This Week I Saved a Darling 

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

I write thrillers. That means I major in action. But I do have a lead character who is wont to share an opinion every now and then. That’s one of the things I like about John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee. There are times, briefly (which is the key), when McGee takes a moment to let loose on something. Here’s a bit from The Quick Red Fox:

And so we drove back to the heart of the city. San Francisco is the most depressing city in America. The come-latelys might not think so. They may be enchanted by the steep streets up Nob and Russian and Telegraph, by the sea mystery of the Bridge over to redwood country on a foggy night, by the urban compartmentalization of Chinese, Spanish, Greek, Japanese, by the smartness of the women and the city’s iron clutch on culture. It might look just fine to the new ones.

But there are too many of us who used to love her. She was like a wild classy kook of a gal, one of those rain-walkers, laughing gray eyes, tousle of dark hair –– sea misty, a little and lively lady, who could laugh at you or with you, and at herself when needs be. A sayer of strange and lovely things. A girl to be in love with, with love like a heady magic.

But she had lost it, boy.

Some object to these passages as “stopping the action.” I call it controlling the pace and deepening our bond to the lead character. 

So I wrote a paragraph of my next Mike Romeo thriller expressing an opinion. A bit later I came back to the scene and wrote another paragraph in a similar style. When I edited the first draft I saw that these two bits overloaded and overwhelmed the story. 

But they were so well written! (I humbly thought). I loved them! Which is the first clue that you have a “darling” on your hands. And we’ve all heard the old saw, “Kill your darlings!”

To me that always sounds like “Destroy your delight” or “Drown your puppies.” Yeesh! I mean, if something is your darling should your first instinct be to kill it? Sounds positively psychopathic.

A darling is at least owed a fair trial!

The phrase has its origin in a lecture on style delivered by the English writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch back in 1914. He said:

To begin with, let me plead that you have been told of one or two things which Style is not; which have little or nothing to do with Style, though sometimes vulgarly mistaken for it. Style, for example, is not—can never be—extraneous Ornament … [I]f you here require a practical rule of me, I will presentyou with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

At least Sir Arthur was honest enough to call it murder! But murder requires malice aforethought, and that is a terrible way to think about a darling.

Darlingcide should be outlawed, not encouraged!

Stephen King strikes the right balance. In his book On Writing King says the whole idea behind “kill your darlings” is to make sure your style is “reasonably reader-friendly.”

Thus, your darlings may be the very thing that distinguishes your voice from the vanilla sameness of so much writing these days, especially in the omnipresent AI epoch which we now inhabit. 

Which means sometimes a darling stays, sometimes it goes, and sometimes it gets a skillful edit. In my case, I did remove one of the paragraphs in its entirety. The other I clipped a bit, but it remains largely intact. 

It pleases me to write darlings. I do not summarily execute them. I let them sit, I look at them again, I have my wife render an opinion, and then I decide if they must go, stay, or get a loving manicure. 

And I know I’ve done good work when I can finally say, “Darling, you look marvelous!” 

Comments welcome.

31 thoughts on “This Week I Saved a Darling ”

  1. “It pleases me to write darlings. I do not summarily execute them. I let them sit, I look at them again, I have my wife render an opinion, and then I decide if they must go, stay, or get a loving manicure.”

    You sum up the essence of how I approach all the so-called rules of writing. I’m going to write what appeals to me. I let the piece sit, I review it, and I consider the feedback of those critiquing me. But I’m the one who has to decide if I keep or eliminate them. Sometimes I take the advice, sometimes I don’t.

    As came up in a recent post, for example, there is an ‘auto-hatred’ of prologues with some people. That’s their choice but I don’t feel the same way. And while my attention span has gotten smaller just like everybody else, I don’t mind well-chosen, well-timed sections of description that some might consider too long.

    In the end it’s my story and I’ve got to be true to the story I’m trying to tell. If I change it so much that I don’t even like it, what’s the point?

    • This is why you’re a human being and not a robot, BK.

      As for prologues, we’ve written several times on this topic. Just search the archives. The main advice I give here is two-fold. Make sure it’s a full scene, and don’t label it “Prologue.”

  3. Irony of ironies, I was asked to be an advisor to a senior architecture design class at Georgia Tech this past spring after having been summarily booted out oh so many years ago for repeated failures to pass calculus…

    This to say I used this phrase to explain why sometimes a design element might need to be scrapped or reconsidered and reworked for the greater good of their project… or better defended and fleshed out.

    • Perfect for architecture, too, George.

      I was somehow able to graduate high school without taking Trig or Calc. In college, I satisfied the requirement by taking “Math Appreciation.”

