Kill your darlings

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Layla Nahar

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Yes, writers do.

I disagree. I think someone with the aesthetic common sense to produce a functioning piece of writing examines such statements to understand what they really mean. Those who adopt them wholesale are those who fail to understand what one does as a writer. Call me elitist if you like.

Why is King copping flak for this?

Right? Didn't Johnson (that's who it was, right?) say this about 300 years ago? 'When you find something you think is particularly fine, strike it out' -

Lol, holy crap. My mind just went '.......................'
It flat-lined.
I know
 

quicklime

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I don't like the term 'your darlings' because surely the whole work should be your darling. The way some people talk about writing is that its a clinical process, a streamlined service for others when in fact I see it as the opposite - a passionate pursuit of expression. If I paid serious attention to this, It would really limit my creative flow. Writing is sensual, we should all make love with our words.

bear in mind that to be fair, a good many writers do not romanticize what they do in this manner.

in fact if I ever said something like "make love with my words" it has only been facetiously.


your mileage may, and should, vary, but it is a large world out there. perhaps the pragmatism above is part of why I have so little issue with the phrase in question.
 

JustSarah

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So most of the time they are accusing the author of ego stroking? Or is the context different?
 
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Barbara R.

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We've had any number of threads here concerning bad, hackneyed, meaningless bits of common advice doled out to writers, often by other very successful writers. An entire book could probably be compiled of comments concerning "Show, don't tell," as just one example.
caw

I'd just like to point out that the advice to "Kill your darlings" refers to writing only.
 

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What Quiller-Couch likely meant

So most of the time they are accusing the author of ego stroking? Or is the context different?

I have no idea what other writers purport to mean by "kill/murder your darlings."

I do know that the earliest attested use of it was by Quiller-Couch and he was objecting to style-as-display or egotistical ornament or as he put it:

Arthur Quiller-Couch said:
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.

That is, he is objecting to text that serves only as ornament to a writer's ego, to show how very clever the writer is.

It is not, in other words, advice to kill every thing you love in a text, just those bits that have no other purpose in a text than satisfying the author's artistic ego.

It doesn't mean you can't have clever or witty characters, for instance.
 

Mr. Breadcrumb

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Yeah, this is one I don't have much of a problem with, and I'm not one for prescriptive nuggets in general.

Partly because it's so hard to see how it could be taken wrong as so many seem to. I mean, you'll end up in a logic spiral if you really believe the advice is to remove anything you like. After all, if you should not like anything you like then do you still like the things you like because you don't like them? (Also, never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.)

Practicality is the key, here. It's possible for a word or a sentence or a chapter to be a beautiful piece of art in its own right. The best thing you've ever made. But if it doesn't make the whole work of which it's supposed to be a part better, it doesn't matter how beautiful it is or how much work you put into it. No sentence, no matter how wonderful, will save a bad book.

If you find yourself trying to solve a problem and your argument against a solution is that it removes a little line you're really fond of, don't you kind of know what the right answer is already?

It's a form of the sunk cost fallacy. Nothing is off the table if cutting it makes the whole better.

If removing it makes the whole worse, then you have a concrete reason for keeping it and it isn't merely a darling, it's pulling it's weight as a member of the team.
 
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