amyh12•7d ago

Heard a writing professor at a bar say 'kill your darlings' is the worst advice ever given

I was eavesdropping at a coffee shop in Portland last week and this guy who apparently teaches at PSU was telling his friend that the whole 'kill your darlings' thing makes people delete their best, most original ideas. He said he's seen students cut the one weird character or strange plot twist that made their story stand out, just because someone told them it was self-indulgent. Kinda made me rethink how I edit my own prompts and short stories. Has anyone else run into advice that ended up hurting more than helping?

3 comments

3 Comments

ivan_harris7d ago

My last "darling" was a character I was weirdly proud of, a talking cat who only communicated in tax law jokes. Maybe getting rid of him was the right call, since my beta readers called it a "distraction" and then one of them stopped talking to me. Turns out, sometimes the darlings get killed by the audience first.

cole_murphy6d ago

Honestly I'm more curious about what the tax jokes said than whether the cat should have stayed. That could've been the whole draw if you leaned into it hard enough.

davis.olivia6d ago

I actually think killing off characters isn't always the right move, even when beta readers push back hard. That cat sounds like a neat idea that just needed the right framing maybe something like a magical realism or absurdist setting where it could have worked. If the tax law jokes connected to the story's themes at all, the problem might have been execution rather than the concept itself.