Acyl Wrote:The quote can mean different things to different people. As Morgan's pointed out, it's probably important to clarify that it doesn't literally refer to killing off characters. It CAN refer to killing characters, yeah. But it's more than that.Exactly. And it doesn't matter how good the writing is - if it's out of place in the story, it needs to go.
It means you should be willing to discard any element of your writing if it makes the story better. And you should be willing to do that even if you're attached to it. That could be a character, yes. Or it could be sentences, paragraphs, chapters. It could be a concept, it could be a piece of imagery, it could be some aspect of the plot... whatever.
...
Let's assume for an example that I'm writing a side-story to a well-known fanfic. I've written a beautiful death scene - one that I'm sure would be praised for decades if I publish it. However, that fanfic is Nobody Dies, so a death scene - no matter how well-written - is completely out of place. Kill that darling, and let whoever I was going to kill off continue living in-story. (But keep that scene for a different story.)
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012