Cameron Montague Taylor

Fantasy Author & Fiction Editor

Archives for December 2022

Killing Darlings

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This week, I’m trying something new on the blog: a segment called Dear Cee, in which I answer I question I received via email, DM, comment, or otherwise. The first Dear Cee is from a colleague who’s wrestling with a Contemporary Romance manuscript and trying to work out whether/how a scene ought to be cut.

If you’ve ever wondered why a developmental editor might suggest a scene-level cut—or how an editor might go about performing one—read on!

Dear Cee,

I have a question about “killing darlings.”

Let’s say an author’s manuscript has a long chapter in which the FMC (female main character) and her two friends go out to party on a boat. The only thing that happens during the trip is a conversation about the FMC’s ex-boyfriend and her hot new (MMC) neighbor. The chapter shows the closeness of their relationships, but doesn’t progress the plot or add any tension.

Should a chapter like this be cut? My gut says ‘yes,’ but I’m not sure how to approach this with the author!

You’re almost certainly right, so the questions are:

  • How much of that information is necessary to character development / to understand the rest of the story?
  • Could the author cut the entire chapter and not lose anything meaningful? (in that case, chop chop)
  • Do we need character and relationship progression there, but the scene fails to add anything to the story because it’s a ‘diner’ conversation (ie: had while eating/drinking/hanging out with little external motion)?

I suspect the issue is a combination of the above three factors. Granted, I haven’t read the source text myself, so I’m making guesses, but I’ll go out on a limb and pinpoint the following issues:

  • The reader probably doesn’t need to know all of the information that gets presented in the friends’ dialogue
  • Most of the dialogue is snappy back-and-forth, ie: literal reportage of what the author heard in their head while they were writing
  • This snappy back-and-forth feels like talking heads by the end of the scene, which drowns out important or interesting character-building information.

These tend to be ‘darling’ scenes. They’re fun, the author enjoyed writing them, they show the characters interacting and having a good time. We’re loath to cut these moments in our writing because they give us the warm-fuzzies, and it’s easy to conflate I love this scene with I need this scene. Self-editing is hard!

But your author would be happy to know that, while I’m leaning towards ‘cut it,’ there could be enough important contained to justify keeping (and rewriting) it. If you suspect that’s the case, I have another set of questions:

  • What aspect of the Big Three elements of story (plot, character, worldbuilding) are advanced in this scene?
  • Can those elements be worked into surrounding scenes in order to chop this one?
  • If not, is there a more conflict-driven, high-stakes way to approach the reveal of this vital information?

On the surface, this scene sounds like a candidate for either a wholesale cut or a drastic reduction: it moves slowly, it only advances one element of the Big Three, it lacks conflict/stakes. But—if this is the only in-scene relationship development between the FMC and her friends, cutting it might leave their friendship on shaky legs.

What if the author was right to include a character-building scene, but the execution is flawed? What would need to change in order to turn this ‘darling’ scene into one that drives the narrative forward?

Kill your darlings, then bring them back to life

Like zombies. But better.

When giving ‘darlings’ a new lease on life, we must identify what information the author conveys. Mark and set aside important dialogue exchanges, moments of action, and snippets of interiority that need to make it through to the next draft.

Next, take a step back. Look at those important bits, and ask the author “how else can you string together these pieces?”

I’m operating under the assumption, based on the nature of the question, that this is a ‘bonding’ scene. These types of scenes often cause problems, not because character bonding is irrelevant to plot, but because of how the bonding happens. The easiest way for characters to share information is through dialogue, which is why we end up with so many sit-down conversations in our rough drafts. But sit-down conversations tend to drag, and moreover, they aren’t the fastest way to show the bond those characters have.

People bond through hardship, which is another way of saying conflict—ie: the driving engine of narrative traction. When adding conflict into a dialogue heavy scene, many authors reach first for a natural next step: make the characters have an argument.

This is a possible solution, but it’s often a trap. If the scene is already too dialogue-heavy, adding more dialogue (even if it’s high-conflict dialogue) won’t necessarily fix it.

So, how else can we add conflict into a dialogue-heavy scene?

  • A ticking clock
  • An obstacle

In other words: incorporate an action element to replace, contextualize, and balance the scene’s dialogue.

The resurrection

When I edit, I ensure the author understands 1) why I believe the structure of a scene isn’t serving their story, and 2) offer multiple solutions for how the author can address the issue. I try to recommend a way to ‘save’ a scene unless I believe, from the bottom of my soul, that it has to hit the chopping block. In this case, I’d give an example of a way to add a ticking clock or obstacle in order to provide the tension necessary to carry a relationship-building scene.

In this case, let’s say:

  • The FMC has promised to dog-sit for the MMC that evening (ticking clock), and
  • The boat’s engine breaks down (obstacle).

