FREELANCE
FRIDAY #12: KILLING YOUR DARLINGS
If you’ve been a writer
for very long, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “kill your darlings.” Today’s Freelance
Friday article will take us into a quick look through knowing what needs cut out
of your manuscript, when you know you need more in your manuscript, and
overall, the most important things you need to nail down in any manuscript.
Beef Up Your Manuscript
With…
·
Internal struggle. A
good story will have internal character struggles on top of the external
problem the characters have set out to solve. For example, in The Hunger Games,
Katniss’ internal struggles include a sick mother, the fear she won’t be able
to protect her sister or be the person she needs to be as the Mockingjay. Of
course, the external problem is winning the Games (twice) and then abolishing
them. In Lord of the Rings, the external problem is disposing of the One Ring,
but each character has internal struggles of inadequacy, fear, being plagued by
darkness, and that’s just scratching the surface. In 1984, we see the
push-and-pull between the conditioning characters experience in their dystopian
and the sense that there’s something more they could reach if they just evaded
Big Brother. It’s something that must be overcome genuinely, and it’s the thing
that will cause readers to relate to your character more than the actual
external struggle.
·
Symbolism. Often,
the best books will also feature symbolism, emblems, mottos, or motifs that are
interconnected to a bigger purpose throughout the book. In Back To Me, my
thing was water, first as a comfort, then the thing the main character felt she
was drowning in, and then as the thing that helped her experience renewal. The
Hunger Games is rich with examples—the roses, Mockingjay, dandelions, bread, sun;
the beautiful twisted into something other.
·
Background. You
don’t need to dump every character’s life history in your book, but you need
just enough to give readers an image of why they are the way they are. This
goes for governments, world systems, magic systems—the world you’re immersing
readers into didn’t appear overnight.
·
Impact. In
each detail and line of your manuscript, you need impact for the reader. This
is perhaps the biggest “tell” for whether something needs cut or not. Let the
details about the setting reflect the character’s mood, or tip the readers off
about something that’s soon to become relevant. Let the characters tear at one
another in the most cutting, memorable argument and then smooth it over later with
a confession.
Cut
Out If…
·
It doesn’t propel the story forward. If
your characters are on a side-quest that you totally wanted to write because it’s
fun, that’s okay. But make sure it has a purpose and a reason for being there.
If not, readers will often consider it a loose end or grow bored with the story
if it takes too long to move ahead. It might be a spectacular scenario, but
consider putting it in its own document. Make it a freebie short story, a “lead
magnet” for your newsletter, or even recycle it for another story where it
becomes central.
·
It’s too overstated. Readers don’t need every last thing explained
to them all the time; repetition can often become tedious. Look at the ending
of the Mockingjay book by Suzanne Collins. She doesn’t tell readers
Katniss struggles with the loss of Prim. No, Prim’s cat shows up, Katniss starts
screaming the thing she was trying to ignore—“She’s gone!”—and ends up wailing
with the cat while fixing its injured paw, essentially filling Prim’s shoes for
the first time when the Katniss we were introduced to originally hated cats and
didn’t deal with tender care. Do you see the symbolism in that? The sheer power
in a reader understanding that change rather than just being told—Katniss mourned?
In every lesson your character learns, let it be embedded with meaning. Show
us, don’t just tell us.
·
You’re bored. Yeah…so
if you’re bored reading the story (or writing it!) chances are, your readers
will be too. Sometimes you can spice things up with a writing exercise, and sometimes
you just need to reevaluate whether the scene is truly critical to the
storyline.
·
If its impact detracts from the
overall plot you’re trying to tell. This is where it gets
tricky. When you need to kill your darling. Maybe you have an ultra powerful
subplot that ended up taking over the story, but then you have loose ends. This
is when you need to reevaluate which story needs told. The other story
can obviously be recycled into a new story of its own, but it’s still going to
take work to revamp the manuscript. Choose which one will best serve your
readers above all else, and save the extra scenes in a fresh document because
they will always come in handy later on.
So
we don’t really need to kill your darlings, you just need to choose
which ones go into which story. (That’s sometimes important to keep in mind
when you’re bummed about something you need to cut!) You always want to make
sure that each line in your story has some sort of impact or forward momentum
for your characters. Your readers will thank you.
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