I've heard it said by various people that 'killing your darlings' or removing your favourite passages from your work is one of the most important parts of editing. I'm doing a major rewrite of my novel at the moment and have found myself doing a lot of darling-killing - and I really think it makes a major (positive) difference.
I'm slightly concerned that it makes it a blander read, but I guess it's worth it for a smoother flow and more sensible plot.
Has anyone else saved their darlings and been glad of it?

I was never too sure what this whole 'killing your darlings' business was all about, to be honest. But if it means taking out the bits of your book that you think are really smoking, then I definitely don't do it - not off my own bat anyway. But I'm probably just a rubbish self-editor.

I guess what constitute 'darlings' differs from writer to writer. With some it might be beautiful sentences or colourful descriptions. For me it's funny stuff.

So far I've saved most of mine. There were a few I had to put my hands up and admit they were just self-indulgence and had no reason to be there. But some I'm prepared to do battle over. I don't see how a book that's essentially meant to be funny can be improved by cutting out the funniest bits.

I agree with Sidewinder.

The expression "Kill your darlings" has always slightly irritated me. It's quoted in a zillion how-to books. Whoever wrote it was obviously very pleased with the phrase and probably should have edited it out.

Also, it's such hard advice to follow - if you really like something you've written, then kill it. There are some cases where I know what it means: when I'm trying to be clever or showy and the passage has to go, but hopefully sometimes our best writing is our best writing.

If Joyce had killed his darlings, Ulysses would be a novella.

The bit that's missing in 'kill your darlings' (I've always thought of it as 'murder your darlings,' but I've no idea if I'm right) is that it's not about getting rid of the best bits.

As I see it, when you're revising you come across three kinds of things: perfectly good stuff you leave in, stuff that you can see doesn't work and you cut, and third, the things that you can see don't work, but you don't want to cut because: they took ages to write; or have some personal significance for you; or cost a lot in time or money or energy to research; or cost you emotionally; or seem to be what your best friend/writing teacher/editor/reviewer/husband said they wanted. You don't just cut them without a second thought, even though half of you knows they're not right for the book because you don't want to get rid of them for all those reasons. Those are your darlings - the things you cling to that you know you shouldn't. If they were the right words in the right place you wouldn't be agonising, you'd leave them be and move on.

But it's a very macho take on the process (I always blame that kind of he-man talking-about-writing on Hemingway, most unfairly. Can't remember who it really is), as Rosy's take on 'are the rules of writing gendered' suggests. You could just as well describe it as 'put your darlings away for another time' because they're necessarily wrong tout court, they're just not right for here.

Hm, thanks, catcrag, I was wondering what to blog about today!...

Emma

Apparently, it was Faulkner.

<Added>

Nothing macho about that, then.

Whoever wrote it was obviously very pleased with the phrase and probably should have edited it out.

LOL!!

LOL here too! I love it!

Me too!

Thanks EmmaD, I think you've put it perfectly - and helped me understand what I'm trying to do. There are many bits of writing in it that I love but wouldn't dream of cutting out, and others which I think are really funny or say something incisive and witty about the world but which really don't belong. Or maybe it's that they're not actually funny or incisive or witty ...

Or perhaps "Kill your darlings" is advice intended for writers with noisy children. I know that's a problem faced by many here. Zach will be home soon. Mmm.

Rod!
For me, it's 'murder your purple darlings'. Re-reading my novel for second draft, I watch myself and cringe as I fall into deeply purple passages which are, to say the least, self-indulgent, and to say the most, plain useless.
So for me The Color Purple is the clue.
Susiex

Perhaps it should be kill your darlings before the reader does. In other words yuou need to ask yourself would the reader love those favoured passages as much you the author? If there's any doubt then they probably need to go.

I'm not at all sure that the concept of 'murdering your darlings' is macho. The female of the species, is, after all, more deadly than the male.

I'm with susie on the purple prose, but I've always taken 'murdering your darlings' to mean editing out 'smoking scenes' (at least 'smoking' in the author's eyes) that don't really fit with the rest of the book or end up serving little purpose, for all their elegance and panache?

You can be so attached to something it blinds you to the fact that overall, it's a pointless piece of writing. Hard to let go of, but once abandoned, it usually improves the story. Maybe it's editor speak. love to know who coined it first. Doris Lessing wrote 'learn to be ruthless' and I try to hold to that, though it isn't always easy.

JB

I think it's about thinking of the story as a whole, not as a series of individually attractive pieces of writing stitched together. One has to think of pace and structure and all that. I do think the ability to cut - even 5000 words that you slaved over - is important. It still kills me though.
I'm proud of the re-write I did on the second Bathsheba because 1) I turned it around in 2 weeks, which was really hard, but 2) I had to cut out a LOT, ruthlessly. If I'd tried to patch it, it would never have worked. It was very hard to do, but now it's over, I hardly remember those darlings.

I always thought it was because of the tendency new writers have to sometimes overwrite - either passsages of description, or something poetic (or pseudo-poetic) that they're very proud of but which would sound much better in fewer words, or no words at all.