It’s the monthly blog hop/ known as the Insecure Writers Support Group founded by Alex J. Cavanaugh. You’re invited to join if you're a writer, insecure, or just supportive of writers. It happens the first Wednesday of each month, and it would be sweet of you to visit at least a dozen or so new blogs and leave a comment. Your words will be appreciated. Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG. Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!
The May 5th questionis: Has any of your readers ever responded to your writing in a way that you didn't expect? If so, did it surprise you?
The awesome co-hosts for the May 5 posting of the IWSG are Erika Beebe, PJ Colando, Tonja Drecker, Sadira Stone, Cathrina Constantine!
Recently...
A reader of my book, Azael’s Lot
That I thought she was referring to someone else’s book.
(Yeah, that’s the insecure part of me)
I challenged her with a few questions...
And to my surprise she answered them...
And then she had some of her own like:
Had I ever thought of an alternative ending?
Why had I chosen the setting that I did?
How long did my research take…and more.
She then said she was glad...
That although it seemed that I would kill off one of my main characters...
I didn’t...
However, I told her I actually had thought of killing her...
The character, that is. . .not her...
Because when I’d heard the term “kill your darlings” ...
I thought it only meant killing a beloved main character.
But I love this character and I didn’t have the heart.
Plus, she’ll appear in a sequel...
And I don’t want her coming back as a ghost.
Curious then about the quote...
I researched it...
And though it's often attributed to William Faulkner...
It's actually British Writer, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, 1916
Who first said: “Murder your darlings”
Since then it has also been attributed to several other great writers: OscarWilde, Allen Ginsberg, Eudora Welty, and Anton Chekov...
Even Stephen King.
In King's, On Writing”: A Memoir of the Craft, 2000 he said:
“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
Here’s an article from a recent MasterClass ...
About what “killing your darlings” means.
Writing is a painful process and most experienced writers will tell you that good writing involves substantial rewriting. An essential part of the rewriting process is combing through your work and cutting out material that isn’t essential. Sometimes this means we have to lose things that we are proud of and attached to. When you edit out material like this, you are killing your darlings.
So?
Ever kill any of your darlings? Care to share?
Or
Ever get an unexpected response to your writing?
Always,
Em-Musing
5 comments:
That's awesome that you interacted so much with a reader. I haven't killed a character yet, but I'm definitely thinking about it.
I've definitely had to kill my darlings. It's hard to part with a piece of writing that is good but just doesn't fit for one reason or another. I try to tell myself that the story will be better off without it.
Glad you didn't want to kill the reader!
I have killed off a main character, but only once.
I know that book!
One of my books I ended up cutting 30,000 words. That was a lot of scenes but they were unnecessary.
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