I think one of the most important things you can learn to do as a writer is killing your darlings.

Listen, when you are writing the first draft of your story, the main goal should be to get it all out on the page. It doesn’t matter how shitty your writing is. It doesn’t matter if a good portion of your first draft is spent describing what your character is eating. Just write. That is the first hurdle. The next is editing.

I think editing is one of the most labor intensive parts of being a writer. I hate it with a passion. But writing is re-writing.

Right now, I am making my way through a draft of a short story that I wrote a year or so ago. It is a story that I am excited about and that I want to be in the best shape it can be before I try to get it published. That being said, I’ve had to cut back a lot of what I originally wrote.

There was so much unnecessary detail in the story I had to cut out. For example, in the original draft I wrote a flashback where the main character witnessed her father brutally butchering a goat when she was five. I went into detail about how she was sneaking around and how she felt when she saw the act. Ultimately, I decided to cut this and summarize the experience in a brief and just as effective paragraph.

Was this the right move? I feel that it was. I was able to get the impact that I wanted in a word count that was more suitable to the size of a short story.

I am big believer in letting a story be the length it needs to. Just because you start off a project with the intent of it being a short story doesn’t mean you should fight it if it would read better as something a longer. However, if you can make an scene of your story just as effective, engaging, and lively with 100 words as opposed to 300, try making the cut. Sometimes less is in fact more.

If you are still ambivalent about killing your darlings, my recommendation is creating and saving different drafts of your story. This way you’ll never truly lose it, and you can always return to it if you need to.

In the spirit of showing you what I mean, here are two things that I wrote describing the same action, let me know what you think is better.

The bright hue of the orange on the table enticed Michael. He picked up the fruit, eyeing it for a moment before he began peeling it. The oils of its flesh sprayed into the air a sweet and bright scent. Once it was fully peeled, he plucked a wedge from the sphere and slipped it into his mouth.

The ripe orange on the table enticed Michael. He eyed it for a moment before grabbing and peeling it. A bright, sweet scent filled the air. He plucked a wedge from the fruit and ate it.

Both describe the same thing—the last example doing so more effectively (and less seductively). But still, unless the story is about a magical orange, there probably doesn’t need to be this much detail, even to the extent of the second example.

I’m curious to know if you have any advices on how to best kill your darlings. Leave me a comment letting me know.