What does 'Don't be afraid to kill your darlings' mean?

I see this advice tossed around a lot and all the times I've seen it, it's always left at just that, with no context whatsoever.

Is it meant to be taken literally or something else?

 

I take it to mean, "don't hesitate to kill the characters you've created and which might be your favorites as a writer, when you've thought of a suitable plot point where they eventually die." Some of our beloved characters have to die, hopefully meaningful deaths. That's how I perceive this saying at least.

Don't literally kill anyone. Won't be excused. "Literally"... huh! Funny.

 

It means don't get too attached to particular things in your stories, be ready to throw out anything and everything when it becomes necessary. If you're not that blunt and tough on yourself, you won't be able to get rid of that one scene that you really really like but it's screwing up the flow and killing the whole story.

 

If you have darlings in your life, it's most certainly NOT to be taken literally.

What the others have said. Sometimes the bit you like best just doesn't work and that edit can be painful.

 

Yeah, broadly speaking, 'Kill your Darlings' is advice meant to warn writers against not changing or removing a part of your writing even when everyone is telling you that project would be better without that part.

Writing is very personal. Our stories and ideas mean a lot to us and we easily get attached to characters, plotlines, scenes, even small things like individual paragraphs or lines. It's difficult for most creators to locate such 'darlings' in their own work, even if those darlings are actively making that thing worse. When we receive feedback that tells us, "I didn't like this thing, the writing is weaker as long as this thing is here", we need to be willing to consider that point of view, and try to imagine what that piece of writing would look like without that darling. Because sometimes, we end up liking that version more than the one we actually wrote.

 

In business school (university) the prof had two bits of advice he said repeatedly: there's no free lunch and don't fall in love with your assets.

It's very easy to love something in your writing be it a character, a sentence, a paragraph or a chapter. It's akin to missing the forest for all those darling little trees you love so much. Sometimes they just have to go.

I cut my darling paragraphs or chapters out by sending them to a 'not using now' file. It's so much less painful than sending them to the trash. After a bit of time you forget all about those little darlings and your work looks so much better for it.

 

My reaction is that I shouldn't be afraid to edit and cut away parts of the story that, though I personally enjoy, but doesn't do anything for the story overall.

 

This is how I understand it, too. Like, in my current project, originally the murder victim's mistress was a character. She had a whole backstory, detailed personality and a few darkly funny lines. I really liked her, as did my alpha reader. Ultimately, though, her character just didn't fit into the story and her role in the plot could easily be managed in tighter ways which would improve the story as a whole, so she had to go. Sorry, Ellie!

 

I had a section of my book dedicated to a girl, the daughter of my main villain, going to boarding school in Switzerland and her adventures when she traveled with her friends to California for Christmas.

But the story wasn't going anywhere, so I cut the whole thing out.

 

There is an editing book called "Murder your darlings", written by Roy Peter Clark. It explained where the quote comes from (a 20th century author, don't remember who).

 

My impression is that, in writing, if you have found a particular element of your story, that you have worked hard on and become attached to, is not contributing to or helping the overall piece you would employ the practice of 'killing your darlings' to make it better.

 

I just realized that I have to completely rewrite my story with a bunch of new concepts that I plan to introduce. But it's okay. I'm actually really excited because I love these characters but as the story is now, it doesn't have enough in it to make it interesting.

 

I think it means if your kids keep interrupting you so that you can’t finish your story, you gotta do what you gotta do.

 

Um... give up on the story, right?

 

Yes, that’s also an option.

 

This site is selling classes but has a strong etymology on the phrase and a description of what it means:

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-does-it-mean-to-kill-your-darlings

 

I actually think something slighty different should be done, because contex is very useful: For each draft, make a separate copy of the previous draft to work from. Then go ahead and be completely ruthless. The parts you love remain, safe and in situ, in your previous draft, so you're not really killing them.

But then, if you go "wait a min, that version is better..." you don't have to wade through a mass of out of context clips, you can use the context you remember to go back to the scene in the previous draft- or to the version before it was cut, if you're multiple drafts later.

This also gives you visible progress in the improvement of the novel, which can be helpful for people who have difficulties traking their improvement. There maybe little difference between draft 1 and 2, but there should be a lot between 1 and 5.

Besides, text does not take up much space on a computer. Your finished novel won't take up more than a few megabytes, if even that. In a world where it's possible to find 128 Gigabytes for under 20 bucks? You could have dozens of full drafts and have plenty of room to spare.

 

I don't think it necessarily refers to characters, although I guess it could. I always saw it as referring to the actual writing; lines, paragraphs, scenes, chapters, etc. You can't get too attached to anything in your first draft. Sometimes there are things that just don't work with the story. It might be that they belong somewhere else, or it might be that they just don't fit at all.

For example, the idea that sparked the first novel I wrote was an imagined conversation between two "henchman"-archetype characters about their job. I wrote a whole book around the concepts expressed in that dialogue; one could argue that the entire book only existed to be a vehicle for that one scene.

On the second editing pass, I came to the conclusion that the dialogue scene which had been the genesis for the whole book had to go. It wasn't nearly as funny or clever as I thought it was originally, it fiercely interrupted the pacing, and it didn't really add anything to the overall narrative by that point. I was only still including it because I was attached to it and because it was a sort of "legacy" piece of the book I didn't want to lose.

So after trying and failing to figure out where else in the book it might fit better, I cut it out. The improvement to the story as a whole was immediate and dramatic. The action it had previously interrupted now flowed seamlessly, and the only thing I had really lost was my personal connection to the behind-the-scenes history of the story.

I'm pretty sure that's what "Kill your darlings" means. That scene was very much a darling to me, but the story was better without it. It's about taking an objective, darn-near-utilitarian view of your work, without treating it like the child of your loins. Every sentence either pulls its weight and earns its keep, or it goes, no matter how emotionally invested you might be in it.

 

No, it isn't. I've already paid for the headstone.

 

Sometimes we love parts of our stories, character. or sections of our prose itself. And maybe these things we love our good things, but maybe they just seem like good things. This is where it can be very hard for a writer to judge when it's their own work. We, as the writers, might even feel like something is such an important part of our story and we can't imagine taking it out or changing it. However, sometimes these things in our writing are actually hurting our work rather than helping it. These are the darlings that need to go. It can be very hard to spot these things on our own, and it's common for a writer to be resistant when advised to kill such darlings. They are called darlings for a reason.

When I sell my writing I tend to listen to my editors 100 percent when it comes to the changes they want. They've bought the story now so the rest of my job is to make it exactly how they want it. It's hard sometimes, but it's important not to get too attached to anything. And when those darlings go, a story is always better for it.