Everything Is Linked

One thing I forgot about changing one scene in my novel was the ripple effect through the rest of it. The (hopefully) last edits I did this round were fixing references to things I had to omit from the scene. A novel is sort of like presenting an argument. The plot should flow in a natural progression, where each scene is an example of who the characters are and how they interact, which leads them from this situation to the next in logical order. Either that, or it's like playing Ker-Plunk - you can remove sticks that aren't supporting the marbles, but the second that you remove a vital piece of the structure, things start falling through the plot holes. Thankfully, we were able to remove that part of the scene and do a little clean-up, and the rest of the story wasn't affected in any meaningful way.