Last week I spent two hours writing a conversation between my protagonist and her dead grandmother. It takes place in a kitchen that doesn’t exist in my story. It references events I’ll never include. The grandmother isn’t even mentioned in the actual draft.
And I loved every minute of it.
When I finished, I saved the file in a folder I call “extras” and closed it. That scene will never appear in my novel. It wasn’t supposed to. I wrote it knowing it would go nowhere, and I did it anyway.
This feels like something I should have figured out years ago. But I spent a long time believing that every word I wrote needed to earn its place in the final manuscript. That writing scenes “for nothing” was self-indulgent. A waste of time I could spend on real work.
I was wrong about that. Really wrong.
I used to think good writers were efficient. That they knew exactly what their story needed and wrote only that. No detours. No dead ends. Just clean, purposeful prose from beginning to end.
I have no idea where I picked up this belief. Maybe from reading interviews where authors made their process sound effortless. Maybe from my own anxiety about wasting time. But it got lodged deep in my brain and stayed there for years.
The problem is that efficiency is a terrible goal for a first draft. Or a second draft. Or honestly most of the creative process.
Stories don’t reveal themselves efficiently. Characters don’t either. Sometimes you have to wander around in the dark for a while before you find what you’re looking for. And sometimes the wandering is the whole point.
That conversation with the dead grandmother taught me things about my protagonist I didn’t know before. How she talks when she’s being defensive. What memories she returns to when she’s sad. The specific way she avoids saying what she really means.
None of those insights came from outlining or character worksheets. They came from putting her in a room with someone she loved and letting them talk. Following the conversation wherever it wanted to go.
When I went back to my actual draft, something had shifted. I understood her better. Her voice felt more natural in my head. I made small adjustments to scenes I’d already written, little tweaks that made her feel more like herself.
The scene was “wasted.” But the knowledge wasn’t.
There’s another thing that happens when you write scenes you know won’t make the cut. You stop being so precious about your words.
This might sound counterintuitive. If the scene doesn’t matter, why would it help with scenes that do? But that’s exactly the point. When nothing is on the line, you write more freely. You take risks you wouldn’t take in your “real” draft. You let yourself be weird.
And that freedom starts to bleed over into the rest of your writing. You get more comfortable with the idea that not every sentence needs to be perfect. That some scenes exist just to help you find the good ones.
It’s like stretching before a run. The stretching isn’t the run. But it makes the run possible.
I started keeping track of these throwaway scenes a few months ago. Just out of curiosity. The list is longer than I expected.
A childhood memory for a villain I ended up cutting entirely. Two thousand words about his relationship with his mother. Useless for the book. Incredibly useful for understanding why he became who he became.
A first date between two side characters. They ended up not being romantic in the final version at all. But writing that date helped me figure out their dynamic, which made their actual scenes together feel more layered.
An alternate ending where everyone dies. I knew I wasn’t going to use it. I just wanted to feel how it landed. Turns out it felt wrong, which confirmed that my real ending was on the right track. Sometimes you need to write the wrong thing to know the right thing is right.
A scene set twenty years after the story ends. Just to sense where these characters might land. Just to give myself a feeling for what they were building toward, even if the reader would never experience it.
None of these scenes were wasted. They just served a different purpose than making it into the final manuscript.
I think the resistance to writing “useless” scenes comes from a scarcity mindset. The fear that we only have so many words in us. So much creative energy. And if we spend it on scenes that don’t count, we won’t have enough left for the ones that do.
But that’s not how creativity works. At least not in my experience.
Writing more makes writing easier. The words don’t run out. If anything, they multiply. The more scenes I write, even throwaway scenes, the more fluent I become in my own story’s language.
There’s also the time pressure thing. We’re all busy. Writing time is precious. It can feel irresponsible to spend an afternoon on a scene you know won’t matter.
But here’s what I’ve noticed. Those “irresponsible” writing sessions often leave me more energized than the dutiful ones. More connected to my characters. More excited to get back to the main draft.
That has to count for something.
Maybe that’s what this is really about. Permission.
Permission to write badly. To write aimlessly. To follow a tangent just because it’s interesting. To spend time with your characters without demanding that every interaction serve the plot.
I didn’t give myself that permission for a long time. I was too focused on being productive. On having something to show for my writing time.
But play is productive. Exploration is productive. Even dead ends are productive if they help you understand your story better.
In case you’re curious about the practical side, here’s what works for me.
I keep a separate folder for extra scenes. This matters more than it sounds like it should. When the scene is physically separate from my main draft, I feel less pressure about it. It’s clearly not part of the “real” story. It’s just me messing around.
I usually write these scenes by hand first. Something about the slower pace makes it feel more exploratory. Like I’m sketching rather than drafting. But that’s personal preference. Typing works fine too.
I don’t edit them. At all. That’s the rule. These scenes exist to be messy. To be experimental. The moment I start polishing them, they stop serving their purpose.
I try to write at least one throwaway scene per week. Not always related to my current project. Sometimes I write scenes for characters I haven’t thought about in years. It keeps the creative muscles flexible.
If you’ve never tried this, I’d encourage you to experiment. Pick a character you’re struggling with. Put them in a situation that has nothing to do with your plot. A grocery store. A waiting room. A conversation with someone from their past.
Write for twenty minutes. Don’t think about whether it’s good. Don’t worry about where it’s going. Just follow the character and notice what they do.
You might discover their voice in a way that surprises you. You might learn something about their history you hadn’t considered. You might stumble on a detail that ends up in your actual draft, transformed into something new.
Or you might just have fun. Which is also allowed.
I think there’s something freeing about accepting that most of what we write won’t make the final cut. It takes the pressure off. It reminds us that writing is a process, not a performance.
The throwaway scenes are part of that process. The dead ends and tangents and experiments. The pages we write knowing they’ll never be read by anyone else.
They’re not wasted. They’re practice. They’re discovery. They’re the work behind the work.
And sometimes, honestly, they’re just fun. Which might be the best reason of all.
Do you write scenes you know won’t make it into your final story? Or does that feel like something you couldn’t justify? I’m curious whether this resonates with other writers or if I’m the only one with a folder full of ghosts.