  4. John D warned us of the destructive changes coming to Florida. He foresaw the dangers of massive overbuilding of condos on the beaches. All of this done in the asides of Travis. How I miss him.

    • He let it all loose with Condominium. I read that so many years ago, and thought it a bit too much (like 500 pages, right?) But many Floridians love it. What do you think?

  5. I’m with you on “these passages” controlling the pace and deepening our bond with the lead. They can also immerse us in the setting and establish a tone. I use them sparingly and like your approach, consider them in post. Beta reader feedback is invaluable.

    It’s also worth noting some genres lean into this more, especially literary fiction (and I included science fiction and fantasy that strongly lean literary in that group).

  6. Jim, you’re so right about fiction turning vanilla and boring. Voice is one of the most appealing parts of fiction and that sometimes includes darlings. As long as they’re not self-indulgent and are important to the story, great. If they’re the writer showing off, nope.

  7. “She was like a wild classy kook of a gal, one of those rain-walkers, laughing gray eyes, tousle of dark hair –– sea misty, a little and lively lady, who could laugh at you or with you, and at herself when needs be. A sayer of strange and lovely things. A girl to be in love with, with love like a heady magic.”

    I would know this gal anywhere, dance in the rain with her, and happily join her zany tour of her city’s best secret corners. As would Travis McGee, I’m sure.

    What skill with simple words and emotions! You’ve got me itching to start at one end of my bookcase with “The Deep Blue Good-by” and read straight through the series — again. Thanks for this John D. MacDonald moment, Jim.

    • Always glad to reignite interest in JDMcD, Suzanne. I’m rereading Darker Tham Amber right now.

      Her dark eyes were like twin entrances to two deep caves. Nothing lived in those caves. Maybe something had, once upon a time. There were piles of picked bones back in there, some scribbling on the walls, and some grey ash where the fires had been.

  9. Kill your darlings — unless they add something to your reader’s enjoyment.

    This is an example of how true mastery means knowing the rules and knowing when to break therm.

    • As Alice Turner, the longtime fiction editor at Playboy said, “When you’re good enough, like Picasso, you can put noses and breasts wherever you like. But first you have to know where they belong.”

  10. Thanks, I always wondered where that line came from.

    I hate digging up my basement, so I put my darlings gently on the shelf. After all, their only sin was to appear in the wrong story, like someone dressed for a costume party who walks into a memorial service by mistake. Realizing this tends to take a lot of its shine off, anyway.

  11. Darlingcide 😂😂😂 Great topic today, Jim. I handle my darlings the same way. If a paragraph sticks out and adds no value, I’ll cut it but keep for another series book (if it fits into the plot). If the beautifully written paragraph deepens the characterization, I see no reason to kill my darling.

  12. “So I wrote a paragraph of my next Mike Romeo thriller expressing an opinion. A bit later I came back to the scene and wrote another paragraph in a similar style. When I edited the first draft I saw that these two bits overloaded and overwhelmed the story.

    But they were so well written! (I humbly thought). I loved them! Which is the first clue that you have a “darling” on your hands. And we’ve all heard the old saw, “Kill your darlings!””
    I’m so glad you left at least part of Romeo’s “digression.” One of the reasons I enjoy your Romeo books is because he has this philosophical bent. I like that he has baggage and it shows. I won’t read thrillers that are all action and no character development. I have to care about the characters, root for them, in order to care about the shoot-outs, fight scenes, and chases. A nice piece of writing doesn’t draw me out of the story, it usually tells me something about the character.

    “I call it controlling the pace and deepening our bond to the lead character.”
    That’s how I look at it too. How much much leeway I give myself to save my darlings depends on the character. My first published romantic suspense book featured Ray Johnson, an East Texas cowboy who worked as a detective in San Antonio. He owned horses, read voraciously, and planned to become a pastor. So yeah, Ray had a vocabulary. He sometimes waxed poetic. He had a nice turn of phrase. Because it was in character for him. I just had to know when to turn him loose and when to corral him. His partner Samuel Martinez was a tight-lipped, uptight straight shooter who played by the book–but you better not mess with his family or friends. Samuel didn’t have any fancy phrases or deep philosophical thoughts. If I found a sweet passage of darlings in his POV I likely had to dispatch them forthwith . . . .

  13. We just returned from Killer Nashville. I hope you’ll teach a class there next year entitled “Kill Your Darlings – or Not.” It would be a perfect match for the conference.

  14. I love Mike Romeo’s philosophical wanderings–they make Mike, Mike. He is a character I’m invested in and can’t wait for the next one. BUT it takes a lot of talent to pull it off. Kudos to you for doing that!

Comments are closed.