Sooo…this week’s tease will be a bit delayed. It will be posted Thursday. Sorry!!! But it’s not because I’m taking all advantage of my break and being a big slacker. No, not at all. It’s because it’s Michelle Gregory’s “Share Your Darlings Blogfest.” Another blogfest!!! Woot!!!
*There are only 12 of us so far. It’s not too late to join! Go on over and sign up!
Writers are often told to “kill your darlings.” For a long time, I thought this meant that you have to be willing to kill off a character for the sake of the story, even if you love that character with all your heart. I have no idea if the phrase ever had to do with that or not. But the real writer-ly meaning is about cutting those sentences, paragraphs, scenes or even chapters that do nothing for the story, no matter how much we love them.
They might be beautifully written, but boring. They might provide a little character-building, but don’t have any conflict that keep the pages turning.They might be an interesting flashback or a dream or back-story that can be better woven into other scenes rather than be a whole chunk on its own. Whatever the reason, we writers love them, they are our darlings, but we know we must kill them.
I’m especially excited for this blogfest because there is one scene in particular that I absolutely luuuuurve and I had to cut it from Promise. It didn’t pull its weight in moving the story along. Removing it was like cutting a little piece of my heart out. It’s one of my fave darlings and I’m so excited I get to at least share it here. (And this, by the way, is why I save new versions of my writing all the time and when I cut a scene…it’s not completely gone. You just never know when you can use something…)
So come back Thursday to share my little darling. In the meantime, here’s some music enjoyment from the Promise playlist. I haven’t yet figured out how to put one of those playlist doo-hickeys up, so for now I’ll just post the first two songs here – and in video form!
Enjoy!
The Middle – Jimmy Eat World
Analyse – The Cranberries
I don’t have a problem cutting things. Weird. I’m just not ever overly attached to my stories. Change is good, right?
thanks for the plug. and btw, i don’t know if you read, but i changed the word count from 600 to whatever (within reason). i couldn’t keep my own scenes to under 1000.
LOVE the song choices so far!!!