KILLING THE DARLING!

3/5/2016

The Vision – Avengers: Age of Ultron

"You know, the one thing you've got to learn about this business is....you've got to learn to kill your darlings."

And so this advice was exasperatedly expressed to me following a lengthily discussion...*ahem* calling it a discussion would be a sugar coating; I was on it like I was defending my doctoral thesis.
As there are stages of grief, there are stages a writer goes through when they have to 'Kill their darlings' trust me there is a reason they are called darlings.

Your darlings characters are like those friends your trying to get into an exclusive club but the bouncers is stone! They are those girlfriends you want to tag along on a date. They are...well, you get the drift. You know, you are rooting for them,

Katniss Everdeen

you want them to work out with your editor, with the producer. The truth is, darlings are just bandages you put on your broken scripts hoping no one will notice that glaring plothole wham! in the middle of your script.

But the biggest fear of losing your darling is losing your story. Loosing the salt in your food. If my darling has to go then my story has to change. But isn't that the beauty of writing? That it's re- writing? That you can always explore, that it feels like you are always working on a puzzle, that killing them actually liberates your imagination.

The Minions

And besides, you don't always have to kill your darlings, you can always imprison them for a later story. You can always give them an alternative universe where they go from being berserk serial killers with childhood trauma to being a cop with a chip on his shoulder and drinking problem. Then again, you can always set them free and hope they will reincarnate themselves in another story and live once more.