Though in some genres, these obstacles will be life-threatening, they absolutely don’t have to be! All we need is a little shock or scare that gives the characters a reason to rally together, bond (or bond further), and reveal information in an organic way that doesn’t read like a conversation included for the reader’s benefit.

For the purpose of the example, let’s say the boat’s engine breaks down. This would give the characters a reason to talk about the FMC’s hot new neighbor (MMC), because if they can’t get back to shore in time, she’s going to ruin his night by failing to show up to dogsit for him. Even better—what if they don’t have cell reception, so she can’t even let him know what’s happening?

Was the FMC’s ex good with engines? Does she momentarily bemoan their breakup only for her friends to leap on the offensive and remind her what a no-good cheater he was?

Sure, this could be a scary moment: they’re adrift and panicking as the sun starts to set and the waves get bigger. Or, it could be a lighthearted, zany adventure as they find a handheld VHF, charge it, and make a radio call to the coast guard. What if, when the tow boat comes, the captain is young and attractive, and one of the friends flirts outrageously with him—and teases the FMC when she won’t join in on the fun, saying her ‘heart is spoken for’ by her hot neighbor?

There’s a reason why friend groups often get involved in antics in books/movies/tv: antics are fun, they provide an in-scene way to show relationship dynamics to the reader, and they almost always result in a conflict the group needs to overcome in order to reach their scene-level goal.

Tie it all in

To recap: the best thing for the story might be to cut the scene entirely. But if that’s not the case, the author must find a way to tie the events of that scene into either an external plot or subplot, creating moments of action that have a ripple effect on scenes. The easiest ways to add tension are through a ticking clock or an obstacle—preferably both!

This author’s order of operations becomes:

  1. Identify a goal for the FMC that will carry her through the boat scene and into the rest of the story. Does this goal—or a sub-goal beneath it—carry a ticking clock? Even better.
  2. Put an obstacle into the boat scene that will force failure on the ticking clock goal.
  3. Hijinks ensue as the friends rally around FMC to help her meet her goal.
  4. Use this as an opportunity to work the important conversation, action, and interiority that was flagged as ‘must save’ from the original draft.
  5. Allow the FMC to have a partial win (she doesn’t get stranded at sea, hooray!) with a defeat immediately chasing its heels (she is egregiously late to dog sit, so the MMC missed his evening obligation).
  6. Does the MMC get upset about this? Probably! This ties into the romantic plot’s ‘push’ factors (the MMC thinks she’s a flake; the FMC thinks he’s an uptight, unforgiving jerk).
  7. This partial defeat can also tie into the next step of the external pot (how does the FMC make it up to the MMC? This gives them an opportunity to connect further!).

Naturally, this tweak with the engine breakdown and the dog sitting might not work for the author, and that’s totally okay. In editorial work, our suggestions aren’t The Only Way to ‘fix’ a story. Instead, they’re fleshed-out examples that show the author how altering an element of the story will strengthen it, hopefully paving the way for them to plug-and-play their own solution.

The details of the change itself aren’t important. We can change them to anything: one of the FMC’s friends falls overboard and the MMC is a member of the Coast Guard, for example, or the FMC breaks something on the boat and has a blow-out fight with the friend who owns the boat, which reveals a lot about the FMC’s backstory in the process.

Whatever the author chooses, the result is the only thing that matters, and that’s a scene which reveals both the FMC’s backstory and the bond she shares with her friends, while generating conflict/stakes and connecting back to the external plot.

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Understanding Psychic Distance

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By this point, everyone and their cat has heard the world’s most popular piece of writing advice: “show, don’t tell.” It’s a snappy, cute little phrase that feels accurate while remaining frustratingly vague. Though it’s one fiction writing’s most important tenets, I don’t like repeating it verbatim for one big reason:

It’s not a single piece of actionable advice.

“Show, don’t tell” is an umbrella under which a wild number of craft concepts sit. It impacts almost every single aspect of writing prose, and the best method I have to explain it is a metaphor: if your prose is a camera and you’re the photographer, make sure you use the right zoom lens for each scene.

Some parts of the story require a wide-angle. Or a telephoto. Or a macro lens. Showing vs. telling is the act of zooming in or zooming out to focus (or not focus) the reader’s attention on immersive, real-time detail.

This ought not be interpreted literally, either, for setting detail is only one part of the “Show, don’t tell” picture. It impacts all axes of prose in our writing, and in today’s blog post, we’ll be looking at how “show, don’t tell” impacts narrative voice and psychic distance.

