Carrie - Lesson 5 (Kill Your Darlings)

Kill Your Darlings in Carrie : "Kill your darlings" is a quote attributed to William Faulkner. This means that a writer should strike any passage that he or she finds exceptionally beautful, clever, or interesting. Why? Usually things the writer holds dear aren't exceptionally beautful, clever, or interesting. Stephen King gives this advice in On Writing, but he (like most writers) struggles with it. Here are three examples:

1. When Susan argues with Tommy over whether to ask Carrie to the prom, he states that kids don't have empathy. He says, "Kids don't even know their reactions really know their actions really, actually hurt other people." She replies, "But hardly anybody ever finds out their actions really, actually hurt other people! People don't get better, they just get smarter. when you get smarter you don't stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it." This analogy is pretty apt, but it sounds like something Stephen King would say rather than Susan Snell.
2. Tommy finally asks Carrie out as she's leaving period five study hall. At the teacher's desk Mr. Stephens, a tall man just beginning to run to fat, was folding papers abstractedly back into his ratty brown briefcase. At the time King wrote this in the back of the fabled trailer, he had no idea he would become a celebrity. Here King appears in his own book, like Alfred Hitchcock walking down the hall in Marnie. Writers should stay out of their narratives.
3. In his excerpt from The Shadow Exploded, the author describes how Ross was remembered: "a friendly, good-natured fellow (many referred to him as 'a hell of a good shit')." Again, unless King himself were writing his non-fiction account of the Carrie White affair, I can't imagine that the admittedly funny detail would have been included.

My three examples don't wreck Carrie, and some might argue that they are the folksy kinds of things that have made King so popular. However, writers who are not Stephen King would do well to avoid them.

Exercise: Examine your work for your favorite passages. Ask yourself (honestly) if your story would be stronger without them.