{"id":11362,"date":"2018-12-19T17:56:43","date_gmt":"2018-12-20T01:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jessicabrody.com\/?p=11362"},"modified":"2022-05-05T17:57:21","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T00:57:21","slug":"put-your-darlings-to-the-test-before-you-kill-them-a-tip-for-revising-with-clarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jessicabrody.com\/2018\/12\/put-your-darlings-to-the-test-before-you-kill-them-a-tip-for-revising-with-clarity\/","title":{"rendered":"Put Your Darlings to the Test (Before You Kill Them) – A Tip for Revising with Clarity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n
\n

Have you ever found yourself staring down a page or chapter in your revision, knowing you have to cut or rewrite major chunks of text, and thinking, \u201cI DON\u2019T WANNA DO IT!\u201d Or maybe you say to yourself, something along the lines of, \u201cBut I\u00a0love<\/em>\u00a0that passage! It\u2019s some of my best work!\u201d<\/p>\n

But we all know that sometimes to make a good scene great you have to (let\u2019s say it all together!)\u00a0\u201cKill your darlings!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

But if you want to become a productive writer<\/a>, you have to be able to tell which darlings to keep and which to kill. So, here\u2019s a mind trick I discovered to put those darlings to the test and discover if they really ARE that great\u2026or if they’re just sort of, kind of great, and my reluctance to kill them stems more from the fear of not being able to do better. (Sound familiar???)<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what I do: I cut and paste the entire scene or chapter I\u2019m trying to revise OUT of my main document. Get it out of there.\u00a0REMOVE IT COMPLETELY<\/strong>. I paste it in another separate document. I then set those document windows side by side so I can see them both at once and I start the scene or chapter from scratch. That\u2019s right.\u00a0 Blank page. Fresh Start. White horizon. (Sometimes I\u2019ll even start a brand NEW document just for the revision of that scene).\u00a0Now here\u2019s where the hack comes in. You\u2019re allowed to put anything from the original scene\/chapter back into the new version of the scene\/chapter BUT\u2026here\u2019s the caveat. You can\u2019t copy and paste anything back in. You have to RETYPE it. Every. Single. Word.<\/p>\n

What this little nifty trick does is:<\/p>\n

1) Forces you to really decide if it\u2019s worth keeping.<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s a lot harder to retype than it is to cut and paste (or type\u00a0around<\/em>\u00a0text that’s already on the page.) Once you have to retype that entire passage back in word for word, your brain goes, \u201cUgh. Is this really worth it?\u201d And you\u2019ll have an easier time answering that question truthfully. You might get halfway through retyping that passage you\u00a0thought<\/em>\u00a0was the best work you\u2019ve ever done, only to discover that it\u2019s really not and all of this retyping work is\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0actually worth it.<\/p>\n

2) Just the act of retyping the words (which is essentially re-writing it) puts your brain into a different gear.<\/strong>\u00a0Essentially, it puts your brain BACK into drafting mode and you can see that old passage with new eyes. It\u2019s strange, but just the act of retyping it, often gives me a new perspective on the text and I find myself typing NEW things along with the old things. Literally revising the passage as I type. Instead of trying to cram new things into an existing chunk of text (where my ego is clinging desperately to things it probably shouldn\u2019t be clinging to) I\u2019m able to revise as I type and decide what stays and goes in the \u201cmoment.\u201d Which oftentimes works out better for me.<\/p>\n

So give this little hack a try. Find a scene or chapter or passage that needs to be revised, get it out of your manuscript and add it back \u201cmanually\u201d\u2014word by word. See if it helps you look at your writing with a bit more clarity.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever found yourself staring down a page or chapter in your revision, knowing you have to cut or rewrite major chunks of text, and thinking, \u201cI DON\u2019T WANNA DO IT!\u201d Or maybe you say to yourself, something along the lines of, \u201cBut I\u00a0love\u00a0that passage! It\u2019s some of my best work!\u201d But we all  … Read more <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,558],"tags":[526,593,559,581,592,591,717,594,588,525,567,537,253],"yoast_head":"\nJessica Brody | Put Your Darlings to the Test (Before You Kill Them) - A Tip for Revising with Clarity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jessicabrody.com\/2018\/12\/put-your-darlings-to-the-test-before-you-kill-them-a-tip-for-revising-with-clarity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jessica Brody | Put Your Darlings to the Test (Before You Kill Them) - A Tip for Revising with Clarity\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Have you ever found yourself staring down a page or chapter in your revision, knowing you have to cut or rewrite major chunks of text, and thinking, \u201cI DON\u2019T WANNA DO IT!\u201d Or maybe you say to yourself, something along the lines of, \u201cBut I\u00a0love\u00a0that passage! 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