Writing Prompt: Finding Your Darlings

In order to "kill your darlings" you have to find them first.

Introduction

William Faulkner is often heralded for having coined the term “Kill your darlings,” but the first use of it actually stems from Arthur Quiller-Couch's 1916 book, On the Art of Writing. He says,

“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.”

(more about this phrase can be found here)

So what does that mean?

Sometimes, when we have a chapter, or a section, or a paragraph, or even a sentence, that really speaks to us as writers, we can be blinded to its overall use in the piece as a whole.

So, you may ask, how do we determine when something is, in fact, a darling that needs to be murdered?

Ask Yourself These Questions

Identifying a “darling” is one of the hardest things to do as an author.

First of all, we’re blinded by how much we love it. We want it to have a place in the work, and it makes us feel good because maybe if we wrote a sentence (paragraph, page, chapter...) like that one then we, surely, aren’t as bad an author as the little demon in our ears tries to convince us we are.

But, sometimes, for the sake of the poem, essay, short story, novel, etc. we need to take out that snippet in order to preserve the meaning and concision of the piece as a whole.

So, these are a few questions you can ask yourself to help you find and eliminate the darlings you so love.

1.) Is this darling located where it should be?

Sometimes murdering our darlings isn’t a matter of taking out the idea or concept entirely, but about moving it or changing it, so it fits. Sometimes our sentences are truly wonderfully well written, but in the wrong place.

If I’m talking about oranges for a page and a half, and then suddenly insert a wonderfully written single sentence about apples, and then continue talking about oranges again, what’s wrong isn’t that I wrote a sentence about apples, it’s that I placed my sentence about apples in my chapter about oranges.

It needs to be in my chapter about apples.

Now, keep in mind, this is not to say that authors can’t decide intentionally to throw around their readers from one scattered thought to the next. In fact, this can be a wonderful writing tool, particularly when writing about a character that is scattered in much the same way. But, it matters that these sorts of choices are intentionally made, so that the author can lead the reader’s thought process along and deliberately throw a wrench in it.

2.) What is the context of the paragraph?

If I have a sentence that’s a darling, chances are whenever I read it I feel warm and fuzzy and excited that I came up with it. I’m not considering the larger context of that sentence.

So, what should I do when I come across a sentence I truly love?

Zoom out.

Sometimes, you’ll find a sentence like this and it will fit well and genuinely work with the rest of the things around it. But other times, you’ll realize that it’s a great sentence, but it’s not adding anything to the paragraph that hasn’t already been said.

That’s a darling.

There’s two things you can do here:

1.) You can cut the sentence you love, in benefit of the clarity of the whole paragraph.

OR

2.) You can cut the paragraph and keep the sentence, knowing that you will have to alter the things around it to make it fit.

Either choice is fine, but more often than not, keeping a paragraph with clearer and more concise sentences is going to benefit a reader more than keeping one sentence that’s unique. And the question should always be “what benefits the reader?”

That leads well into my next point.

3.) Does this sentence, or paragraph, or page lead my reader to further clarity and understanding of my story?

This fact, in particular, can be a tough pill to swallow, but…authors are not writing for ourselves.

We are writing to transmit the story we have in our heads to the reader, who didn’t think of it. We are writing for the sake of the reader.

So, by nature, our task is one of service.

Therefore, my pleasure in writing the story should always come second to clarity because the goal is to instill my story in the reader’s mind. In fact, I would argue that anything you want to keep at the potential detriment to the reader’s understanding is a darling.

Anecdotally, the teachers in my undergraduate education would always say to go for clarity over anything else, even style. And it took me many years to fully understand and implement that advice (and to understand that choosing clarity, most of the time, means killing your darlings).

4.) If I cut this, what will it do?

Something that’s helped me, not just with killing my darlings, but with editing as a whole is the simple curiosity “what would happen if….”

What would happen if I cut this sentence? (Then read the paragraph out loud without that sentence included. Did it make it better? Worse? Why?).

What would happen if I changed the wording here? (Then read it out loud with those potential changes. Did it make it better? Worse? Why?)

Sometimes, it can help to see what the writing would be without your darlings because you can think clearly about what your options actually are. The question, then, is no longer “should I cut this?” it’s “will cutting this make it better?”

If you agree that it will, make the cut because that was a darling.

Conclusion

Killing your darlings is a painful experience. It’s hard to take something you really love and decide that, for the benefit of the piece, it needs to go. But, it’s one of the most essential skills an author can learn.

What helps you to find your darlings and kill them? Do you have any other thoughts? I’d love to hear them.

Thanks for reading and, as always, happy writing!