Today’s article comes from Clear Sight Books editor Rita Lewis, who is also a writer, grant consultant, and presenter. She helps professionals and organizations develop messages that serve their strategic goals, whether it’s authoring a book, making a strong case for funding, or becoming a better writer. A generalist at heart, Rita loves tackling diverse subjects and adopting words of all eras. Get in touch with her at RitaLewisWriter@gmail.com.
I’m a sucker for a good metaphor. I invent them as I write, use them in conversation, collect them, dream about them.
A few years ago, I had this great idea to use the metaphor of a car to explain how modifications to your diet can help treat diabetes. Genius, right? You need the right kind of “fuel” to make your “engine” run correctly. You need to consume a mix of protein and carbs, but not too heavy on the carbs because you don’t want your fuel mix too rich, which can cause problems with blood sugar…
And right there, the metaphor started breaking down. Filling up with premium gas instead of regular does not damage a regular engine the way too much sugar can damage your body. (Gearheads, please don’t correct me on nuances.)
I loved the idea of this metaphor because everyone can relate to cars. But it didn’t cover the complexities—or even the basics—of diabetes. I kept trying to make it work. (For months!) Only after a kind soul intervened did I realize that I’d fallen in love with a darling.
What is a darling?
A darling is a part of your writing that:
- you love, and
- doesn’t work.
In short, you develop a fatuous blind spot for a brilliant phrase you wrote, an irrelevant section you spent hours developing, or an idea that doesn’t serve your plot, premise, chapter, or book.
How do you know if something is a darling? Luckily, there are red flags:
- Unreasonable demands. A self-centered taskmaster, a darling might ask you to rewrite or rearrange surrounding text to accommodate it. Or it could demand a rework of your entire chapter so it can shine like the cheap Vegas headpiece it is.
- False notes. A darling is something that stands out from the rest of your writing, and not in a good way. A jarring passage in the wrong tone… over-the-top flowery prose… five too many clever examples… A darling is a loud, uninvited guest at your birthday party, getting drunk and causing trouble with the other words. It simply doesn’t belong.
- Your obsessive behavior. You keep hammering that square peg into an obviously round hole, keep spending time on it, getting more and more invested until it becomes a seductive, self-sustaining loop. Giving up on a darling is really hard.
Editors are expert darling-spotters. John McPhee, a longtime writer for The New Yorker, in his book Draft No. 4 describes a tussle with his editor over a pun of questionable taste. His editor told him to take it out: “The line is not on the level of the rest of the piece and therefore seems out of place.” Back and forth they went, McPhee insisting on keeping the line. Finally, the editor said, “O.K. I just work here.”
McPhee recollects what happened next:
The day after that, I came in and said to him, “That joke. Let’s take that out. I think that ought to come out.” “Very well,” he said, with no hint of triumph in his eye.
Trust your editor. A darling might bring you joy, but it rarely enthralls anyone else.
Darlings can live anywhere
Darlings show up in all types of genres: fiction, nonfiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, plays, college essays.
In fiction, they pop up as unnecessary scenes, pointless dialog, characters without a literary purpose, and weird subplots. In your nonfiction book, a darling can assume the form of a title, a section, a structure, or even your central premise.
Most of my darlings materialize as ideas, metaphors, or just words (“spangled” made a visit the other day). They appear at the door to my mind, knocking like mad things, and I let them in—all of them. I fall in love with four out of five, and it takes me an absurdly long time to recognize them as darlings and break up with them. (As a matter of fact, my editor pointed out at least one darling in this piece! There were more, but who’s counting.)
Flush your darlings out of hiding
Dealing with darlings earlier, in the revision stage, is easier than fighting them in the editing phase, after you’ve invested so much in these little nothings. Flush them out and get rid of them before you get too attached.
Pretend you’re writing to spec, a certain number of words or characters only. Try tightening your novel by a scene, or your article by a certain number of lines. Is there an inessential darling hogging the word count?
When you identify a suspicious-looking element in your writing project, remove it temporarily. If its absence doesn’t make any difference to the story or the flow, you might have found a darling you can delete permanently.
To flush out other darlings, identify which phrases, sections, or word choices have been giving you a fit. Are you still trying to make them work? Your emotional attachment is a dead giveaway.
You don’t need to resort to murder
The famous advice to writers to “kill your darlings” probably derives from “murder your darlings,” which appeared from the pen of Arthur Quiller-Couch around 1914.
“Kill” and “murder” are a bit extreme, don’t you think? Let’s look at some other ways to prevent darlings from weakening our writing…
Transform your darling. Maybe you can convince your darling to change. Maybe it really wants to be a sidebar. Or a headline. My car metaphor really wanted to be a woodstove metaphor. Shoutout to my clever sister for this: If you keep your stove going with the right kind (slow burning) and the right amount (a Goldilocks amount) of wood, it won’t burn down the house (let high blood sugar cause damage) or let the fire go out (in a low-sugar crash). Voilà.
Warehouse your darling. Remove your precious darling from your essay and put it in a file “just in case.” You may later want to use it in another section or in a different piece entirely. Revisit the file when you need confirmation of your own genius.
Appreciate your darling. Appreciating your darling as you say goodbye to it is a much more satisfying end to its psychological life than just snuffing it out. Darlings are often the seeds of ideas, evidence of inspiration and your passion for writing. Falling in love with a darling is not a bad thing. To paraphrase Marie Kondo: Thank your darling for sparking joy—and then let it go.
Cutting your darlings loose is a good, healthy thing. It improves the piece you’re working on, frees your writing from distracting incongruities, and saves you time and energy for something more important than arm-wrestling unruly metaphors.
Related Reading
Rita always has great advice. For more from her on craft and the creative process, check out these articles :