TECH: Murdering Your Darlings!

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 10 January 2013

The sheets are turning brown, so it must be time to summarize this. Writer's Digest, July 1995, pages 30 and 31 have an article by James Patrick Kelly with the title "Murder Your Darlings". The little headline under that title says, "Beware of having your story with extra characters, plot twists or words. To keep readers turning pages, you must tighten your prose. Here's how."

Kelly starts by pointing out that we fall in love with our own words. And that's fine, except that you're doing revision, "you must harden your heart, sharpen the ax and murder your darlings." But you really need to focus on the ones that are just ornaments, and aren't doing any work. He admits that some people like to try to fix problems by adding material. However, Kelly suggests that staying focused and cutting out paragraphs or even pages is more likely to help.

Next, Kelly reminds us that he's going to give some specific suggestions, but you really need to develop your own skill, not just follow a checklist. It's got to be almost an instinct for cutting, built up through practice. One of the ways that he tackles it is that he starts every writing day by paring and revising the work that he did the day before. Also, with a working draft in hand, he looks at two different stages, revision and deletion. In revision, his focus is on making sure that everything is there that needs to be there, plot, character, setting, theme. He looks for logic flaws and continuity breaks, and checks the spelling. Then in deletion, he's trimming.

How much trimming should you do? Kelly recommends 10%. So a 20 page draft should shrink down to 18 pages. What all are you going to cut?

1. Adjectives and adverbs! At the sentence level look for unnecessary modifiers. Make sure you use strong verbs.
2. Clumsy entrances and exits. Don't spend a lot of time getting your characters on stage or offstage.
3. Unnecessary scene or time switches. Always ask "Is this trip necessary?"
4. Overpopulation. Remember, your story should not be the clown car in the circus, with an incredible number of people popping out of it. You want the readers to care about your main characters, so they have to be able to see them. Keep your cast tight.
5. Overdramatization. Sometimes you can just tell the reader what is happening, without trying to build up a whole dramatic revelation.
6. Arriving early and staying late? No, stories should start in the middle of the action, and quit when they're done. A good story starts on page 1. And when it's time to leave, they leave!

Kelly recommends a couple of tricks to help you identify where you need to cut. First, read your draft aloud. There's a good chance that you can hear yourself getting interested or bored. Guess what needs to be cut. That's right, no room for boredom in your stories. Second, get a second opinion. It's amazing how someone else can pinpoint our problems for us.

He ends with the advice "Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it -- wholeheartedly -- and delete it before sending your manuscripts to press." Or "Murder your darlings."

So, what is on your revision list to watch out for? What are your hot spots? How did you find out that these were problem areas, how do you detect them, and what do you do about them? Go ahead, make up your own list!

Sharpen those stakes!