Kill Your Darlings

My favourite character out of the series I am writing is very complex and difficult to understand. He was hard to get to know and seemed to try and evade me. The more I get to know him, the harder it became to fit him in the story. There was this one thing that happened in his past that would influence how he coped with certain events and this would have a great impact on the story. More and more it seemed as if the story needed to bend around him in order to make him fit in, but he is not the only character. It just did not feel right.

 At that point I started to consider that perhaps this was not his story. But I was not going to give up that easy. I did not want to give up on him so easy because to me he was far more than just another character. Parts of me are in him and he is very loosely based on someone that I admire a lot and has been inspiring me for a decade. I did more research in the hope to find something that would enable me to bypass his problem and make him fit in the story nonetheless. The answers I found were not the ones I wanted. Maybe this was not meant to be.


I was very close to killing him. I did not want to and the thought alone made me very sad, but it he would probably cause the whole story to come crashing down and I wanted to avoid that at all costs. I ensured myself if I had to kill him, I would not bury him. When the time was right, I would resurrect him and give him his own story. But luckily I did found a solution. A very simple one, actually. The trauma of his past was not important for the story, so why would I make him suffer so much? Taking the trauma away wouldn't fundamentally change him but it would make him able to be in the story. Everything is now starting to fit together again and I am very relieved because of this.  

But finding a solution for one character/scene/plot point/sentence/... does not mean there will always be a way to make it fit. You always have to look at the bigger picture. If something does not fit in, do not force it. It will make your story's quality go down. It is not because you kill it now, that you cannot use it later. Keep a notebook or a document were you save all the ideas and things that had to go because it did not fit. Maybe in time you find a way to rehabilitate them. Writing is great fun, but sometimes I can be very hard and it can even suck. Turn your heart into a stone and kill everything that does not fit.

"Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings."

On Writing by Stephen King

Writing Habits

A while ago I did a blog on reading habits and I decided that doing one on writing habits might be fun. I have been writing for about a decade now, though I only started writing seriously a couple of month ago. Thus I am still trying out new ways to work. 

I try to write every day. I do not set myself goals for the days as in how many hours I will be writing or how many words I want to write. Some days when I am having a down day or when I am very busy, it is just very hard to write. Still I try to get some words on the page, even if the writing ends up to be very bad. Bad writing is better than no writing. I fail the write daily more often then I want to, especially now that I am studying for my resists it is very hard. When schools start again in autumn, I hope I will finally plan everything in on a weekly basis and commit myself to that planning. I am, however, notoriously bad in planning.

source: google images

I hate being disturbed while writing. It can kill my flow. Most of the time I do the disturbing myself. The internet and not picking the right writing music are things that easily distract me. I like to chat with my friends and I do not stop a conversation when I am writing. It is not rare that I spend most of the time chatting instead of writing. I actually should close down the internet when writing, but I often use google translate to check up words seeing English is not my first language. Also the internet is easy for research. Writing with the internet open, is a very bad habit of mine. I really should try to close the internet more often or just ignore the people who are trying to talk to me until I have finished a paragraph or a scene.

Without a doubt my worst habit is wanting to rewrite scenes all the time. I have a hard time controlling my inner critic. When I reread something I have written previously, I almost always want to write it all over again because I know I can do it better. I should, however, leave that for another draft or else I have the risk to end up in a circle of never-ending edits or making myself very annoyed. Yesterday I spent a lot of time on writing a significant conversation and when I reread it today in order to continue, I wanted to make a back-up of the whole thing and start all over again. I managed to restrain myself so far, but it makes me frustrated and loose my enthusiasm to continue. 

I tend to keep everything related to the story in my head. I have a fairly good memory and I know that I am not likely to forget good ideas. I know everything would be much more organised when I would write it down, especially since I am working with a co-writer. I love world building until I have to write everything down. Because I have absolutely no clue what the best way to organise everything, I cannot stand to write it down. It somehow always makes it look very messy and disorganised. A giant cork board would be handy, but I have no room near my computer to hang something like that. I have, however, decided to scan in all my notes instead of typing them. It saves me a lot more time. I am also considering on using cards to write world building things on them and file them in a particular way. The downside of that system that I might end up with tons and tons of cards because they are so small.

I could go on for a little while longer, but as this blog is getting quite long, these habits (looking back on it, I a doubting if habit is the right word, but for now I cannot think of anything else) are the first ones that sprang into my mind. I might do another blog on something similar in the future about how I write, but I'm very busy now and leaving on a holiday in two weeks, so I might take a while before I write another blog.

If you have tips how I can improve these 'habits' or sort my world building organising problem, feel free to share in the comments. I would also love to read about your habits!