Gotta kill your darlings! (writerly)

[Stella_Omega]

This is an excerpt from a PM (reposted here by permission);

What is strange too is that once i got my guys in a true couple the story changed so much moved away from the non consent and the dark stuff like i couldn't do it to them. Too weird.

I admit, I've had the very same trouble-- getting too attached to my characters, and wanting them to be happy. As we all know, that's a fast way to ruin a good story!

"Kill your darlings" is a phrase I repeat to myself like a mantra. It refers to two things; One is the need to slash one's prose to the bone. When a passage just isn't important to your story-- if it doesn't contribute to character, plot, atmosphere-- you gotta cut it out, no matter how beautiful a piece of prose it is. That one, I've gotten pretty good at. Sometimes, I can use the castoff bit as a poem or something.

The other thing, of course, is being willing to torture your characters, even kill them if need be. That's so... much... more difficult. It's my problem with my Unfinished Opus, and once I get the hang of it, I might be able to make something out of that dusty stuff.

Who's done it? I know Boota, for instance, can destroy lives with a debonair stroke of the pen.

Who else? How did you do it?

 

[rgraham666]

Haven't killed anybody but antagonists yet. And most of them deserved it.

Unless you count turning one of my characters in my vampire stories as 'killing'.

I don't know if I'll ever kill a protagonist. I write fantasies and all my fantasies have happy endings, sort of. If I want to read about horror and misery I'll read the paper.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Real Life is hard enough on people. I'm not up to making my characters suffer without any chance for redemption. It's okay for them to suffer part way through the work but the end needs resolution . . . and I don't mean by cremation, either.

 

[cloudy]

In my first NaNo novel I had to kill off one of my favorite characters. I hated doing it, and it was horrible, but it had to happen to keep the story going in the direction I wanted it to go.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I had a character write a suicide note and get as far about to jump but a rescue ocurred just in time.

 

[WRJames]

I torment my characters. Killing them off is another issue. Even the supposedly dead ones have a way of coming back.

As for wanting them to be happy -- not too entertaining. I may allow them a half page or so of happiness before something goes wrong.

 

[TxRad]

I wrote Eugene Just so I could kill some people off. It was an interesting exercise. For a first try it wasn't bad, not good either but I never went back and rewrote it to spruce it up. I need to do that.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I prefer to saddle my protagonists with inner daemons, then let them and the daemons struggle in a gladiatorial fashion. Theyre at war with themselves, and sometimes they kill themselves to destroy the daemon....a Jack London technique. London ruined many excellent characters when he killed them.

 

[slyc_willie]

The only characters I've killed were ones in which their death was a part of the story from the beginning. My wizard Bagdemagus in Red's A Royal Sacrifice chain story was such a character. His death was pretty much assumed from the very beginning. Still, it was hard to kill him off; despite how thoroughly evil and despicable he was, he was a lot of fun to write. The only way I could feel good about killing him was by making his death spectacular and dramatic.

 

[3113]

Adendum

The other thing, of course, is being willing to torture your characters, even kill them if need be.

I'd like to modify this one. Years ago the problem with most writing was that (bad) writers would create utopias where nothing really happened and their characters lived happily ever after. Hence, the emphasis on being willing to hurt your darling characters or even kill them. No more. The current crop of (bad) writers have an unadmitted BDSM streak where they LOVE to torture their characters--and will say it with glee as if they are the only writers on the planet to have ever done such terrible things to their characters ("Torturing my characters is so much fun!" *gag*)...whether it makes for a good story or not. I remember reading one particularly terrible story where there was page after page of the heroine imprisoned, tortured, gang raped, tortured, gang raped....(repeat for about 10 pages). Far from making me weep with empathy, as I imagine the writer wanted me to, it made me yawn and toss the book in the trash. Torture the character too much and you dull the reader's ability to care about them.

Ditto for killing a character. I'm reminded of those awful 19th century novels were angelic little Eva's and Beth's passed away after speaking of how happy they were to be joining Jesus...and everyone would have a good cry "boo-hoo!" What a cheap shot! You kill the sweet little girl or the dog and everyone will cry. Period. It's too easy, and, let's be honest, it's LAZY!

So I'd like to amend this. Obviously, this does not apply to self-indulgent tales where the writer is just enjoying themselves and won't be removing their "darlings" anyway, as well as the BDSM or Horror novel that need a dungeon scene. This applies to the same sort of writing where "kill your darlings" applies. Be circumspect when you decide to torture/kill a character. Make sure it serves the story and makes for a better tale. Don't do it just to do it. Do it because making the story the best that it can be is what matters to you. And torturing/killing or NOT torturing/killing will make it the best that it can be. Period.



