writerjenn

Something I discovered last night while performing surgery on a manuscript:
If I'm on the fence about deleting a passage, it helps to stop rereading the marked-for-deletion passage, and instead focus on the stuff around it, the stuff that will be left. If it reads more smoothly, the passage has to go, no matter how wonderful the deleted part is. After all, there's always the attic to hold those priceless gems.

No, I have not morphed into a villainess out of a V. C. Andrews novel.  Today's writing technique is my own personal way of dealing with the advice to "kill your darlings."

For those who may not have heard this one, a "darling" is a pet phrase, scene or character that may not belong in the current writing project (usually it's committing the sin of irrelevance), but is so wonderful that we just can't bear to cut it out.  Wise writers know that if something doesn't belong, it doesn't belong, no matter how darling it is.  Therefore, "kill your darlings."

My solution to the squeamishness over sending a darling into cyber-death is to simply move it to another file, which I call an "attic."  The attic functions the same way as the attic in a house: it holds the stuff that doesn't belong downstairs, but seems too good to throw away.

If the story I'm working on is called, say, "Golden Apples," the story file might be called "goldapps."  I create another file called "goldappsattic."  That's where I stash all the darlings I delete from "goldapps."  Once in a while, I find something in the attic that really does belong back in the original story, and it's a simple matter to cut and paste it back.  Occasionally, something in the attic finds its way into an entirely different story.

It's amazing how many times I can read an edited story with a darling removed, and find that I really don't miss the darling.  The story flows, and there's no hole there.  That's a big clue that the darling didn't belong.