Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
214,733
edits
(new mechanics of writing page) |
No edit summary |
||
(6 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{
{{quote|''"Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it -- whole-heartedly -- and delete it before sending your manuscripts to press. [[Trope Namer|'''Murder your darlings.''']]"''
|[[wikipedia:Arthur Quiller-Couch|Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch]]|''On the Art of Writing'' (1916), [http://grammar.about.com/od/rhetoricstyle/a/murderquiller.htm Chapter 12]}}
'''Murder Your Darlings''' (or sometimes '''Kill Your Darlings''') is a phrase used in editing—particularly self-editing. The idea is that a writer may have some aspect of a story, typically a scene, that she is irrationally attached to. The editing process needs to be merciless
Common editing victims include [[Narm]] and [[Purple Prose]], though many tropes from the [[Bad Writing Index]] could apply. And remember writers, it's never bad to write these kinds of
For good essays on the topic, see James Patrick Kelly's ''[http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/murder-your-darlings/ Murder Your Darlings]'' at the [[SFWA]] website, or the [[Trope Namer]] itself, linked in the quote above.
This phrase is the source of the movie title [[Kill Your Darlings]].▼
▲This phrase is the source of the movie title ''[[Kill Your Darlings (film)|Kill Your Darlings]]''.
Not to be confused with [[Kill the Ones You Love ]].
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Mechanics of Writing]]
[[Category:Pages Original to All The Tropes]]
|