Wednesday, March 18, 2015

KIlling Your Darlings

Paula has ‘killed her darlings’!

Several years ago, when I first heard the phrase ‘Kill Your Darlings’, I thought it referred to the characters an author killed off. Since I don’t write murder stories, or thrillers where characters are bumped off in a variety of gruesome ways, I thought it was something I didn’t need to think about.

However, it appears the phrase originated with Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch who wrote: Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

He was referring to passages that you may think represent some of your best writing. I’m not sure I really have any of those, but I think it can equally refer to killing words, paragraphs, scenes, and even chapters in your story that aren’t necessary, even though you may have sweated blood over them while writing your first draft.

I had plenty of experience of this during the first dead-end drafts of ‘Irish Intrigue’. A scene where the heroine slips and breaks her ankle had to go as it proved too ‘inconvenient’ for her to be immobilised for the next few week. Similarly a Christmas Eve scene also had to go because it brought the hero and heroine together much too quickly. Although I loved both those scenes, they simply didn’t work with the rest of the story – so I had to kill them (but I’ve kept them in a separate file just in case I want to use them sometime in the future).

As well as deleting scenes that don’t work, there are also the scenes that aren’t necessary. I deleted several of these in ‘Irish Intrigue’. Two were of the heroine interacting with the hero’s two children. I thought they were necessary to show her growing relationship with them – but did the scenes need to be so long? One of them covered over two pages. Highlight and delete – ouch! I loved the scene, but managed to convey what was necessary in half a page.

Conversations, too, can be cut or at least shortened. My characters do have a tendency to rabbit on, and my huge word cull for ‘Irish Intrigue’ showed me plenty of occasions when I could cut unnecessary chunks from their conversations. In one case I deleted a whole phone conversation between my heroine and her best friend. I thought I needed it to show the heroine’s confusion and conflicted feelings, but it was actually just a rehash of information and feelings the reader already knew.

My mantra became: Does this add anything to the story or to the characters? Is it absolutely necessary? If not, out it went. I won’t say I didn’t have some regrets at times, but ‘killing my darlings’ did in the end make the story sharper and faster-paced, and I learned a lot from doing this which I hope will stand me in good stead for future stories.

14 comments:

  1. Paula, you must have discovered ways to identify the killable darlings.
    Can you share some?

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    1. Most times it was simply by saying, "Is this absolutely necessary?" If I'd been short on words, I might have left some scenes or conversations in, but I was cutting words with a vengeance, so I think my basic question was, 'What does this add to the story and/or characters?' If the answer was 'Not a lot' or 'Nothing that hasn't already been said/shown', I deleted it!

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    2. Or she has obnoxious critiquers who say, "Why are you telling me this AGAIN???" :)

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    3. That's the best kind of critique to have, Jen :-)

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  2. I don't think there's much chance of me 'Killing my Darlings", Paula. I'm so economical with words that I often have to go back and put something in. I love the expression, though.

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    1. I need to train myself to be more concise, Margaret, and not let my characters run away with me!

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  3. The phrase sounds very 1930s actress drama diva and I love it! I also thought it originally referred to killing characters, but you're right, deleting our words can be equally painful.

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    1. Think Sir Arthur Q-C first coined it in 1916, but yes, it does sound like 1930s, or even like Downton Abbey!

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    2. I imagine Agatha Christie and the actresses from The Mirror Crack'd.

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    3. No idea. I was really, really young when I saw it. Not sure I would have known who she was at the time.

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    4. Lady Mary in Downton could say the words perfectly LOL!

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  4. My problem isn't overwriting and needing to kill my darlings, but underwriting and needed to adopt additional darlings to bring a story up to print length.

    I've found my niche is novellas, however I do enjoy having paperback copies of my own books, so I do delve into longer stories at times.

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    1. It's interesting that you and Margaret both have to add additional darlings!
      I used to write a lot of short stories for magazines (3-5,000 words) but I seem to have lost that skill now. Not sure I could write novellas either, although I've thought about trying one sometime.

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