William Faulkner famously said, “In writing, you must kill your darlings.” Stephen King in his writing book (which is worth a read for anyone, fiction writer or not) quoted Faulker and said:
“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
And so it was that I found myself vorpal sword in hand, point resting against the innocent throat of the first draft of a fantasy novel. Editing is not my favourite part of writing (actually writing is not my favourite part of writing--the best part of writing for me is having written, which is hard to get to without doing the actual writing part first...). Even though I don't particularly enjoy it, during this process I've found lots of "purple prose", grammatical errors and some great examples of just plain old bad writing. I also found some bits that I really enjoyed reading again, but that need to be cut for whatever reason and will never see the light of day (insert evil laugh here).
Since "killing your darlings" can be traumatic, I thought I'd post some of these bits that I liked so that they don't just end up on the cutting room floor. These are presented without much context, so this may be a terrible idea. But here goes anyway. :-)
This was part of a scene with what is left of a platoon of soldiers. They refer to each other by nicknames (yes, Goatturd's real name is not actually Goatturd).
Karney was saying, “So, we do what we have to do, then head back to Seagate. Anyone got a problem with that?"
They shook their heads except Python who mere sat as still as a stone.
"You're the boss, Karney," said Sweetlip.
"Then get your shit together. It's time to go, and I've been thinking it might be time to start that retirement fund we've been talking about. It seems to me that there’s more to life than combing the forests for murderers. It’s got me thinking. Here’s an opportunity to make something for ourselves."
“You talking about deserting?” asked Sweetlip.
“Right now, I’m saying we should bury our dead and get out of here. There’s a troop of Devilsbluff dogs out there that just made crow meat of Darro and the advance team. I don’t know about you, but I’m not paid enough to risk my neck against those odds.”
Goatturd grinned. "I’m with you, Karney. It’s about time we got something for ourselves. Never thought I'd hear such sweet words. I want to get me out of this jungle and back to Bertha's."
Sweetlip laughed. "If you spent as much time training as you did whoring, Goat, you'd be a formidable man."
"That's just what Bertha said." Goatturd chuckled. "Only the other way round."
For anyone who is interested in reading where this came from the chapters of the newest version of the story are here:
This is Chapter 1.
This is Chapter 2.
This is Chapter 3.
This is Chapter 4
This is Chapter 5
If you like my work, please consider following me for more. If you enjoyed them, please do upgoat and resheep!