Why Writers Must Learn to Kill Their Favorite Scenes to Create Unforgettable Stories
Writing tips: kill your darlings.
Some writing tips are cryptic.
When I first came across writing advice that said, “Kill your darlings,” I thought it meant we should kill off our favorite characters. That seemed ridiculous. I mean, there are situations in which a story calls for characters to die, but to make a sweeping rule that we should default to killing off our most beloved characters is pretty extreme.
Almost immediately, I realized it was so ridiculous that it couldn’t possibly be the intent of the statement, and I concluded that although “kill your darlings” means that we should be willing and prepared to kill our favorite characters if the story calls for doing so, it also has a broader meaning: We writers must be prepared to cut our favorite sentences, paragraphs, and chapters, if doing so improves our work.
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