Deleted Scenes

When writing and editing a novel, things have a tendency to get cut. And if the process of Book 1 is any indication, there are a LOT of cuts, entire scenes cut and pasted in a dump file that right now is too much of a mess for me to even consider going through.

But it got me thinking, what if there were deleted scenes for books? When movies come out on DVD they love to tout their bonus features: deleted scenes, commentary, blooper reels. Stuff that you can only see if you actually buy the DVD (or if you get Netflix). I don't know if most people care to watch these things, but if it's a movie (or tv show) that I love, I'll watch them. I'll watch the heck out of them. It's interesting to hear a funny director or favorite actress talk about a movie as it's playing, to get an idea of what it was like for them to create and film it.

That particular idea probably wouldn't work for books. I suppose I could include footnotes that said something like "this is the scene that was so difficult I literally fell to the floor and had a temper tantrum." Or "this is the part where I binged on cookies for three days and gained ten pounds." I suppose that might be interesting to some people, but it would really take away from the book.

Deleted scenes, on the other hand, could  totally work. Some things are cut just because they disrupt the flow of the story, or because they don't move the story line forward. But they usually still have something of value in them, some line or thought that made them difficult to delete in the first place. By tacking them on at the end, the reader has extra stuff to read if they enjoyed the book, and the author can feel less guilty for excluding them from the main piece.

Obviously, there are reasons why this hasn't been done. Printing out extra scenes means higher production costs. There doesn't even need to be a reason beyond that: money is just what things come down to these days.

Maybe these scenes can be put on an author's website then? Actually, what would really be great for me is to be able to continue writing things for these characters, to continue their story beyond the ending of the book. I can't envision coming up with a sequel for the book but it also depresses me that I'm nearly done working with these characters (which might explain why I keep coming up with new things to add in to the book - I don't want to let go). I wonder if some authors do this, put special content on their websites to attract readers and please fans. I could research it, but since I mentioned the cookies I've gotten hungry.

Thing I Don't Understand:
I feel like I'm always either 1) getting ready for work, 2) at work 3) going to bed because I have to go to work the next day. The free hours every evening barely seem to exist. It's criminal.