Edited to add: I've always heard the term "Kill your darlings" in regards to editing out your favorite chapters, scenes, passages, sentences. I've never heard of it applying to killing your characters also, though it might if it applies to a character you wanted to put in a story, but they weren't working...this as compared to killing off a character as part of the plot.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I'd like to modify this one. Years ago the problem with most writing was that (bad) writers would create utopias where nothing really happened and their characters lived happily ever after. Hence, the emphasis on being willing to hurt your darling characters or even kill them. No more. The current crop of (bad) writers have an unadmitted BDSM streak where they LOVE to torture their characters--and will say it with glee as if they are the only writers on the planet to have ever done such terrible things to their characters ("Torturing my characters is so much fun!" *gag*)...whether it makes for a good story or not. I remember reading one particularly terrible story where there was page after page of the heroine imprisoned, tortured, gang raped, tortured, gang raped....(repeat for about 10 pages). Far from making me weep with empathy, as I imagine the writer wanted me to, it made me yawn and toss the book in the trash. Torture the character too much and you dull the reader's ability to care about them.

Ditto for killing a character. I'm reminded of those awful 19th century novels were angelic little Eva's and Beth's passed away after speaking of how happy they were to be joining Jesus...and everyone would have a good cry "boo-hoo!" What a cheap shot! You kill the sweet little girl or the dog and everyone will cry. Period. It's too easy, and, let's be honest, it's LAZY!

So I'd like to amend this. Obviously, this does not apply to self-indulgent tales where the writer is just enjoying themselves and won't be removing their "darlings" anyway, as well as the BDSM or Horror novel that need a dungeon scene. This applies to the same sort of writing where "kill your darlings" applies. Be circumspect when you decide to torture/kill a character. Make sure it serves the story and makes for a better tale. Don't do it just to do it. Do it because making the story the best that it can be is what matters to you. And torturing/killing or NOT torturing/killing will make it the best that it can be. Period.

That's better. The winding up and release of tension within the story is what makes the story, isn't it? So everyone can survive and live happily ever after so long as they take the long way around to get there.

 

[cloudy]

I'd like to modify this one. Years ago the problem with most writing was that (bad) writers would create utopias where nothing really happened and their characters lived happily ever after. Hence, the emphasis on being willing to hurt your darling characters or even kill them. No more. The current crop of (bad) writers have an unadmitted BDSM streak where they LOVE to torture their characters--and will say it with glee as if they are the only writers on the planet to have ever done such terrible things to their characters ("Torturing my characters is so much fun!" *gag*)...whether it makes for a good story or not. I remember reading one particularly terrible story where there was page after page of the heroine imprisoned, tortured, gang raped, tortured, gang raped....(repeat for about 10 pages). Far from making me weep with empathy, as I imagine the writer wanted me to, it made me yawn and toss the book in the trash. Torture the character too much and you dull the reader's ability to care about them.

Ditto for killing a character. I'm reminded of those awful 19th century novels were angelic little Eva's and Beth's passed away after speaking of how happy they were to be joining Jesus...and everyone would have a good cry "boo-hoo!" What a cheap shot! You kill the sweet little girl or the dog and everyone will cry. Period. It's too easy, and, let's be honest, it's LAZY!

So I'd like to amend this. Obviously, this does not apply to self-indulgent tales where the writer is just enjoying themselves and won't be removing their "darlings" anyway, as well as the BDSM or Horror novel that need a dungeon scene. This applies to the same sort of writing where "kill your darlings" applies. Be circumspect when you decide to torture/kill a character. Make sure it serves the story and makes for a better tale. Don't do it just to do it. Do it because making the story the best that it can be is what matters to you. And torturing/killing or NOT torturing/killing will make it the best that it can be. Period.

I dunno....

I think:

The other thing, of course, is being willing to torture your characters, even kill them if need be.

...expressed it very succinctly.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I dunno....

I think:



...expressed it very succinctly.

I haven't started a story where that sort of thing ever necessary. It might be in the upcoming sci-fi novel, though. I can see losing the current male protagonist, in an appropriately heroic manner, of course.

 

[3113]

...expressed it very succinctly.

You would think so. But I know too many writers who misunderstand that "if need be" and read it as "don't be afraid to torture/kill your characters." To which they answer, "Afraid? I love doing it!"

I don't accuse Stella of doing this, and I admit this is a hobby-horse for me, but I do think that as the pendulum (from what I'm reading) has swung the other way, a better warning would be "Don't torture/kill your character unless needed."

 

[voluptuary_manque]

You would think so. But I know too many writers who misunderstand that "if need be" and read it as "don't be afraid to torture/kill your characters." To which they answer, "Afraid? I love doing it!"

I don't accuse Stella of doing this, and I admit this is a hobby-horse for me, but I do think that as the pendulum (from what I'm reading) has swung the other way, a better warning would be "Don't torture/kill your character unless needed."

The whole thing seems to be dictated by whatever is in fashion in Creative Writing departments and they are as subject to the idea the the only way to academic advance is through Revisionism. This sometimes means denying the value of whatever went before them. You see it in history, all the time. So my guess is that the writers you have problems with have the collective talent and imagination of a bucket of soapy water on top of an ego the size of a small planet. You know? The visual arts seem to suffer the same thing. And as for film . . .

 

[Stella_Omega]

You would think so. But I know too many writers who misunderstand that "if need be" and read it as "don't be afraid to torture/kill your characters." To which they answer, "Afraid? I love doing it!"

