I keep everything.  I mean everything for my stories.  For each story idea I have, I've created a folder.  And in those folders are story notes.  Snippets of scenes, dialogue, character information.  And as the story progresses so does the folder.  It becomes bigger and with much more detail.  Each version of the manuscript is saved.  But also in this folder is the cutting room floor so to speak.

It's where all the cut scenes are kept with file names that depict exactly what the scenes are.  For example:  Adam_wants_to_Kiss, Four_Leaf_Clover, Car_Scene.

Each of these were at one time scenes from one of my manuscripts.  They are all now on the cutting room floor.  But I thought it might be fun to share a couple with you.  WARNING:  These are all from the first draft and have not been edited:

This one is called Part_Of_The_Promise:

The events of that day were still fresh in Adam’s mind as if they’d happened last week instead of seven years ago.

He’d drove Eve home in that beat up old jeep of hers.  Upon their arrival Amy sent Eve straight to her room to change into dry clothes and then ushered Adam into the study.  It was then she asked him to do the hardest thing he would ever have to do.

It’s for her that I ask this.

She had been right.  Adam knew it as well now as he had then.

And this is from Four_Leaf_Clover:

Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled a tiny box out and placed it in the center of the table, then cleared his throat.

She looked up and asked,  “What’s this?”

“Open it and find out.”

Her eyes locked with his for a moment before she lifted the lid. "Where did you find this?”

Adam laughed.  “Where do you think?”

Her reaction was more than he had bargained for.  She was practically glowing as she gently lifted the four-leaf clover out of the box.

“I thought you could use a little luck.”

It's funny, but for only a few discarded lines, I get a pretty good sense about him...

Hm. The first one sounds like I might have read it, but I don't remember anything about a four leaf clover!

I keep everything, too. Even have a great scene from IH in Jer's POV where he's getting ticked about Chris toying with Teresa. I still love that scene.

hm, I just throw the stuff I cut into one big "Outtakes" file for each book. I do like the idea of naming the scenes as I cut them and saving them like that.

Lynn, I think I did work something similar to this into another scene so it probably does sound familiar and the four leaf clover was cut completely.

Marty, thanks. I think that’s really cool that you can get a feel for him from those few lines.

Kacey, I find it’s so much easy to know what I’m looking at if I save the scenes individually with a quick reference file name. It saves a lot of time if I have to go back to find something.