Apples of Gold — Preparing
Rarely can you perform an entire story or play. You'll have to do some cutting. Here
are some guidelines:
- Read the whole selection three times so you have a good idea of content.
- Find the climax of the selection and cut anything that does not reveal interesting
aspects of your characters or build to that one climax.
- Bracket what is key to the plot.
- Slash through what can be deleted without changing the idea of the story.
- Most writers give ideas from several directions. Take the most dramatic story line
and delete the others.
- Sometimes minor characters can be cut out without altering the story drastically.
- Tag lines (i.e., "he said," "she said") can usually be cut unless they are needed to
distinguish characters or somehow advance the plot.
- "One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in
pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the
vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation
of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One
dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas."
– From "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry
(The author repeats different facets of the problem which is wonderful for the
reader, but cutting all but the most dramatic lines improves the oral performance.)
