Let’s Talk Process: Kill Your Darlings
Yay! Another cliche!
Summary: needs to shake things up? Lead your favorite character to her seise. Kill her off and make it memorable. Bring Mjolnir down on the hearts of your readers. For the “holy shit” factor.
Go ahead.
No?
I agree.
I’m an upstart here. My only published work is self-published.
That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m a slave to expert writing advice.
And here, I plant my flag and yell, “THIS! IS! SPARTA!”
By all means, kill your darlings. If it suits your character. If you want to. For fuck’s sake, though, don’t do it because you’re out of ideas or feel you need to shock and awe your readers!
You worked hard on that character. You know everything about her. And you’ve worked hard to create her world, her reality as well. Smoker? Coffee or tea? Baretta or Glock? If she needs to die for the sake of the story or your catharsis, by all means, bump her off with impunity. Don’t waste all your creative efforts just for the sake of a gimmick. Yes, it’s function. Yes, you can always resurrect her if your world/story allow for that. But she’ll never be the same. She’ll always have been dead. And the whole resurrection thing is one of the reasons I stopped reading what had previously been my all time favorite urban fantasy series. It’s a cop out.
Out of ideas? Something will come to you. Something always does. And if it doesn’t, maybe it’s time to call the game. In an era of trilogies and series that stretch out over years and decades, writers have forgotten how to say, “I’ve tapped this. Time to move on.” Why is it so hard to let go? Because we’re all afraid of being one trick ponies. Because old characters are comfortable. Because starting from a blank page or screen is fucking hard. It’s also a fantastic challenge. So if you’re out of ideas, shut it down. But be smart about it. If death is the way to go, bon voyage, but remember, Anne Rice said years ago she was done writing Lestat and, because she didn’t kill him, she can now revisit the character without having to do something tricksy.
You can kill your darlings. You may, of course, kill your darlings. It is not, however, requisite to writing a good, or even great, novel. It isn’t something you must do to create something people are going to want to read, to tempt them to crack covers or download a file.
It is your world and, therefore, your prerogative.
Do your thing. Do it the way you want it done. If you put the love and work in, it will show, whether or not that MC gets a knife in the back or a 90th birthday cake.
That’s the way I do it, kids. How about you?
Recent Comments