In My Experience: Murdering Your Darlings

As someone who had been on the whole writing bandwagon for some time now, I'm more than familiar with some of the popular terms and phrases that float around the writing community. I've always wanted to do a series of posts on how some of these terms apply to me and what my experience is with them. So from now on, I'm going to call them the "In My Experience" posts, or IME.

 

Today I really want to talk about the phrase "murder your darlings". In short, it means cutting away the words, scenes, chapters, or even whole plots and characters that you love but that may not serve the purpose of advancing or deepening the novel. "Advancing" and "deepening" are obviously fluid words that can be subjectively defined. There are many posts out there that do the task of delineating exactly what is considered a "darling" and how you might "murder" them, and I encourage you to find them if you are still curious, because I won't be going into much more depth.

The selection of this particular phrase is inspired by the fact that I was lucky enough to have the wonderful Mara select me as her mentee for this year's PitchWars. Because of this, I'm a part of the 2015 PitchWars mentee Faceook group, where talented and awesome writers encourage each other and commiserate together. The term "murder your darlings" has popped up in the stream of FB posts quite frequently because the abundance of darlings is a common problem that writers face. Now their wise mentors are encouraging them to take up the knife and cut away.

So IME, how have I dealt with murdering the darlings?

I haven't, and here is why.

If you've read some other posts of mine, you probably know that when I first got into writing, it was through the medium of fanfiction. And if you have ever read or written some fanfiction, you know the prevalence of "fluff" scenes. Fluffy scenes are basically the darlings. It makes sense that the darlings and fluff thrive in fanfiction. Readers and writers already adore the original work or canon that inspires the fanfic. They aren't necessarily reading or writing the next best classic or looking for something "deep". I've been in a place where all I wanted to read about was two characters, whose relationship was never really explored in the cannon, just talking and doing cutesy things together. 

In my own fanfiction, I've written more than my fair share of fluff. My ability to write drool-worthy fluff was praised by my readers (who are the most supportive readers a writer could have), and this in turn bolstered my confidence in my general ability to write. Why not, I began to think, write a novel?

So I did. The end-result was a plotless thing that was entirely fluff. 

(Thinking back, this novel sort of got all the fluff out of my system. Nowadays, I rarely feel the burning desire to write fluff.)

I open it sometimes and reread some of the chapters. I still love it. But after finishing that MS and sending out like...one query, I shelved it because I realized that I had approached the novel as fanfiction, simply with my original characters rather than someone else's. 

Ever since, I've turned my plentiful experience as a fanfiction writer into a ruler, against which I measure how "fluffy" something might be while I'm drafting. This is how my fluff litmus test goes down:

Am I writing this scene/character interaction/character/chapter/(insert unit of writing here):

1. Primarily for romance?

• This one is pretty self-explanatory because I think it's the main cause of too many darlings. From the perspective of a YA writer, I can see why I'd want to sweep the reader off his/her feet with that gorgeous romance. But it's all too easy for the writer to also get swept off his/her feet, and that's when we have scenes that are just there for the romance and don't do much else.

2. Because I really just want X thing to happen because I know that I can write it well? 

• Example: A writer who is also a cook who likes to write random food scenes into the novel. This is not to say that you can't have scenes or an entire book built on top of cooking and food. You can if the food is central to the plot. IME, I do, however, have a tendency want to write what I know best or what comes easiest to me, which isn't always best for the story.

3. Solely to make myself, the writer, happy? 

• This question sounds pretty bad. No, I'm not saying that your writing should make you unhappy. I assure you that I love writing, but I've realized that some of my best scenes are the products of some struggle and complex planning in my head. Contrast this to the ease of writing fanfiction--the fluff just pours out and can put this grin on your face and you soak it up yourself. It's probably why my most popular fanfic ended up at 140k words, a pretty big no-no for conventional YA novels).

I'll subconsciously run through these questions when I'm drafting if I suspect that something is becoming a little too indulgent in the novel. If I answer "yes" to one or more, I'll take a step back and examine if I really need/want this scene. Most of the times, the answer is no. If the answer is "yes", I'll try to weave in something else so that the scene can multitask. 

There are downsides to being really strict on the fluff during the drafting stage, of course. For example, I more often than not underwrite instead of overwrite. I might have to go back to develop things more. The romantic arcs of my novels tend to take a backseat to the plot, so sometimes I do have to go back and insert more romance, or fluff. But I find inserting fluff more easier than cutting it away. Maybe it's simply because I'm a pessimist, but it feels better for me to grit my teeth and get the bare-bones, essential parts (and often harder to write parts) of the novel down before I indulge. 

Lastly, I am all for darlings. After all, while fanfiction and novels are beasts of different sorts, they often both have the same goal: bringing joy to the reader. And so of course there is a place for darlings, just in moderation. 

Hopefully, through reading about my experience with those beloved and dreaded darlings, you might gain some insights on how you treat them yourself! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the phrase! And good luck and much chocolate to everyone who is revising like I am for PitchWars!