After you finish watching a DVD (if you even watch movies that way anymore), do you go back to the menu and watch all the deleted scenes? I do. I’m fascinated to see what got left out, and I always wonder why they got axed. Here are three deleted scenes from my first novel, The Portal & the Panther.
1. In the woods right after Jon’s first time shifting.
I’m only being a little sarcastic when I say that hearing and smelling the squirrels and birds and insects was fascinating. If an axe murderer tackled you to the ground, pinned your arms, and lifted his axe above your neck, and then you notice a strange-looking stain on your ceiling that sort of looks like Elvis, you might think, “Huh, that stain’s fascinating,” but really, you would care less about that stain. You’d be thinking about the axe murderer.
That was what it was like for me when I was waiting in the woods for that girl.
Why I cut it: I liked this joke; it appeals to my quirky sense of humor. However, I received feedback from more than one of my beta readers that it was too much of a distraction in this chapter. While it reveals Jon’s sarcastic humor, it takes the reader away from what they really care about, which is Layla showing up.
2. After the first fight with “Jacket Man.”
This isn’t golf. This is a team sport, he shot back. It was one of Coach Irvine’s favorite admonishments.
Well, this sure as hell isn’t football, either. And even if it was, you’re not my quarterback anymore.
I told you before, Jon: I didn’t ask for this any more than you did. But it’s what we are; we may as well accept it.
I stood up. Maybe you and Layla accept it. I never said I did.
I walked back in the direction I came from, back towards my old house.
So that’s it — you’re going to just walk away?
Yeah, Dave, I am.
And leave the rest of us here to protect this portal?
That’s right.
And if we die defending it? If Layla dies? Or if they get through us and set up more colonies in this world? You’d be ok with that?
Take care of Layla for me, I said.
Why I cut it: Honestly, I don’t exactly remember where this bit of bickering between Jon and Dave, but I assume it comes after the first encounter the Shifters have with “Jacket Man,” the earth-user. I think instead of walking away, I changed the scene so that Jon attacks Dave for putting Layla in harm’s way. Much more heroic of Jon, and fitting with his history with Dave, which, at this point in the story, he hasn’t yet moved past.
3. At the Ozark Diner after the intruders’ invasion.
“Ok, he speaks English,” I said. “So what?”
“Come on, Jon,” Ellen said impatiently. “Think.” Why would someone from another world speak our language perfectly?
I shrugged, again wishing I’d listened a little better when Patti had tried to teach me the Histories. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder why an intruder would speak our language. Although, to be fair, every time I’d met Jacket Man so far, I’d been a little busy thinking about things other than his language skills.
“He grew up here,” Mary Jo said. In this world. Probably in this country.
“How could he have grown up here?”
“It’s like Patti told you before,” said Dave. The intruders have been trying to establish colonies in this world for a very long time. So there are some who live in our world. Some who even grow up here, like my mom said.
The rest of them don’t speak our language. They speak languages from their own world, Ellen said. Did you see the metal translator on the mind user’s neck when we were in the ravine?
I thought back. Now that she mentioned it, I could remember seeing something metal glinting against his neck, like a metal brace. I nodded.
That’s how they usually talk with us, Dave said. It’s Explorer technology, some kind of computer that translates what they say into our language as they talk.
“The point is,” Ellen said, if the earth user grew up here, then they can send him into Mecksville or anywhere else as a scout. He won’t stick out like the rest of them would.
Why I cut it: I reworked this scene at the diner multiple times. In the first version of the book, Jon isn’t present when Jacket Man first comes through the portal by himself to demand the keys. In that version, Layla relates the whole encounter to Jon after the fact. This bit in the diner between Ellen and Jon came after the intruders’ invasion. I needed to work in a couple of important bits of information for the reader: (1) that the Mentalists have had colonies in our world for a long time, and (2) that Jacket Man grew up in one of these colonies. Therefore, Jacket Man is virtually an ‘Merican! In later revisions, Jon is there when Jacket Man first comes through the portal, which means all this information is revealed much sooner in the story.