Sleeping Beauties

Every writer who’s every had a conversation with anybody about editing and publishing has heard the phrase ‘kill your darlings’. It’s a phrase about being willing to cut anything unessential to the main plot of your story (unless you write murder mysteries, then it’s a double entendre). The problem is, ideas are our currency, and it is painful to burn money. This twist or turn, that character… it’s PAINFUL to lose them forever…

But I had an epiphany this morning as I trudged through the snow… we don’t NEED to kill them. We can just give them a nice dose of the Draught of Living Death and then we are free to kiss them awake again as needed. Let me e’splain…


That First Novel

Fan fiction aside, my first novel took me well over two years to write. It began as an idea that wouldn’t leave me alone in 2000 (living in one of the houses that backed up to THESE woods… with my family, including my 5-year old… erm, and a homeless man who lived in the woods and would make an easy scapegoat)—It was a time in my life I hadn’t written a WORD of fiction for about 7 years. It was a GREAT idea, and I wrote scenes in my head and named characters, but I didn’t write anything.

In 2005 when I first started dappling into fan fiction (as back up for a point I was trying to argue about the Potterverse *rolls eyes*) I hadn’t thought about my little story for quite a while, but a few months later a reader suggested writing something original (thank you, Natasha) and so my idea began to dance again.

Now you can see… in 5 years I had ONE idea. Only one. But it wasn’t going very far. Then suddenly I had another idea, and I started to play with the two together and a basic plan began to form. The MESSAGE was ‘HOLY CRAP-LOOK HOW VALUABLE AN IDEA IS!!’ I proceeded, through a year of dappling, then 18 months of REALLY WRITING to think every idea I had was so valuable it had to be twisted into the story somehow because HECK, I was writing a BOOK!

Editing

It sure made for a painful editing/streamlining process. Not that I put in any ideas that didn’t GO, but there wasn’t room for all of them. Still… each one hurt to give up… it was well thought out, had been developed, and I’d gotten attached to it.

The fallacy though, was thinking THAT was the only place for them. You see, I’m not a writer of A BOOK. I’m a writer of BOOKS.

I have finally seen the light, that a great character that has to be cut can be used in some other story. A plot twist that was too cumbersome for one story might round out another quite nicely.

This is really liberating!

So when somebody tells you to kill your darlings, just stick out your tongue and say you’re just going to put them down for a nap. They may never get up again—it’s entirely dependent on whether the troll makes it past the dragon… or something like that… but at least you can be content that you aren’t a murderer… (unless you’re only saving them to kill them yourselves…)