Killing Your Darlings (Holly Schindler)

It's the worst. Seriously. Cutting parts of your book that you love. 

But it's the most important thing you can do. Also seriously. 

You can't be blindly in love with your book. You have to be willing to sacrifice anything. And I mean anything. It can be:

A character.

A scene.

A subplot.

A chapter.

A beautiful turn of phrase. 

A section of funny dialogue.

How do you know that it needs to go? 

Simple. 

It has to serve your story. Period. If it does not serve the larger plot, it has got to go. I know that novels feel so roomy when you first start writing. My first "book" was 30K words--and I thought I might just die before I got to the last line. I had no idea, at that point, how anyone ever reached the 100K mark (which is the usual 400-pg-lenth of an adult book). 

But the more you write, the easier it is to--you know--write. Fill the page. Actually, fill page after page. Then you've got to get out the scissors. 

Sometimes, though, it's really hard to see what isn't necessary. The best method of training your eye?

Retyping. 

 

Yup. The whole shebang. It's so easy to just let your eyes skim over text as you're reading your work. It's easier to keep text as your reading. But the opposite is true when you're typing. It's easier to cut. Because typing is work. 

So the next time you know you need to get really mean to those darlings of yours, give it a shot. Retype. It sounds like bringing more work on yourself. But often, it's actually far quicker--and more effective-- than multiple reads.

~

Holly Schindler is the author of books for readers of all ages. Her first releases were YA novels.