Letting Go: How to Kill Your Darlings in Fiction Writing
The famous writing advice "kill your darlings" is attributed to writer Arthur Quiller-Couch, who said, “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—wholeheartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”
This is your invitation to be ruthless in your editing process. Let go of beautifully crafted sentences or ideas that, though darling to you, ultimately don’t serve your story.
Killing Your Darlings
Picture this: You’re rereading the scenes you wrote yesterday, smiling at the way your characters are interacting and patting yourself on the back for the clever dialogue you’ve written. Then you realize, heart sinking, that while the scene is great, it isn’t leading anywhere interesting. In fact, it’s gumming up the story; dragging down the pacing.
But…but…you love it!
This has happened to me several times over the course of writing 45+ books, but one particular example stands out. When I was writing His Forbidden Kiss. Here is part of that scene:
Royce Knox was dressed in jeans—who knew he owned a pair of jeans?—and a dark T-shirt stretching over those delectable back muscles and broad shoulders. As if he sensed her, he stopped whistling and looked over his shoulder. His rumbly greeting of “good morning” paired with a wink nearly liquified her. She oozed into the kitchen and peeked around him to see a stovetop filled with a tray of cooked bacon, a plate of stacked pancakes, and scrambled eggs he was currently fluffing in a skillet. He turned off the heat and then turned it up when he bent for a kiss she gladly returned.
“Good news, bad news,” he announced.
“You forgot the potatoes?” she joked.
He opened the oven and showed her evidence to the contrary. “They were out of the freezer, but they still count.” He pressed another quick kiss onto her lips before taking out the hot potatoes and adding them to the spread. “The good news is that this is the best breakfast you’ll ever eat. The bad news is that I have to go into work. Jack called, and there are a few pertinent changes taking effect starting tomorrow morning. He’s expecting me shortly.”
“That is bad news.” She wouldn’t lie, she was already looking forward to them lounging on the back porch and sipping coffee while trading sections of the Sunday paper. “But I understand.”
“I didn’t get the call until after I started cooking. Sunday always meant big breakfasts at our house. It was the one day the family could hang out together because we’re workaholics. Guess it’s a tradition Dad hasn’t kept up.”
“I’m guessing it wasn’t you doing the cooking?”
“No. But I don’t have a private chef on weekends so I had to figure out a few things on my own.”
“No private chef on weekends!” she gasped. “You poor baby.”
There was a lot here that I absolutely loved. My hero, Royce, was, as it says above, a workaholic. He was very gruff and I wanted to show his softer side when he was with the heroine. But when I read through the scene again, I realized that something was off. While it was fun and gave me the cozy vibe I was wanting, it simply didn’t fit into the book.
But could it? I kept writing, and wound up with a knock at the door. It was my heroine’s mother who had arrived unannounced! I thought maybe I was onto something. A little added conflict and a bit of awkwardness…and then…nothing. I couldn’t justify why her mother showed up. It didn’t have any reason to be there.
So, what did I do? I cut the scene.
Mercilessly. And without pity.
I’m not going to lie—killing your darlings isn’t easy. The words can feel like your babies, especially if it was a particularly rough writing day where you “labored” for hours to write those babies! But I did it. I cut what you read above (and more). Once it was gone, I found the flow again and my book became better. The scene was perfectly fine (although would have improved with some more editing if I’d kept it) but it didn’t have a point. We weren’t gaining any great insight on the characters. We weren’t leading up to a scene that would be relevant later in the book.
Killing your darlings isn’t about taking out bad writing or scenes or ideas. It’s about taking out what you love for the betterment of the book.
I’ve killed darlings to the extreme. Superfluous characters? Cut. A lake house the stuff dreams were made of? Gone. Twenty thousand words written into the wrong direction? Poof—into the void.
At first, erasing your hard-won words and paragraphs—or, gasp! pages—can chip away at your soul. But we must let go of those darling words in order to make the book stronger. My little breakfast scene was charming and sexy…but it was also bulky and pointless. What I had written wasn’t working. And so, it had to go.
Why Killing Your Darlings Is Important
It’s easy to fall in love with the words you’ve written (especially when on deadline), but always remember the reason for them. Scenes and characters are there to serve the story, not only to look pretty or show off our grammatical prowess. If a scene or character isn’t moving the plot forward, or if they’re not foil for your main character, it might be time to show them the door.
As Mort Rainey [played by Johnny Depp] from Secret Window says right before hitting the Delete key, “This is just bad writing. So you know what to do. Just do it.”
The Felling Blow
Letting go of words you’ve spent time writing isn’t the most fun task on the planet (I don’t even think it makes the top 10), but once you read through your book without those stodgy scene-stealers, you’ll see the value in a good slashing.
Embrace the cuts! Murder your darlings if they’re dragging down the pace, and then celebrate your bravery. Self-editing is one of the best skills you can learn as an author. Cutting superfluous scenes instead of sending them intact to your editor will save you a ton of time on the book. There’s no sense in editing, discussing, or trying to imp.
Happy writing!
Jessica