There is a Twi proverb my grandmother used whenever a story ran too long at the table: obi nkyerɛ akwadaa Nyame — no one needs to point a child to God, because the child already knows. The saying is usually about faith. I have started to think it is also, secretly, about editing.
The scene that already knows
The instinct in a first cut is always to explain. To add the line that clarifies the motivation, the reaction shot that confirms the emotion, the extra beat that makes sure nobody in the audience missed it. Almost every editor I have worked with has to be talked out of this instinct at least once a project.
The best cut is usually the one that trusts the audience to already know.
What proverbs do, structurally, is compress an entire argument into a single image and then stop. They do not follow the image with a paragraph of clarification. The best scenes I have cut behave the same way.
