Kill Your Darlings
Some of my most favorite passages I’ve ever written were things the world will never see. While beautiful and poetic—to my ear, anyway—they added nothing to the plot of that particular story, so they had to go.
I was once editing a story for a friend, this was back in the very early 2000s, and she had a scene in a park where a side character goes on a rant about something or other, I think it was about fast food. I crossed it out with the notation “author intrusion”. The author really liked the bit, though, and fought for it. I insisted it had to go because, while it had meaning for the author, it was a point she wanted to make about society, it really had NOTHING to do with the plot or the story she was telling.
In the end, she had to kill her darling.
This is a phrase you hear a lot when you start writing, but what does it mean?
Put simply, it means that, when you reach the editing phase, that line that you think the world is going to faun over, that side plot or supporting character you think gives the story flavor, chances are very good it doesn’t. In fact, chances are just as good it’s unnecessary fluff that is only going to distract from the main plot. Readers don’t have time for your bullshit. Tell the story, and tell it in the most straightforward manner you can. Anything that isn’t THE STORY has to go, no matter how interesting you think it is, no matter how purple the prose may be, and no matter how cleverly YOU think the passage doles out some universal truth.
In fact, that last one definitely HAS to go. That’s author intrusion and it has no place in your story. YOU have no place in your story, even if the story is told in first person. In the world of the story, you don’t matter. You don’t exist. Only the story exists, only the story matters.
Kill your darlings.