SJ "...wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”

[Euphony]

Most quotes I either understand at face value or ruminate a little on to find my own meaning. This one, however, feels like there's a rich secondary layer I'm just not connecting to like most.

Feels generally in the realm of "kill your darlings" but if anyone has their own reinterpretation or personal meaning, I would love to consider it.

Know it? Just want to think on it as well and share your own meaning or specific application? This is the space.

 

[madelinemasoch]

I've never understood writerly advice that sits in this vein. "Delete all of your best moments" okay but why??????

 

[Euphony]

I've never understood writerly advice that sits in this vein. "Delete all of your best moments" okay but why??????

Many writing quotes don't read as pithy as they originally were or as intended.

Regularly too much context is cut off to keep memorable/clever. Or, time period shifts and general understanding of word contexts or baseline meanings change.

"Don't be too precious" I get. But the inference of many to intentionally murder a child because you might grow to love it too much seems not the actual intent even if it reads so.

 

[lovecraft68]

I've never understood writerly advice that sits in this vein. "Delete all of your best moments" okay but why??????

Fake elitist martyrdom. These are the purists so above the rest of us they claim they don't need to show people their best work.
The hubris is appalling

 

[Britva415]

I think he was counseling against being "too cute."

 

[KeithD]

I change practically nothing after I write it other than being Germanic and sometimes having to unravel a sentence into more sentences. When I review, I add rather than subtract. I write in conversational mode and pretty much stick with what was originally worked. I take writing as something to enjoy, not to angst over.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Yeah, fuck that guy.

 

[samhasstories]

"Kill your darlings" I get. Don't resist cutting something you're fond of if cutting it makes the work better. But cutting it because you're fond of it? No thanks.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I've never understood writerly advice that sits in this vein. "Delete all of your best moments" okay but why??????

Not all of them, but sometimes you've added them when they're superfluous just because they're clever. I'll give an example from the story I just submitted. Note: I don't think this one is particularly clever, but it's the most recent example where I was like, "I like this line best, but it doesn't fit with the rest."

Which, I suppose, is how we get back to the beginning of this story. We got to the party fashionably late. While I couldn’t hold a candle to Alyssa, I’d cleaned up well. I’m tall and athletic, with blonde hair and blue eyes. I once received the backhanded compliment that I was “handsome, if you like that surfer boy type,” which is funny, since I can’t stand the beach. One Halloween, people thought Aly and I had dressed up as Ken and Barbie, but we were just wearing our everyday clothes. You add all that to Alyssa’s extensive efforts to make me look at least somewhat fashionable, and the two of us turned more than a few heads.

For a description of the character, it's fine, but it's just too long. It was clunky, and one sentence in particular really contributed to that.

One Halloween, people thought Aly and I had dressed up as Ken and Barbie, but we were just wearing our everyday clothes.

It's a fun line; arguably it's got the most personality of any single line there, and it reinforces the notion that the two of them are very similar in appearance. But I don't need to reinforce that; I'd just described Alyssa one paragraph before, I'm describing Justin (the narrator) in this one, and it didn't add much of anything but a cute bit of fluff. I didn't need it. I put it in there because I liked it, not because it was needed. I even kind of knew that at the time, but I still did it.

So I cut it. The paragraph reads better as a result. I'll probably use it again in some other story, when it's more appropriate, but keeping that particular darling would have hurt the overall flow. Not much, but enough that I wanted to pull it.

 

[Wriggle]

It's 500 year old advice he was trying to give to shakespeare and Marlow, and Johnson's most famous work was the dictionary.

 

[madelinemasoch]

It's a fun line, and it reinforces the notion that the two of them are very similar in appearance. But I don't need to reinforce that; I'd just described Alyssa one paragraph before, I'm describing Justin (the narrator) in this one, and it didn't add much of anything but a cute bit of fluff. I didn't need it. I put it in there because I liked it, not because it was needed. I even kind of knew that at the time, but I still did it.

It's the stand-out line in that passage to me, too, but that's because it adds a layer of characterization. I'm not sure if this is what you were going for, but it really implies that they're the "Chad and Stacey" couple so to speak, conventionally attractive above the rest.

 

[NoTalentHack]

It's the stand-out line in that passage to me, too, but that's because it adds a layer of characterization. I'm not sure if this is what you were going for, but it really implies that they're the "Chad and Stacey" couple so to speak, conventionally attractive above the rest.

Yeah, but I had tons of other characterization around that, too. He's the POV character, so we get a lot of his thinking on things, and she gets a hefty chunk of characterization and description, too. Like I said: it's a good line, but it's not a good line for this.

 

[12oclocktales]

Boswell quoted Samuel Johnson as also saying, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” So much for us blockheads.

 

[Zootonius]

Well, I suppose if you're writing something like "...the luscious curves of her heaving breasts" in a medical journal, maybe.

 

[Euphony]

"Kill your darlings" I get. Don't resist cutting something you're fond of if cutting it makes the work better. But cutting it because you're fond of it? No thanks.

I think this is the clarification lacking in the o.g. quote. (due to SJ attitude or chopping off surrounding context, I dunno)

 

[Priscilla_June]

See I’m reading this as “particularly fine” as “mediocre” and thus this advise means something different to me.