You know this writing advice, but do you follow it?
You know this writing advice, but do you follow it?
Plus: The origin of the advice
“Kill your darlings” may be the most well-known writing advice.
Even if this is your first time hearing it, its admonishment is clear: when you write something you love, proceed with caution. Those words are likely headed for execution.
I like how Forest Wickman defines the advice in an article for Slate titled “Who Really Said You Should ‘Kill Your Darlings’?”: “You have to get rid of your most precious and especially self-indulgent passages for the greater good of your literary work.”
Darlings tend to happen when you’re writing for the sake of being seen as a writer.
When your words sound so precious that you can’t bear cutting them.
When you read a line or two and want to applaud yourself.
When there’s a noticeable disconnect from the lines that precede and succeed your darling.
Darlings may cause a reader to enjoy your skill as a writer, but I’d argue they’d rather be impressed with your skills as a storyteller (even if you’re a nonfiction author). Darlings are like Toto at the end of The Wizard of Oz: they pull back the curtain to reveal just an average person fabricating the experience.
Put another cinematic way: A darling is an all-too-famous person in a little-known movie who suddenly takes you out of the story because the star seems so incongruous with the film. You momentarily forget the story because you’re thinking about the actor.
Darlings kill momentum because, when a reader encounters one, they’re more impressed with the storyteller than the story being told.
You don’t want to wow a reader with a line; you want to wow them with the full experience.
When you write for the sake of being known and revered as a writer, you’re writing for the wrong audience. Your readers may be tripping over darlings left and right.1
But when you read and edit your work as if you were a first-time reader who doesn’t know the editor, you’ll be more brutal on yourself.
Killing your darlings comes down to asking yourself one question: Did I write this for myself or for my readers?
But, here’s your saving grace: no murdered darlings need remain forever dead.
When you cut your indulgent writing, save them all into a new file. (Mine’s often called “Fertilizer.”) Use those words or the ideas behind them for content surrounding your book, like a behind-the-scenes look at what you removed.2
And you never know what ideas might be sparked from even your purplest of prose.3
Where did “Kill your darlings” come from?
It wasn’t Faulkner. Or Ginsberg. Neither was it Anton Chekhov, Oscar Wilde, Eudora Welty, G. K. Chesterton—although that one makes the most sense to me—or a host of other well-known writers to whom this quote is often attributed.
It wasn’t Stephen King either. He was just quoting the well-worn advice in On Writing when he wrote, “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” And, since King knows a thing or two about murdering words, I’d recommend following his advice.
But who first started killing darlings?
According to that Slate article, the earliest form of this advice, from whence all the others sprang, is by the not-famous-at-all writer Arthur Quiller-Couch. His 1914 lecture “On Style” was reprinted that same year in a book titled On the Art of Writing. Quiller-Couch said:
If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”
If you really need a place to dump the bodies of your murdered darlings, share your favorite purple prose in the comments.
Just promise me that you’ll always take a second, knife-wielding look at anything screaming, “Look how well I can write!”
Featured writer T-shirt
Today’s fitting writer T-shirt.
This one was a close second, but it’s pretty niche.
View all of the ridiculous T-shirts here. Some have stickers!
(I can take custom requests too, within reason.)
About Better Writing with Blake Atwood
I’m Blake Atwood, a nonfiction editor, author, and ghostwriter. My literary claim to nominal fame is as an early developmental editor on Atomic Habits, but I’ve worked on more than 60 books, including a few of my own. If this was forwarded to you and you’d like to subscribe, please do so below.
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However, if you’re one of the rare few who write only darlings, that’s different. I recently started Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and holy smokes am I a terrible writer in comparison.
That suggestion might only be for the brave.
For more on purple prose, see “How to Know If Your Prose Is Purple” by Joe Bunting at The Write Practice.