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Greg Pak@gregpak.bsky.social |
"Kill your darlings" only applies if you're holding onto something that actually hurts your story. But jerks sometimes use "kill your darlings" as a weapon to try to break you. Don't wantonly kill what you love the most about your story. That's why you're writing it. Make it work.
16 replies 273 reposts 993 likes
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Drew Melbourne
@drewmelbourne.com
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Yes. To put it in a historical context, cavemen wouldn't indiscriminately kill their children. They loved their children! They would only kill Derrick, whose cries were attracting rabid angry mammoths and sabretooth tigers.
1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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G. Willow Wilson
@gwillow.me
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I specifically needed to hear this today, thank you
1 replies 0 reposts 21 likes
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Sarah "Neila" Elkins
@neilak20.bsky.social
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It has taken me years to get over someone who used to do that to me. I am finally making the stories I wanna make how I want to make them and readers are resonating with those stories. 🔥_🔥
0 replies 0 reposts 5 likes
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Alex Plante 🐀👑
@aplante.com
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lately i’ve been seeing a ton of people *aggressively* failing to understand that “kill your darlings” is specifically about like.. that scene you really like that doesn’t actually add anything, ruins the flow, etc.. and sometimes you can’t keep *every* joke, even if they’re all funny!
5 replies 9 reposts 85 likes
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Robb
@buckyunderbelly.bsky.social
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And sometimes you need to kill everything *but* your darlings. Sometimes you need to keep the part you love and rethink/rebuild around it.
1 replies 3 reposts 35 likes
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LA Sunshine
@lasunshine.bsky.social
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If you find yourself taking your piece a certain way for the express purpose of including your darling, it’s probably going to be a clunker.
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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LA Sunshine
@lasunshine.bsky.social
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Ah, you’ve never had me as your editor, lol …
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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Greg Pak
@gregpak.bsky.social
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This particularly applies if you're writing from your perspective as a member of an underrepresented community. Your "darlings" might be the fact that your characters are of your background. Don't let jerks make you change that for their comfort.
0 replies 14 reposts 110 likes
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Anne Hawley
@annehawley.bsky.social
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Thank you for saying this. I DETEST that advice, as much for its violence as for its common misinterpretation. I've seen too many writers pre-edit themselves because of it, and then never finish the work.
0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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Parker
@jeffparker.bsky.social
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with me its usually an exchange that I had in my head since the beginning and there's never the right place to use it. Which is good, it means the story is progressing with purpose and not so random that this particular darling can make it in.
0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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And Jinxe
@jinxe.bsky.social
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I prefer "gently moving my darlings into other projects if they're not working in this one."
0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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GermaricanMix (Pixels)
@germaricanmix.bsky.social
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Audience side, but I was already on the fence about continuing to watch The Walking Dead after Glenn but when I saw the showrunner say 'at this point we're trying to break our fans' I was out. Why would I want characters suffering and dying for no actual reason? Give me relevant plot.
1 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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Kit Whitfield
@kitwhitfield.bsky.social
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And if nothing about your story feels darling to you, you're writing the wrong story! Good darling-killing is cutting the bits where you're trying to be a cleverpants. Those bits are often overstrained. But the bits that really mean something need to stay in.
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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Kathleen Rowan 🌱
@rowanauthor.bsky.social
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📌
0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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Scud
@scudsworth.bsky.social
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So important to remember. I also would like to add that sometimes constructive criticism is actually wrong. You don’t actually need to accept story notes if you don’t want to.
1 replies 1 reposts 4 likes
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JJ is tired
@jjofbc.bsky.social
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Kill your darlings is for when you have an overly clever bit of prose which is detracting from the larger work or not nearly as clever as you think
1 replies 1 reposts 14 likes