Dead "Darlings"

Stephen King’s book On Writing contains, among other helpful pieces of advice, this gem: Kill your darlings¹. Sounds very King-esque, right? What he means is that you need to chop out scenes or sentences or paragraphs that you are especially proud of but that don’t advance the plot or help the book in any way.


It could be a particularly evocative or cleverly phrased description, or a bit of backstory or exposition that slows your pace or contains information not crucial to the story. In earlier drafts of Hunter’s Moon, I had written some scenes from the “bad guy’s” point of view that my editor told me to cut because they gave away too much. (That’s one way to shorten a long book!) The vital-to-the-plot information those scenes contained, I had to find a way to sneak into other scenes, and I replaced some villain scenes with good-guy or neutral-character POV scenes.


Still, although I have learned to trust my editor (she is amazing!), I usually find it incredibly hard to kill my darlings. I love my little pets, and I want to stroke them, pet them, massage them . . . anyone getting the Tommy Boy reference? J But you have to take those naughty pets and rip them up! Your editor says chop them, and you sit there scowling at her note in the margin, and you mentally argue with it, and you’re in denial and then anger and then bargaining and the other stages of grief. You know, deep down, that your darling is already deceased. The dreaded knell has sounded. And now you have to bury that little pet in a separate document for deleted scenes.


You keep one of those, don’t you? You don’t just cut those darlings from your manuscript without saving them somewhere? Well, I do because I’m a pretty nostalgic person.²


I have a document for each of my novels, containing “darlings to resurrect.” I will try and sneak these paragraphs or scenes or descriptions back into the story somewhere else if I can. I’m almost never able to, but with Hunter’s Moon I did pull off one significant resurrection—editor-approved! It’s the scene with Erickson in the diner, talking to Joelle the waitress. Its earlier manifestation got cut, as it wasn’t too relevant to the plot. But later I found a way to make it fit in and work! Now it provides a character with motivation to make a choice, instead of just listening in on his thoughts.


For funsies, here’s a little (non-spoilerish) snippet that wasn’t able to be worked back into Hunter's Moon:



[from chapter 1, showing the girls camping before their night hike]


The sun had sunk below the tops of the trees by the time the girls finished their dinner of hot dogs, chips, and lemonade. Mel and Pam lingered on the picnic table bench, gazing at the peaceful scenery and enjoying the feel of wind brushing their faces.


“Look,” Mel said in a low voice, pointing to the edge of the woods. A raccoon slinked out of the underbrush. It loped over to the rusty trash can at the empty site next to theirs, stood on its hind paws, and sniffed. Then it scratched and scrabbled its way up the can and dove inside. A hollow, metallic thump rang out when it landed—the can must not have been very full. Mel couldn’t help but grin at the cute critter’s antics. “Better luck elsewhere, little buddy.”


The family across the circle had retired into its camper, and the RV remained a silent monolith, dark against the darker woods. Even as Mel wondered about its occupant, she gave a contented sigh and said, “It’s so nice out here.”


“Mm-hmm. The air is so fresh.” Pam drew in a deep breath. “I love the scent of pine.”


Somewhere nearby, a cricket began to chirp. “Whoa,” said Mel, “they’re not that loud back on campus.”


“Yeah, thank goodness. It’s hard enough for me to get any rest when you keep talking in your sleep,” Pam said. She snickered.


“Do I really do that?” Melanie put her hands on her hips. “You always tease me about it, but—”


“Oh, you do. Almost every night. And you say all kinds of strange stuff, like ‘Where did you put my potato?’ One time you laughed—it kind of freaked me out.”


Mel couldn’t help but giggle, even as heat crept into her cheeks. “At least I don’t snore.”




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¹ Apologies if this post's title is triggering. I can empathize: My baby brother died when I was 14. As if adolescence wasn’t already torturous enough, and then that happened, throwing my mom into the deepest pit of depression for years right when I needed her the most. She went to a professional counselor for about a decade, and fortunately the tragedy didn’t rip our family apart but brought us closer together.


