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| Kill Your Darlings Word Cloud courtesy of alvaradofrazier.com |
William
Faulkner famously once wrote, ‘in writing, you must kill all your darlings’.
This is rather extreme, though very true. It is a tough truth to face; a truth
I have only just come to terms with.
It is a shame that
some of the things we hold most dear in our writing must face the chop. It is
as if the heart and soul we poured into creating this section of masterful
prose is wasted. But, it needn’t be. See, when we kill our darlings we give
breathing space to other ideas that had previously been suffocated by the
greedy being we called our darling.
What is a
‘darling’, you may well ask. It is a hard thing to define, but I view it as
something you as a writer really, really love unconditionally. For example, you
may have this brilliant idea of a scene where the protagonist enters a witty
riposte with the antagonist and comes out on top. You love like your first
born. It is amazing. It showcases your clever mind and makes the reader see how
much cooler the protagonist is than the bad guy.
Cut it.
Plain and simple.
