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/lit/ - Literature

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7486555 No.7486555 [Reply] [Original]

>"kill your darlings"
>writing is riddled with darlings

>> No.7486569

>>7486555
what does the quote even mean?

>> No.7486581
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7486581

He didn't say that. It was Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, fuckface. And it was 'Murder your darlings'.

Read a fucking book and stop parroting people.

>> No.7486593

I want to fuck my darlings!

>> No.7486663

>>7486569
not OP, but i always took it to mean "get out of your comfort zone"

>> No.7486685

>>7486663
No.
>>7486569
It means that you wrote something that you think is particularly clever or moving, a phrase or sentence, and it's going to make the reader cringe. Fight yourself and delete it.

>> No.7486692

>>7486685
Then what should be put in its place, O wise one?

>> No.7486717
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7486717

>>7486692
Plain language. Or nothing. Just make a new copy without it / with the change, so you can part with it more easily.

>> No.7486748

>>7486717
Plain language is a total meme, its about syntax the flows well with sub-vocalization not some undefined 'plain'

>> No.7487296

>>7486569
It means remove any ornamentation from your prose that you couldn't defend if interrogated by a panel of English professors from Yale, Oxford, Stanford, and Jakarta University.

>yknow, like referring to lines you like as members of your harem...

>> No.7487305

>>7486748
Word.

Plain language is one of those things that is supposed to bring (supposedly) dead poetry back to life. But nobody likes plain english, or even believes it accurately approximates how people actually sound.

The idea is tinct with condescension towards the "common man" (whoever that is). The implication is that the common man can't handle your big, thick, juicy, erudition. No matter that rap (yeah I'm making this argument) has massive appeal despite often being inscrutable and performed in a dialect only spoken by maybe a tenth of the country

>> No.7487829

>>7486663
no.
it means that you should not get emotionally attached to your writing. All writing is rewriting and in that process you must be able to edit and cut even the most 'darling' sentences or scenes.

>> No.7489090

>>7486717
It's Faulkner, not Hemingway, nerd.

>> No.7489141

>>7486581
This fella is CORRECT! Though strangely aggressive about it.

"If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings."

>> No.7489246

>>7487305
You're pathetic. Listen to published authors; they know better.

>> No.7489284

>>7486569
He means kill all your cute womyn characters to get cheap sentimentality out of your readers.

> MUH CADDY!