Just don’t do it. 

Do something else. Like, extoll your strengths and virtues. Focus on your positives. Sell your charm and wit. Take your shame, dig a deep hole and bury it so it never sees the light of day.

This may seem like a strange piece of advice. Alright, it should seem rather obvious on its face. But it is something I notice crop up in both amateur and professional work alike. For some reason or another, a writer will basically draw attention to an error, mistake or simply badly written section of their work. It will be in a moment where, say, the character is faced with an interesting idea and they choose to not take it. Which can work and be fine but the bigger problem arises when the character then muses how much more exciting, interesting, successful and marvelous that other option would have been. 

Or the character will do something and then reflect later, “Oh, I should have done this instead. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

I’m not sure what else to call this other than drawing attention to an error. Perhaps you, as the author, didn’t think of this alternative when you were first writing. You’re then neck deep in a sequentially locked story with little room for large choice changes without having to scrap everything and rewrite the whole story. But while you’re going through and editing you think “Man, this idea would have been so much better. I know. I’ll let everybody else know that this other idea would have been a huge improvement!”

Maybe it comes from a fear that because you noticed it, other people will notice it too. However, if you head them off at the pass, it’ll all be fine. 

But it isn’t. And it won’t. 

All it really does is shine a huge spotlight on this error and then rings it with flashing, neon signs reading “This was all a huge mistake!” Especially if there isn’t any reason given for why this better alternative never happened. 

See, I’m from the school of writing that everything which makes it into the final version should be there for a reason. If it’s not serving the primary goal of your story, then cut and prune all the extras. Witty paragraph of description? For a character or place that doesn’t really have any relevance? Cut. Deeply philosophical question that has great real world ramifications but not really important for your character development? Cut. 

And that’s, at best, what these little cutesy moments of recognition are. They’re extraneous fluff. “Look at this thing that didn’t happen” is most likely not advancing your themes, character or plot. But because you’re including it, you’re making an implicit statement that this is important to survive the editing process when so much else didn’t.

Hell, maybe this is the remains of a section that he had, loved and cut because it wasn’t relevant. And it’s serving for you as a touching obituary for a scene that you loved. 

Well, cut it as well. Because all it accomplishes is making your reader wonder why they’re telling you of a better idea than you did. It almost suggests that you’re wasting their time. And we never want people to feel like our art is a waste of time. 

So, when you’re writing and editing and you have your characters muse about an alternative that is far more interesting than what they do, ask yourself:

Is there any purpose of highlighting that a more interesting story untold here could or can exist? Usually no? I should cut this.