Vent: That writing teacher who said "kill your darlings" was dead wrong for me

I had a creative writing prof at a community college in Spokane tell me to cut every clever metaphor I loved from my short story. I followed her advice and it turned into a flat, boring mess that read like a grocery list. Three months later I dug up the original draft with all my "bad" darlings and it got accepted by a lit mag after one round of edits. Has anyone else had a rule like that totally backfire on them?

2 comments

2 Comments

lilyfisher22d ago

My uncle who taught writing at a university in Ohio once told me to remove every single adverb from a poem I wrote. I did it and the whole thing fell apart like a cheap chair. I ended up putting half of them back and that version still gets taught in his class sometimes.

logan29922d ago

@lilyfisher that uncle sounds like he was testing you to see if you actually knew what you were doing. I had a professor once tell me to cut every adjective from a short story I wrote and I ended up with a list of nouns that read like a grocery receipt. It was a disaster, nothing but "dog street rain" on repeat. Putting half of them back is the real craft though, knowing when to break the rules is way harder than following them. Your poem surviving that chop and still being taught is honestly a flex, even if you had to cheat a little.