K is for Kill your Darlings

"When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story." 
                                                                                                                                                                  Stephen King (On Writing)

There comes a time when we all have to commit novel carnage. Whether it be a minor character who does nothing for the plot, our favourite scene/line/chapter that goes nowhere. Yep, sooner or later we have to kill our darlings.

I'm a writer that has no trouble torturing my characters. I love to edit and I'll edit ruthlessly. I'll cut adverbs and redundant dialogue tags all day, but killing my darlings is hard sometimes.

We pour our heart and soul into those words. We want to hug those scenes that make us giggle because we remember writing them. We send the draft off to our CP's and wait. They'll love it as much as we do, right?

They probably will, but they'll also notice those little bits you are unsure of. They hone in on scenes that are great, but don't advance the plot. They suggest the line we love more than cookies could be cut and tighten the pace. They point out that character who is only in one scene and doesn't do anything.

We can cry. Stamp our feet, put our fingers in our ears and go "la la la la la," but it won't change what we know deep down -- sometimes we have to kill our darlings. So we ponder over it Delete it, paste it back. Delete it and read it again. And it's better without it. So we send them into the deleted scenes file, crossing our fingers we'll use them one day.

Sometimes those words have to take a sacrifice for the team.