What the heck does kill your darlings mean? (Part III) #writing

Enjoy him while you can. Sexy book man.

For those of you who missed the first two parts of this topic, Find Part I here, and Part II here.

On to the last and final installment. I know you’ve been waiting with baited breath.

Getting rid of the excess characters in the story.

Sometimes there are just too many characters in a story which makes it confusing and difficult to follow.

Confession: I stopped reading a book by a very popular author because she had too many named characters in the novel. It was a murder mystery so you’d think that everyone who’s mentioned in the book would be important.

My head space is light years away from possessing a photogenic memory. I tend to confuse people’s names in real life, what more fictional characters?

I have difficulty coming up with names in my books to begin with so if I don’t need to name a character I don’t. Sometimes my beta readers or editors tell me to give a character a name just because if I don’t, things get confusing.

To be honest I have no trouble getting rid of excesses characters if they aren’t doing anything to propel the story forward.

I’m curious, did you ever have to remove a character from a story?

What the heck does kill your darlings mean? (Part II) #writing

He's back. I couldn't kill him from this writing series.

Last week I wrote about killing off a beloved character. If you missed it click here. This time we’re discussing editing out the excess words not needed in the story.

I believe all of us have done this in our writing. Or we wished an author had done it in theirs as we read two pages about a room description that means nothing to the story. Yes a wordectomy should’ve been done at some point during the editing. I’m sure we’d be surprised at how many words didn’t make it into the book. Can we say an epic number of words?

Do I have a problem getting rid of words in my story? A resounding yes to that because it seems at the time every word is important and has meaning within the novel. But when one of my fabulous beta reader wacks away at the story with a machete making the story flow better, then those same words don’t seem as over-my-dead-body-will-I-get-rid-of-this-sentence as it did before.

My friend is probably going to kill me if she reads this post, but I’m going to tell on her anyway, because it’s such a wonderful example. We were entering a writing competition and she overshot the word count by five hundred words (I can hear your gasp). She had to make some cuts to the story. Rather than do that, she didn’t enter the story into the competition. She said she couldn’t do it.

The editor wanted the story to be entered, so he was willing to shorten it for her. (Oh the horror). She refused, didn’t enter the competition and was more than happy that her piece stayed intact.

Sometimes editors play a tug of war with the writers, and that’s why we see overflowing descriptions of clothing (I’m talking from baseball cap to scruffy sneakers in intricate detail) in some stories.

Do you have difficulty culling the words in your work?

What the heck does kill your darlings mean? (Part I) #writing

He has nothing to do with killing anything,
but a cute guy with a book on his head is awesome.

For the longest time I never understood the full meaning of "Kill your darlings." I’ve heard a few interpretations:

1. Edit out the excess words not needed in the  story

2. Get rid of the excess characters in the story. Not everyone in the first draft makes it to the second.

3. In order to add drama to the story, kill one of the main characters.

4. This one's the most drastic and too painful to think about. When you need to kill a whole book. Why oh why?

For my latest WIP, The Dream Maker,  I had every intention of doing the third. I went into the book knowing I was going to kill off the heroine’s favorite patient who happened to be the hero’s niece. It would be easy to do because she’s been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Do you know how hard it is to kill off a beloved character? I really liked this young lady. A lot. Her name is Vanessa and she’s an intelligent smart ass. Plus she likes to stick her nose into everyone’s business, like when she helps to set up the hero and heroine. But the thing I enjoyed most about her is that she enjoys life and doesn’t want to disturb anyone with the pain she’s feeling about being diagnosed with cancer.

Oh my goodness I love Vanessa. So do you think I was able to kill of this darling? Um…I’m not telling. You’ll have to wait until the book comes out to see. It was a difficult decision, but I think the one I made turned out well for the story.

What about you? Any darlings in your novels that you’ve had to kill which gutted you to do so?