² I also still have in my file cabinet the series of (very short) books I “published” when I was about 8. I wrote them in marker (a different color for each book, in rainbow order—skipping yellow) on 8.5x11” pages folded in half and stapled together. (No, I will not be showing those in this blog! ;-P )

Why Stories?

Some months ago, while I was on a Madeleine L’Engle reading (and re-reading) kick, I came across a fascinating quote about fiction. Two of L’Engle’s granddaughters wrote an Introduction that is printed in newer editions of the Austin family books. Here’s the part of their intro that resonated with me, and that I’ve been ruminating on:


“All of Madeleine’s writing, fiction and nonfiction, was an example of how all narrative is fiction, and all fiction can be true. She wrote and lectured extensively on the difference between truth and fact, arguing that it is through story that we human beings approach the truth, not through facts, which can only get us so far. [They would see their grandmother in her various characters, like Meg Murry and Vicky Austin.] . . . At seventeen, we were cynical about the blur between fact and fiction, and thought we could read our grandmother as if she were a book. In our mature adulthood, we recognize how rich and complicated our grandmother was, and that fact can be the springboard for fiction, and fiction can inform who we are and tell us about ourselves.” (emphasis mine)


Sometimes, “Just the facts, ma’am” is required and appropriate, like with legal matters. But while facts do contain truth, they do not have a monopoly on it.


I am naturally drawn to Platonic ideals—unseen realities being greater than the seen/physical realm. I’m a very intuitive and spiritually-minded person. Otherworldly, you might say. (Or maybe bonkers. Haha.) I do read non-narrative nonfiction—it makes up a lot of what I edit—and find it to be helpful and enjoyable. But I am most drawn to narrative and outright fiction works. I absorb truth from them in much larger and more impactful amounts.


For example, take Ted Dekker’s The Forgotten Way vs. his A.D. 30 and A.D. 33 books. They go together and have the same message. All three spoke to my soul, but the two fiction books (the A.D. ones) much more so. In those books, we travel and suffer and learn with the main character, Maviah, an outcast who rises to become a queen. I saw glimpses of myself in Maviah—desires and character flaws and the need to learn the same lessons. I felt her agony when her son was killed, or when she languished in prison. I’m not saying non-narrative nonfiction is without emotion (it can arouse that in me too) but it goes so much deeper with fiction/narrative.


Probably a big part of it is showing vs. telling. We fiction writers constantly hear the advice: “Show, don’t tell.” It is much more gripping to be given examples in story form, with characters who face obstacles and make choices, than to just be told: “Don’t lie,” “Don’t steal,” “Help your neighbor,” etc. Think of Jesus’ parables, Aesop’s fables, or stories like the boy who cried wolf. They stick with us. We see what happened to the little boy after he repeatedly lied.


Stories also have heart. As an INFJ, I walk a fine line between preferring strong emotion and cold logic. (We’re the biggest thinkers of the feelers.) Sometimes I want all the feels, while at other times I need a break from them. But for something I read to truly make an impact in my life, for it to compel me to make a necessary change, my heart has to be in it. I have to “feel it in my jellies,” as Detective Pikachu says. Story/narrative/fiction touches the heart more deeply than, for example, a biology textbook ever could. I learned a lot about biology in high school and college, and I enjoyed the subject (except frog dissection); but I majored in English, without being fully aware of it at the time, for the stories. And those stories—Chaucer, Beowulf, Milton, Spenser, Shakespeare, etc., etc.—are what I remember the most clearly from all my lessons. They penetrated to my heart.


My life is a story. Your life is a story. The history of the world is a giant, unfolding story. Christians also believe that Truth is a person, Jesus—who came telling stories. Smaller stories, written stories, become truer when we read them and they make a difference in our lives, give us an “aha” moment, or simply cause us to smile and feel a connection to a character. Don’t undervalue pure entertainment.¹


So write your story with heart, and always with honesty. Even if you write fantasy with dragons and sorcerers, if you let the truths deeply ingrained in Story saturate your work, you will be writing something that matters. You will connect with your readers. And you will participate in one of the greatest ventures mankind can undertake.





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¹ It is part of what anchored me, kept me on this earth, through the blackest depths of depression. I may write a post about that later.