What are darlings, and why do you need to kill them off?
Overwrought and overthought, belaboured and beloved. A darling is a tired metaphor; a paragraph that took hours and hours to get just right. It doesn’t serve its intended purpose and yet you haven’t the heart to let it go.
“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”
— William Faulkner
A darling is a non-load bearing pillar, ornate and covered in carvings of garlanded cherubs; it’s Rococo while the rest of the room’s been done up in industrial. Question is, how can you learn to identify darlings despite being biased?
How to identify and remove darlings
The following writing tip is a surefire strategy to identify darlings. Go through your writing paragraph by paragraph and annotate each one by stating its purpose. Describe not what it is but what it does.
“A darling is a non-load bearing pillar, ornate and covered in carvings of garlanded cherubs; it’s Rococo while the rest of the room’s been done up in industrial.”
For example, about the above sentence, I might write, “The purpose of this sentence is to define darlings and explain why they’re bad for your writing using an architectural analogy”.
I must emphasise again that the trick doesn’t work without the correct framing. If you write, “In this paragraph I describe…” that’s a no-go. You’ll be factually correct, but you won’t get at the crux of the problem. However, if you explicitly state the purpose of each paragraph, you might realise that one or more of the following apply:
the paragraph is not effectively serving its purpose
you have no clear purpose
it serves its purpose admirably but is a repeat of the paragraph above it
Repetition for the sake of style or emphasis is, of course, permitted. After all, when Shakespeare's Othello says, "Put out the light, then put out the light" he does not mean the same thing both times. Rather, he is referring to snuffing out both a candle and a human life.
Now that you’ve identified your darling, it will require a rehaul or even an outright deletion. Highlight it so you can inspect it later; you’re unsure and that’s okay. Just kidding. We’re in the business of cold-blooded slaughter here, there’s no room for sentimentality or indecisiveness.
Do you have the immediate urge to undo the highlighting? No? Then it’s most likely a darling. Now here’s the real test: delete the phrase, line or paragraph altogether. How do you feel? I bet you hardly miss, let alone remember, it.
Which leaves you…
A̶ ̶d̶a̶r̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶n̶o̶n̶-̶l̶o̶a̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶a̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶p̶i̶l̶l̶a̶r̶,̶ ̶o̶r̶n̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶c̶o̶v̶e̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶c̶a̶r̶v̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶g̶a̶r̶l̶a̶n̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶c̶h̶e̶r̶u̶b̶s̶;̶ ̶i̶t̶’̶s̶ ̶R̶o̶c̶o̶c̶o̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶l̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶o̶o̶m̶’̶s̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶d̶u̶s̶t̶r̶i̶a̶l̶.̶
…free to carry on with the (cold-blooded) business of writing.
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