Kill Your Darlings, Darling
In my last post I mentioned killing one of my darlings to move my current fanfic project forward and a couple of people interpreted that... not how I'd intended. I have no particular training or education in literature, and I only came across this quote for the first time a couple of years ago, so I have no idea what it's "supposed" to mean, but what it means to me is this: don't hold on to a particular scene/passage/sentence that you love for no other reason than that you love it, and especially not if it's actually hindering the story in some way.
In my case, there was some particular subject matter that needed picking over, and I originally intended to write it from Dawn's POV. I had a number of really nice lines, and when it came to it, I linked them up into the paragraph below. I freaking love that paragraph. It gives a lot of insight into this version of Dawn's upbringing, as well as her opinion of Buffy, having only just met her for the first time as an adult, and generally I think the prose is really nice.
Auntie Anya often said that my mother was hypocritical and suffered from an acute case of emotional constipation. Anya was the most honest woman I ever knew, and so I found it hard to picture what, exactly, she meant, though perhaps the clue was in Uncle Xander, who she said was often so similar to Buffy in the least flattering of ways. I see it now, though - have been seeing it since I came back - but that’s not all, because while the sum of her experiences may have taught her a harsh lesson in self-protection, I’ve seen what she was before the gale that battered her came blowing through, and that’s still inside her, too: ultimately, she has the heart of a lion, if she can only let herself listen to it.
The problem was, it turned out it was too soon to be addressing that stuff -- the story needed to move along a little more first -- and it meant that by the time I could get to it, I was going to be in Buffy's POV, the tone of which is very different, and I'd lose all that yummy material. The paragraph, basically, was my darling, and for the sake the story I had to consign it to the "discarded" file :( So there you go. Darling killed.
For completeness, the fic I'm talking about is The Soul Lies Down, the first 50k of which can be found here.
In other news, Camp NaNo is continuing to go well for me. I thought I was going to be spending today babysitting a friend's sick kid, so made sure to get ahead of myself yesterday, only for the friend to cancel. Whoop! So I got more writing time today, and I'm now two and a bit days ahead of myself, meaning I can spend some time tomorrow editing the chapter I finished today to send it off to beta. That makes three new chapters down, and the next chapter is teh smut, which has been sitting in my notebook for over six months now, so, EXCITE :D In celebration, have a word meter.
In my case, there was some particular subject matter that needed picking over, and I originally intended to write it from Dawn's POV. I had a number of really nice lines, and when it came to it, I linked them up into the paragraph below. I freaking love that paragraph. It gives a lot of insight into this version of Dawn's upbringing, as well as her opinion of Buffy, having only just met her for the first time as an adult, and generally I think the prose is really nice.
Auntie Anya often said that my mother was hypocritical and suffered from an acute case of emotional constipation. Anya was the most honest woman I ever knew, and so I found it hard to picture what, exactly, she meant, though perhaps the clue was in Uncle Xander, who she said was often so similar to Buffy in the least flattering of ways. I see it now, though - have been seeing it since I came back - but that’s not all, because while the sum of her experiences may have taught her a harsh lesson in self-protection, I’ve seen what she was before the gale that battered her came blowing through, and that’s still inside her, too: ultimately, she has the heart of a lion, if she can only let herself listen to it.
The problem was, it turned out it was too soon to be addressing that stuff -- the story needed to move along a little more first -- and it meant that by the time I could get to it, I was going to be in Buffy's POV, the tone of which is very different, and I'd lose all that yummy material. The paragraph, basically, was my darling, and for the sake the story I had to consign it to the "discarded" file :( So there you go. Darling killed.
For completeness, the fic I'm talking about is The Soul Lies Down, the first 50k of which can be found here.
In other news, Camp NaNo is continuing to go well for me. I thought I was going to be spending today babysitting a friend's sick kid, so made sure to get ahead of myself yesterday, only for the friend to cancel. Whoop! So I got more writing time today, and I'm now two and a bit days ahead of myself, meaning I can spend some time tomorrow editing the chapter I finished today to send it off to beta. That makes three new chapters down, and the next chapter is teh smut, which has been sitting in my notebook for over six months now, so, EXCITE :D In celebration, have a word meter.