As writers, we work painstakingly to craft beautiful sentences, paragraphs and stories. And then there comes a time when an editor says we need to cut 1200 words, or a client wants us to “tighten it up,” and the horror of having to delete those beautiful pieces often seems like too much to bear.
Yes, as a species, writers can be a bit dramatic about our words.
The phrase “killing your darlings” refers to the process of deleting exquisitely crafted, beautifully told lines and sections. They’re so beautiful! You want people to see you wrote such magic!
Here’s the thing: If you wrote that beautifully once, you can and will write that beautifully again. If a sentence (or entire chapter) doesn’t serve the story, or if it slows the story down, it doesn’t belong in the document. Period.
Over the years, I’ve developed two techniques to minimize the trauma of killing my darlings.
First, I always work from…
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