun), but that didn’t quite make it in to print for one reason or another.

I hope you find this material entertaining.

And I'm willing to entertain your ideas for "Scenes You'd Like to See." So, let me know what you think....and watch this page.

Susan scibens    TOP

The Archives
Files for printing are retired monthly.

Great dripping chunks of text occupy space, and space is at a premium on web sites -- especially as these Scenes proliferate. Here's how we have handled the problem:

A new scene's download files will be posted for only 30 days.

After 30 days, the download files will be taken down. The read-on-line version will continue to be available here on the web site.

"Oh, that's awful!" I can hear you say. "It's not fair! I just got here! I want it all!" And I like that in a visitor (grin). I'm all in favor of encouraging compulsive text acquisition behavior on the part of visitors to this web site.

I have a fix to propose, as follows: Any time you want a version of any previously posted Scenes section, I'll be glad to send you the text as an email attachment. In this way I hope to keep prior Scenes available as both read-on-line and print-off-for-later versions, while streamlining the storage requirements for this web site.

Let me know if this works for you. And remember, if at any time you want the printable text version, send me an email and I'll be glad to oblige.

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