I finally got to the point in revising The Book Man where I realized that the entire part between Our Heroes' return from the Otherworld and their march into the climactic battle doesn't work at all. It's a bummer, because I like various things that happen in that section: the smatterings of romance, the character backstory, various scenes that have been deleted, added back in, and deleted again. But the section as a whole never sat right with me, and now I get why.
I died a little inside, sobbed internally in writerly anguish, and then started planning how this will all go down instead.
It's a terrible truth that, as writers, we sometimes have to delete scenes, characters, or entire plot lines that we love, but it's also one of the best-known pieces of advice out there: Kill your darlings. Said most famously by Stephen King, first said by Arthur Quiller-Couch ("murder your darlings"), and attributed to various famous authors since, "kill your darlings" has become possibly the most painful rule of being a writer.
Since I'm thinking about this nonstop right now, I want to know:
What darlings have you killed? What are the best scenes you've ever had to scrap, the best characters you've ever had to cut, or the best plot lines that somehow got derailed and had to be totally redone?
Gender:
Points: 91980
Reviews: 1735