When to let it go.

So, time for something a little different. And I don't mean the Frozen reference because it ain't a frozen reference, it's an Ash letting butterfree go reference because I'm a dick.

How do you all handle and sort ideas that you wish to keep or think you should drop. This applies to longer works technically, but it can be made if you have ideas about your story but then it goes along and you get flooded with a bunch more and cycle repeat.

But overall, what do you all decide on what to keep and what to pitch?
Do you have a certain value system, does every new idea that holds it weight replace the old, do you try and see if you can edit, and on and on ad nausium.

But yeah, share some thoughts if yah want and I might too eventually.

If the idea/pitch has nothing that would improve you're story, then do what I would do: A bonus chapter. A bonus chapter could be anything, a AU, a non-canon side story, breaking the 4th wall, etc. If the pitch is debated so heavily in you're head, then as a last resort you can add it as a bonus some other time.

There were some scenes that were originally posted in Foul Play, but then I took them off due to them having similarities to another scene or just wasn't working. Sometimes if there's one idea or scene I wrote before but isn't working at the moment, I still keep them in another document incase I want to go back to it later.

Back when I was writing Fullmetal Alchemist fanfiction, there was one story where I took out a lot of a scenes because my betas thought those had the characters being OOC or wasn't working. Didn't help that story had a lot of political themes hahaha.

I'm a pretty shitty writer in the sense that I'm lazy, so it's never really a question of 'oooh, do I add this or not?' as opposed to 'god, I can't be bothered'. But occasionally I'll have a scene in my head, and there'll be this enormous push to put it into words, except the compatibility with pre-existing content is zilch. When that happens... I don't use it. I have this nasty habit of sticking to my established theme. I may want to put pegasus zombies into my story, but I've already got this Agatha Christie/To Kill A Mocking Bird thing going on, then yeah, pegasus zombies will not be making an appearance. Which is unfortunate, because a fresh idea could probably revive the project. Only implementing it is work, and work is bollocks.

Or, I'll mangle the story to accommodate a tiny idea. And I have no system when it comes to writing. None at all. That's why they're all a mess, I assume.

I usually just try to develop them. I feel like I can improve them a little more with some hard work and such. If not, I end up dropping them and moving onto other ideas. It really depends on what the idea is or how silly it might be.