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There are a lot of articles out there that tell you how to kill your darlings but James Scott Bell at Kill Zone pleads for you to show them some mercy. Instead of killing them why not rehabilitate them?
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Don’t Kill Your Darlings—Give Them a Fair Trial!
I’ve never been a big fan of the writing admonition to Kill your darlings. It’s been a virtual axiom among writers for decades. Yet it seems to me about as useful as Destroy your delight and as cold-hearted as Drown your puppies.
I mean, if something is your darling, should your first instinct be to end its life? Sounds positively psychopathic.
Isn’t a darling at least owed a fair trial?
The phrase itself has its origin in a lecture on style delivered by the English writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch back in 1914. He said:
To begin with, let me plead that you have been told of one or two things which Style is not; which have little or nothing to do with Style, though sometimes vulgarly mistaken for it. Style, for example, is not—can never be—extraneous Ornament … [I]f you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘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.’
At least Sir Arthur was honest enough to call it murder! But murder requires malice aforethought, and that is a terrible way to think about a darling.
Darlingicide should be outlawed, not encouraged!