Overheard a writing teacher say "kill your darlings" and it finally clicked for me

I was at a coffee shop in Nashville last week and this older guy was talking to a student about cutting out their favorite sentences. I always thought that advice was just about being ruthless for no reason. But he explained that if you love a line too much to let it go, it's probably holding the story back because you're forcing it in there. I went home and deleted three paragraphs from my WIP that I was crazy proud of, and honestly the whole thing reads better now. Has anyone else had that moment where a piece of advice you heard a hundred times finally made sense?

3 comments

3 Comments

milesj7021d ago

Man I feel this so hard. I had this one description of a storm rolling in that I thought was the best thing I ever wrote. Kept it in for three drafts. Finally cut it and the next scene where a tree comes through a roof actually felt urgent instead of just more weather talk. For me the trick is to look at each sentence and ask dead honest: does this move the story forward or am I just showing off? If I can't answer yes in five seconds it gets the axe. Saves me time and my readers stop skipping pages.

paigem4521d ago

And that's the thing, it's not about being mean to your own work. It's about seeing the bigger picture. I had a whole chapter once where I described a sunset for three pages. Thought it was beautiful. But when I cut it, the story moved faster and the next scene hit harder. Sometimes the stuff you're most proud of is just you showing off instead of serving the story.

the_morgan21d ago

Three pages of a sunset sounds like a lot even if it was pretty. I get what the advice is saying but I also think people take it too far. I read a book last month where the author clearly cut every line that had any personality and it read like a Wikipedia article. @paigem45 I get wanting the story to move faster but sometimes the mood and the atmosphere are part of the story too. If you cut every beautiful description you end up with something boring and flat. There's a middle ground between showing off and stripping all the life out of your writing.