Kill your darlings.
Cue eyebrow raise from me.
Well, this advice would have been handy the week before when my sister annoyingly borrowed my favourite Kookai top and dropped curry sauce all over it.
Unfortunately, my media tutor was not talking about taking a bayonet to my loved one [the open-endedness of that phrase is what appealed most to me]. He was talking about cutting of a different kind: being rid of those verbose elements of your writing to cut to the chase. I have been practicing this with my written and spoken words ever since I received this advice in 2002. [Though, I'm yet to tell a story to a friend under 46 minutes without being sidetracked. Baby steps, baby steps...]
It all comes back to ego?
It’s difficult for any writer to:
- limit themselves to brevity – how many writers are constantly over word-count than under it?
- have the courage to admit certain elements of the piece do not move it forward. Writers’ egos are discovered with their writing talent, and it is difficult to admit their own words add nothing to the overall topic except that it sounds clever/funny. [“But isn’t that enough?” they cry. No. No, it's not.] The attachment to these darlings may even draw away from the topic and confuse the piece.
Writers who are too attached to a particular phrasing will find it extremely difficult to detach from them. Love is blind like that: you like it → you can’t be objective about it → you can’t judge it → and if you can’t judge it, it may just mean it’s probably not as good as you’d like to think. You may think the mispronunciation of “ekscape” is endearing, but to the rest of us it’s a speech impediment.
This is where an independent editor with fresh eyes and a neutral heart should step in (CF “The Write to Edit“) to finish the break up for you.
But can we bring it back to me, please?
[A variation of kill your darlings is “kill your babies”. I always found this blackly humourous as a children’s author.]
Killing your darling babies is especially pertinent when writing for children. I am often met with: “Oh, it should be easier to write for children than a real novel.” I am not taking personal offense to this statement, but that is wrong. Utterly and totally wrong, you moronic idiots. I feel like pouring my boiling hot coffee slowly into your laps while explaining the virtues of this Andrea Brown quote :
Most new writers think it’s easy to write for children, but it’s not. You have to get in a beginning, middle and end, tell a great story, write well, not be condescending – all in a few pages.
It’s very difficult to punch out one-liners and stick to one idea as it is to drum at a slow tempo and measure 3 ml quantities. Accuracy and relevance are highly valued, though difficult to achieve. And it is a must that it should be achieved.
Reading the current media pith that just can’t be spat out with the seeds proves this turn of phrase of darling killing cannot be repeated enough. If you think “killing your darlings/babies” is too harsh and a sour poison to swallow, just remember: by saving these darlings, you may just be killing your story.
CUT! Once you get on a roll, you can't stop...
[Photo courtesy of Jean Hou.]
