Kill Your Darlings

By M Alice

The mantra has been around the block, keeping company with many a writer.​

William Faulkner is usually blamed for it. I thought F. Scott Fitzgerald said it. Oscar Wilde, Eudora Welty, G.K. Chesterton, Chekov, and Stephen King often get the credit. King wrote, ‘Kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart.’​

Ten minutes on the interwebs got me the ‘fact’—do any of those still roam free in the wild? —that Arthur Quiller-Couch was first into print with it. In On the Art of Writing (1914), he said:​

‘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.’​

It means write whatever the hell you feel. Write what is in your head and most of all what spills from your heart—there’s a third source, but that’s for another tale.​

Write out the pain and frustration, the tears, the silly, giggly laughs. Every scent and sound, each wrenched or wretched moan, all the pangs of longing and nostalgia. Scatter diversions and sidetracks across the page. Write every choke, gasp and tiny whisper of hope.​

Lay it all out in a banquet of words and phrases. A dazzling patchwork of imagery.​

Then edit. Like a sculptor.​

Once, a sculptor who carved a massive, marvellous pink marble elephant was asked how he created it.​

He said, “It’s simple. Take a huge hunk of marble, a chisel and a hammer. Then chip away everything that’s not an elephant.”​

That’s the editing process.​

Cut away everything that’s not essential to drive the story.​

You’ll slay some of your best loved images, twists, phrases, and many metaphors. Afterward, all that you’ll have left will be the sharpest, most vivid, vibrant, and vital version of your story.​

There is a less painful way.​

But that’s for next time.​

M Alice loves to weave twisty tales of romantic suspense, with rock-hard heroes, kick-ass heroines, and thrilling layers of darkness and intrigue. M Alice has published for more than twelve years and has more than two hundred and fifty titles published over three pen names.