Writing Words for Nerds #AtoZChallenge--K is for "Kill your darlings"

It’s funny how many times I’ve had to correct inexperienced writers when they talk about the piece of writing advice that says, “kill your darlings.”

Sometimes, they think “kill your darlings” means that a writer should create a darling and beloved character, and then kill that character.  

Yeah, no.

What’s funnier still is that, even though I know this isn’t what it means, I very often do kill my favorite characters. Toren dies (SPOILER ALERT: she doesn’t stay dead. That’s hardly a big spoiler, since that’s not a ghost telling Noa the story at the beginning of Toren the Teller’s Tale. ADDITIONAL SPOILER ALERT: this isn’t The Sixth Sense). I kill off Josh and Ashley in the first chapter of Ride of Your Life, and Tracy and Mack have already been dead for thirty years before the book begins. And Gilbert is already dying at the start of Why My Love Life Sucks, although that’s just so he can become a vampire and Amber’s platonic BFF, literally forever. All things considered, he probably wishes I had actually killed him, but what kind of story would that have been? I’ll tell you what kind: it would have been a very short story.

No, what “kill your darlings” means is that you should get rid of the sentences, turns of phrase or even scenes that are so exquisitely precious that they stick out in your manuscript like diamonds in a cat’s litter box. Diamonds don’t belong there, and neither do those literary darlings. They make the rest of your manuscript look bad. You can either elevate your entire manuscript to that level, or you can do the much more logical thing and “kill your darlings.” Erase them. Cut them out. Edit them out of existence.

Of course, they are darlings, which makes them hard to kill. “But I love them so much!” you might say.

True, true. But aside from being exquisite, what do they add to the story? Do they move the plot along? Do they reveal something about a main character that isn’t revealed any other way? If the answer to both is “no,” kill them. Kill those useless darlings now.

“But . . . But . . .”

*Sigh*

Look, I hear you.

Me, I’m a ruthless editor. You should see one of my mid-editing copies of Why My Love Life Sucks. I took out lots of scene and temporarily left them in the notes section so I could reconsider using them. My daughter loves this draft. She calls it the one “with the deleted scenes.” And some of those deleted scenes are pretty good. Some of them include pretty funny lines. But they didn’t fit. They were useless darlings, and they had to be killed. So I killed them. For the sake of the story as a whole, they didn’t make it into the final draft. And I’m glad they didn’t. I liked those darlings, but I love the story more. And that’s the thing—you have to love your story more.  

Okay, so here’s a compromise for anyone who’s having a hard time killing their darlings: cut and paste them into the notes. That way you can read your story with and without them. You can see if they do anything for your story, or if they’re just pretty diamonds that serve no function and don’t belong. And if you see they really don’t, but you still don’t have the heart to kill them, just take them out. I don’t mean with a gun or on a date. I mean put them aside. Make another document and put all your darlings there. Maybe one day you’ll write something where they actually move the story along. Maybe you won’t. Either way, your current story will be better without them.

Darlings only work when they serve the story. Otherwise . . . If you want readers to love the story, you have to put the story first. 

Writing Words for Nerds #AtoZChallenge--C is for Creating Characters

Anyone can write a story. 

It's true, and if you've ever played pretend or with dolls or action figures when you were little, you know it. 

Illustration:  © Shevi Arnold, 2003

Unfortunately, many of us lose that ability when we turn into adults. 

So how do we get it back? How can creating characters and plots become easy again? 

There are two ways to write a story: you can create a plot based on a character, or you can create characters based on a plot. Like a noun and a verb are required in every complete independent sentence, a character and a plot are required in every complete independent story. If you have one without the other, you might have a vignette. What you don’t have is a story.

So how do you create a character out of a plot?

And how do you create a plot out of a character?

For the first, take your plot and ask yourself who might have the greatest need to do the things the plot requires and the hardest time doing them. Need and obstacles to achieving the thing that’s needed are great hooks. When a character has both, the reader will need to see if the character gets what he or she needs, and the reader will need to find out how the character will try to overcome those obstacles. It’s as simple as that.