I don't accuse Stella of doing this, and I admit this is a hobby-horse for me, but I do think that as the pendulum (from what I'm reading) has swung the other way, a better warning would be "Don't torture/kill your character unless needed."

maybe that's why I don't read much modern lit-- David Sedaris, anyone? *Blech.*

You ride a good hobby-horse. And I bet my corespondent is lurking on this thread-- might make them feel better about what they're doing in their story!

 

[Boota]

By the time I kill off a character they have served their purpose. Their death is the culmination of their sole purpose in the story, and it is generally done to bring about something from the survivors. In my mind, from the inception of the story, they were born to die. The death has to mean something, though. (Not so when I first started writing, back in 7th grade and I wrote slasher stories where my classmates were murdered, each more viciously and creatively than the last. When one of the stories was accidentally found by a named victim I became the hit of the class. Everyone came to me begging to be killed much more gruesomely the next time.)

When killing your darlings means heavy editing of pieces you love, I've had one major problem with that. In Mr. Undesirable I had an entire chapter, 20 pages or so, that could have been entirely excised from the book. It added a small touch of character development, but it could have been removed and no one would have felt like they were missing anything. I just could not bring myself to cut it. It's the funniest chapter in the book. That was my reasoning for leaving it in. "I'm writing a comedy, I can't very well throw out the funniest part, now can I?" I said as I talked myself into leaving it in. I don't think it hurt anything, but it might have cut down on my "Tolstoyian" length that many reviewers complained about. I guess 480 pages is too long for a dick joke.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Now I'm imagining a Tolstoyan dick joke...

Nope, can't imagine that.

 

[fifty5]

This is an excerpt from a PM (reposted here by permission);I admit, I've had the very same trouble-- getting too attached to my characters, and wanting them to be happy. As we all know, that's a fast way to ruin a good story!

"Kill your darlings" is a phrase I repeat to myself like a mantra. It refers to two things; One is the need to slash one's prose to the bone. When a passage just isn't important to your story-- if it doesn't contribute to character, plot, atmosphere-- you gotta cut it out, no matter how beautiful a piece of prose it is. That one, I've gotten pretty good at. Sometimes, I can use the castoff bit as a poem or something.

The other thing, of course, is being willing to torture your characters, even kill them if need be. That's so... much... more difficult. It's my problem with my Unfinished Opus, and once I get the hang of it, I might be able to make something out of that dusty stuff.

Who's done it? I know Boota, for instance, can destroy lives with a debonair stroke of the pen.

Who else? How did you do it?

I have a multi chapter 'work' that I can't finish for much this reason.

The outline was pure sex. However, as I wrote it, the characters showed respect for each other as well. That totally screwed the penultimate chapter, which the outline had as raw sex. The characters I'd written just didn't behave that way!

There are two options I can see: remove the respect and affection or completely change the story arc.

I still don't want to write the first option, but the second screws the whole opus as planned. That's why the story hasn't been offered.

Meanwhile, the situation that spawned the whole damn thing fades further and further from memory.

 

[Xelebes]

I don't kill mine off. They more or less disappear.

 

[DeeZire]

In Mr. Undesirable I had an entire chapter, 20 pages or so, that could have been entirely excised from the book.

Boota - I just got Mr. Undesirable in the mail via Barnes & Noble. Would you care to name the offending chapter, or will it be obvious by the end of the book? Of course I'll read it anyway.

****

On torturing characters - I like my characters to be imperfect. I like them to be surprised with unhappy endings when a happy ending might garner more 5 votes. I suppose if I was writing for ratings, I'd change my approach, but I write to entertain myself and those few twisted souls who share my cynical view of the world.

A lot of my writing comes from personal experience. In my life, life has sucked mightily from time to time, so now, my characters must pay the price!

 

[Stella_Omega]

I have a multi chapter 'work' that I can't finish for much this reason.

The outline was pure sex. However, as I wrote it, the characters showed respect for each other as well. That totally screwed the penultimate chapter, which the outline had as raw sex. The characters I'd written just didn't behave that way!

There are two options I can see: remove the respect and affection or completely change the story arc.

I still don't want to write the first option, but the second screws the whole opus as planned. That's why the story hasn't been offered.

Meanwhile, the situation that spawned the whole damn thing fades further and further from memory.

Are we twins?

My tentative solution is to dump some other plot onto my characters-- a murder or an adventure, or a ghost that haunts them or something. Let the main plot be about something else, let the sex be part of the secondary plot. That way, the sex-- and the relationship-- can be as respectful and loving as you want.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Outline? What is this outline? I strike keys. Story appears. Things happen and people say things. I have no more idea what will happen next than my readers will. Outline, hmpf!

 

[Stella_Omega]

Outline? What is this outline? I strike keys. Story appears. Things happen and people say things. I have no more idea what will happen next than my readers will. Outline, hmpf!

Ouch, says your editor!

 

[slyc_willie]

Ouch, says your editor!

I write the same way. If I make an outline, I feel like I've already written the story, and I can't do the same thing twice.

Maybe it shows, maybe it doesn't. But outlines . . . pfft!