Definition Kill Your Darlings
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Definition kill your darlings. Well of course they all said it but the first use of the construction appeared in print a hundred years ago by sir arthur quiller couch who urged wannabe writers to murder their darlings. When should you kill your darlings. Killing off characters that you know your reader will love can be a dramatic and useful strategy too. Kill your darlings a 2007 album by david geraghty.
Murder your darlings in writing books or articles to delete text of which one is especially proud with the aim of improving the work as a whole. No it was agatha christie. Suppress overuse of their favorite expressions tropes characters etc. More generally to destroy especially with conflicted motives things or persons of which one is fond.
Kill your darlings an australian literary journal launched in 2010. You can complete the list of synonyms of kill your darlings given by the english thesaurus dictionary with other english dictionaries. My perspective as the copyeditor didn t match the author s view of this character at all. From a reported remark by william faulkner 1897 1962 advising prospective authors that they must kill their darlings i e.
Purple prose narm egregious overuse of a word or phrase. English alternative forms. Kill your darlings is a quote by stephen king. 1947 wrote later in on writing.
No it was william faulkner. You kill your darlings when you decide to get rid of an unnecessary storyline character or sentences in a piece of creative writing elements you may have worked hard to create but that must be removed for the sake of your overall story. The example i used above with the character who was the mc s girlfriend is an easy one to start with. Kill your darlings may refer to.
However your writing darlings are not the only ones that can be useful to kill off. While these may hold special meaning for the author they can cause readers to roll their eyes for reasons such as. In writing you must kill your darlings william faulkner this literary advice refers to the dangers of an author using personal favorite elements. This device is used by some of the greatest murder mystery writers of all time such as agatha christie who often kills off well liked characters in her novels.
The problem lies in the definition of best. Kill your darlings a swedish film. A saying of advice to artists of all sorts to eliminate the behaviors or styles of their idols or what they took influence inspiration from. Though you may have heard the phrase a thousand times it s valuable.
Look up kill your darlings in wiktionary the free dictionary. First said by sonic youth on the ep kill yr idols on the song of the same name. Kill your darlings is a common piece of advice given by experienced writers. A memoir of the craft 2000 kill your darlings.
It s synonymous with kill your darlings. They came up with the song and phrase after music critic robert christgau attended a very early live session of theirs and wrote a. Search kill your darlings and thousands of other words in english definition and synonym dictionary from reverso.