For example, our plot is that someone has been murdered and someone else will figure out who did it. Okay, so our main character is probably the person who needs to solve the murder mystery. But why? Maybe our main character is a detective, and it’s the MC’s job, but that’s been done a million times before. Let’s go for something original. Maybe this person is an astronaut on a space station, and the murdered person is the only other person on the space station. Hmm… That sounds too much like a 2001: A Space Odyssey. Let’s keep looking.  Maybe our main character is a kid who was taken from her foster home, and the murdered person is her abductor. She doesn’t know why she was abducted, if the murderer or the abductor were on her side, or even who she can trust. That’s good, because it’s original, the need is great, and there are a ton of obstacles. 

There are millions of possible characters we can create out of this simple plot. Maybe that’s why so many murder mysteries have been written.

For the second, take your character and ask yourself what he or she needs most. Then create a story around him or her having to overcome obstacles in order to get that need fulfilled.

For example, if you created the character of Harry Potter but didn’t know what the plot of his story would be, you’d see that his greatest need was “to have a family.” You’d then have to create obstacles for him, such as his parents having been murdered, him living in the wrong world for a magical boy, the Dursleys treating him like an outcast, his parents’ murderer wanting to destroy him, and so on. The plot would be all about Harry overcoming these obstacles to eventually create a new family, the one he has in the end with Ginny, Ron and Hermione.  

Is this the only possible plot for a story based on the character of Harry Potter? 

Of course not. However, if you have a clear and detailed idea of who your character is and what he or she needs, the best plot for that character should be fairly obvious: create obstacles for that character and watch him or her overcome those obstacles in a quest to fulfill that need.

But what if you don’t have what you need to even start creating a story? What if you don’t even have a plot or a character?

I’m reminding of something the great playwright Neil Simon said in his autobiographical book Rewrites (I’m paraphrasing): “Writer’s block isn’t when a writer has no ideas. It’s when a writer has so many ideas and doesn’t trust himself to choose the right one.”

The answer to that is to simply stop asking yourself what the right one is and just go for it, right or not. 

As in improv, your answer to any character or plot you think of should be “yes, and…”

Will it be the right one? Maybe, but probably not. The thing is, though, that if you keep answering “yes, and…” to every plot or character that pops into your head—and you keep showing the character trying desperately to overcome obstacles in a quest to achieve a great need—eventually you will discover the right one.  

And in the meanwhile, like a little kid who decides a stick is a sword and that means she’s an awesome pirate on an adventure, you’ll be having fun. 

Have a character but no plot? Three easy steps you can use to make one

If you have an idea for a character but don't know what to do with it, here are three easy steps that will help you create a great story:

1. find out what your main character wants most and make him/her want it or need it more and more.

2. find something that prevents him/her from getting that thing and make the obstacle bigger and more urgent (it can be internal, another character, or the world your character is in). 

3. bring the conflict to a head until the character resolves it by getting what he/she wants, letting go of what he/she wants (and possibly getting something better in return), or coming to accept being without the thing he/she originally wanted. 

A plot can have several steps, so your main character can start out wanting one thing, get it, and then want something else.  For example, in The Cat in the Hat, the main characters ("me and Sally") want something to relieve their boredom until they get it; then they want to avoid getting in trouble. 

These three steps have infinite possibilities depending on the main character(s), other characters, setting, style, and want/need.

If you have an idea for a plot but not a main character, you can easily turn that plot into a main character, too: whatever the objective of the main character in a plot is supposed to be, create a character who is strongly motivated to achieve that objective. Create other characters who are strongly motivated to stop the main character from achieving that objective. For example, some of the people who are motivated to solve a crime are a detective, a reporter, the accused, the victim, and the likely next target. Notice that the more motivated the character is to achieve the objective, the more compelling the story becomes. 

Why less description might be a good thing

“Psychologists have shown that over describing a character is a bad thing, because it doesn’t let readers fill in the blanks, which is necessary because it helps readers see themselves in the character’s shoes.” This is what an editor told me at an odd sort of writer’s conference . . . in a dream. Apparently I’m getting reassured at writers conferences in my dreams now, and this particular conference looked a lot like summer camp, except with adults wearing suits. The editor wore a funny hat, and she had the bunk bed under mine.Oddly, the advice still seems to make sense.