If you have ever attended a creative writing class, your teacher will probably have claimed that literary success is achieved through the willingness to get rid of self-indulgent or unsatisfactory work, usually phrased with the idioms: “murder your darlings”, “kill your darlings”, or “kill your babies” -- quite an over-dramatic bunch really, but that is a subject for another, certainly less helpful, blog. In Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft he advocated for the practice “even [if] it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart”, but does the process of self-editing really need to be so brutal? 

When I imagine the phrase “murder your darlings” enacted, it tends to be a rather exuberant process, often involving a mass exodus of potential ideas, scraps of scripts being discarded, shredded, burnt in a bonfire and cast to the four winds (I must admit, I also enjoy engaging in a similarly dramatic mind-set). At the very least, whenever I edit my own work, the page ends up covered in ink blots and scratches which become indecipherable. I have always been particularly self-critical, and I so my interpretation of “murder your darlings” has always led to whole chunks of script being forever cast aside and re-written. For those of us who struggle with our professional confidence (alongside our desire to join the next generation of screenwriters) egocentrism is certainly not the predominant problem. 

I have certainly been no stranger to the rejection letter -- my inbox is uncomfortably littered with disembodied thank yous and automated well wishes for future submissions. Whenever I receive responses like this and my perseverance begins to dwindle, something in the back of my mind tends to reiterate with “well, Harry Potter was rejected multiple times before Bloomsbury decided to publish it, so I just need to find the right production company / creative team who will be invested in my work”. Now, while certainly not comparing myself to J.K. Rowling, I must admit that it is comforting to ally myself with someone who I greatly admire when I doubt my future as a writer. Many popular writers have indeed struggled to have their work acknowledged, despite the fact that those same works are now considered to be some of the greatest novels, films and plays ever produced. 

However, this attitude, though certainly a confidence booster, can also complicate the editing and submission process; when I am confronted with a plot line or character that I am particularly attached to, I must admit that my mind can occasionally wander towards the J.K. hypothesis, rather than address my work objectively. (I also realise that these are antithetical states of being, possessing both an overly critical and overly generous editing style, but I have never been one to make things easy for myself). I don’t believe this makes me egocentric, nor does it mean that I should solve my problems by slaughtering my prose in a violent tirade of amendments. Like an aggressively proud parent, we want what is best for our paper babies, and there is no shame in that. 

What I think is needed, therefore, is a certain balance of these two principles, and I believe that in order to do this, we must never “murder our darlings” -- at least, not in their entirety. Though learning to be able to edit yourself is an incredibly vital skill, once you have completed your script you need to distance yourself from it, even cut yourself off for maybe a week or so, before you return to edit with fresh, objective eyes. To begin the process even a day after completion means that you are still in the mind-set of the writer, who would most likely attack the editor for even daring to criticise their little recyclable darlings. Even inviting a group of friends round to hold a table reading would be a great way to combat your subjective nature; gather your nearest and dearest, grab an assortment of delectable treats as the evening’s payment, and let them tear apart your plot threads in one amiable free-for-all. Preferably find yourself a group of people who you know will be honest with you, and not placate you -- after all, you don’t want to spend all that money on biscuits without something useful to come out of it, right? It is so crucial for you to hear your work read aloud, as then you will able to contemplate whether something you have written sounds jarring, ambiguous, or just plain unrealistic, and, of course, you will have an assortment of additional voices able to contribute to the editing process, allowing you to gain a richer understanding of the narrative you have created. If you are charged as the murderer of your darlings, then make your friends be accessories to the fact. 

Now as the title of this article suggests, by now I should have told you when it is appropriate to let go of your old scripts that, for whatever reason, have not been produced. Instead of offering you a meticulous timeline, I will say this: I don’t think you should let go of old screenplays, and I think to “murder” an idea in its infancy can prove to be a reckless editing method. For example, if a character provides nothing to your plot apart from your own personal enjoyment, this does not mean that they will not be crucial to another screenplay you might start working on in a few months, or even a few weeks, down the line -- it just means that they are not appropriate for the story at hand. When the executioner’s pen or backspace key begins to fall, if there is some small part of you that laments this action, then stop. Stay your hand, at least for the time being. Yes you might be being an “egocentric little scribbler”, but then again, you might be saving ‘future you’ a lot of time trying to remember that one narrative element long since erased. 

For many writers, the editing process is a test of endurance, fraught with the dangers of self-deprecation, over-confidence or growing frustrations which can lead to the total abandonment of their once beloved darlings. For me, the need to constantly hack at my work with the veracity of one possessed will never be wholly fun, but it does not have to be torturous. If you decide that your script only has about five pages of workable material, then so be it. You need to be honest with yourself, but you should not scatter the dozens of other pages to the winds just because they did not make the final cut of this particular script. If you see no future merit in them, then by all means rid yourself of them, but if the thought of throwing them away sets alarm bells ringing, then give yourself time to potentially find use for them at a later date. We write because we love it, and no part of that process should cause the kind of discomfort that the phrase “murder your darlings” may insinuate. 

My apologies Mr. King -- for now, my scribbler’s heart shall be remaining firmly intact.