That writing professor told me to kill my darlings and I fought him on it for weeks

Dr. Harrison at Portland State kept telling me to cut the first three pages of my short story because they were just fancy scenery description. I argued with him for two weeks, saying it set the mood. He turned out 100% right - after I deleted those pages, my story actually started on page 4 and my workshop group finally engaged with it. Has anyone else had a teacher give advice that you stubbornly ignored at first?

2 comments

2 Comments

allen.ruby1mo ago

Has a professor ever told you something so obvious it took you months to actually listen? My creative writing teacher kept saying my dialogue was too on the nose, but I insisted it was realistic because people do talk like that. I finally recorded myself and my friends having a conversation and realized we interrupt each other, trail off, and say way more with our eyes than our words. It was humiliating to admit she was right after I spent a whole semester arguing with her. Now I cringe every time I see a character say exactly what they're feeling in my old drafts.

hayes.elliot1mo ago

Read this thing online where an editor for a big publishing house said the first draft is basically you telling yourself the story and the second draft is you telling everyone else. That really hit me. I kept defending my page long descriptions of coffee shops and foggy mornings thinking they were mood setters. Nope. They were me figuring out the vibe for myself. Once I cut most of the intro fluff my characters actually had to talk and do stuff right away. Same with my internal monologue stuff. I'd write three pages of the main character thinking about a decision before she made it. Now I just have her make the decision and deal with it. Way less boring to read.