Death to the Darlings

Elizabeth hacked at her manuscript with desperate brutality. The cleaver in her right hand chopped out the offending words while the stiletto in her left sliced them to pieces with savage efficiency. Confetti shreds whirled around her head and covered the desk like snow. One of the scraps landed on her face. She swiped it away and she examined it through a sweat-soaked curtain of hair. When she saw the horrid letters “ly”, she laughed.

“I killed them,” she said madly. “Every one. All my darlings.”

The newly-spoken adverb leaped off the desk and skittered down the hall.

Elizabeth screamed.

If you’re not a writer, this story might require a bit of explanation. There is a popular piece of writing advice that says “kill your darlings”. That is, you should be willing, if not a little bit eager, to cut away the parts of your story you love the most because they often don’t serve the story well. You have them there because you like them but they need to go.

Another piece of advice, like unto to the first, comes mostly from Stephen King. Adverbs, in the words of Bobby Boucher’s Mama, are the DEBBIL! There is some wisdom in that advice but I’ve seen a lot of writes take it way closer to Holy Writ than it actually is. It’s not impossible such advice might drive a writer to a certain level of madness.

And here we meet Elizabeth.

(Photo Credit: campbellstogether on Pixabay)