Show, don’t tell & psychic distance

First, let’s get clear on the camera metaphor:

Showing means zooming all the way in to focus the reader on vivid details, and telling means zooming out to deliver a broader picture. Therefore, showing brings the reader closer to a character’s consciousness, while telling increases the psychic distance (there’s that word!) between the reader and the character, letting them observe story events from further away.

Like any good zoom lens, our narrative ‘camera’ has more than two binary settings, and as writers, we can choose how far we ‘zoom in’ in order to best suit our narrative.

Certain POVs, like true and subjective omniscient, put a great deal of distance between the reader and the character, often by using a third-party narrator. And while omniscient narrators can dip into characters’ heads, they do so at a distance, observing but not experiencing those thoughts and feelings.

Contrast that with POVs like third limited close and first person, which allow the reader to experience the narrative as if they were the character in question. These POVs often get called “voicey,” because the narration sounds is delivered by the character, and sounds like the character’s spoken voice. Think about Catcher in the Rye, when Holden Caulfield calls other characters “phonies” in narration.

Is one method better than the other?

Arguably, no. Third limited and first person are more popular right now, especially in middle grade and young adult categories, but there are bestselling writers who masterfully use omniscient and somehow still attach us deeply to the characters (think Fredrick Backman). Like any zoom lens, psychic distance is a tool and a choice we can use as writers in order to effectively tell our stories.

So what do these different ‘zoom settings’ look like?

Five levels of psychic distance

First, a caveat: there aren’t five levels of psychic distance.

Or, at least, there’s no dividing line between each of these so-called ‘levels.’ I use five, here, because that was how I initially learned about psychic distance in fiction, and because I think it’s 1) enough to provide nuance without 2) being overwhelming.

For these purposes, think of the levels like this:

  1. Omniscient
  2. Omniscient or distant third
  3. (Close) omniscient or third limited
  4. Third limited close or distant first person
  5. Third limited close or first person

Notice how there’s a lot of overlap between them? This is important! It means that, while choosing our POV will inherently limit how close or far we can ‘zoom’ while writing, our narrative camera still comes equipped with a zoom function.

Let’s first take a look at our five levels, then examine why we might choose to zoom in and out between them.

*Note! These examples aren’t meant to be exact rewrites of the same sentence—they’re illustrations of what close vs. distant narration looks like with one character in one scenario.

  • Omnicient: furthest from the POV character

It was an unusually warm fall in Tarrytown. On one of the city’s many tree-lined streets, a brownstone door opened, and a woman stepped out onto the sidewalk.

In this example, it’s clear the character (a woman) isn’t narrating the story; she couldn’t have seen the brownstone door open from the street if she’s the one opening it, right?

  • Omniscient or distant third: far from the character, but skimming their thoughts

Ida Marie didn’t appreciate the unreasonably warm weather, and feared it would ruin her afternoon walk.

This example is slightly closer than #1. A writer using subjective omniscient might even piggyback these first two examples off of one another, ‘zooming in’ to the character to give us her name and a hint of her mental/emotional state.

This could also be an example of distant third limited, because it’s settled firmly upon Ida Marie’s shoulders. Yet while the reader can skim Ida Marie’s thoughts, this POV isn’t immersive; the use of filtering phrases like didn’t appreciate and feared serve as ‘tells.’ Rather than showing the reader what Ida Marie experiences as she begins her walk, the narrative zooms out to tell the reader what she’s thinking and how she’s feeling. Contrast these telling words with the following examples:

  • (Closer) omniscient or third limited—slipping into the character’s body

Ida cursed November’s unreasonable heat, which made her shirt stick to her back as she walked.

Much closer! While this breaks no laws of omniscient (it’s still tell-y), the sensory detail of the shirt sticking to the back brings the reader closer to Ida Marie. This is the true point of crossover between the deepest possible omniscient perspectives and the ‘standard zoom’ of third limited.

  • Third limited close, or distant first person—slipping into the character’s thoughts

God, how she hated those second summers. They made her tacky with sweat, shirt turning clammy and gross against her skin.

Here, we’re experiencing Ida Marie’s thoughts along with her, learning that she calls the unseasonably warm parts of fall ‘second summer,’ that her shirt is tacky, that she thinks it feels ‘gross’ against her skin. While this is phrased in third person, it would work in first, too, without coming off as weak writing: God, how I hated those second summers. They made me tacky with sweat, shirt turning gross against my skin.

Some narrative distance remains, because Ida Marie is still telling us how she feels with “she hated those second summers.” Yet although the camera isn’t zoomed all the way in, her voice sneaks in makes an appearance—how she sounds both in dialogue and in her own head—which means this cannot be an omniscient narrator; Ida Marie is now the one telling us the story.

  • Third person limited close or first person—deep POV, macro zoom

Another damn seventy-degree day in November. Forget pumpkin spice; this year was sweaty tee shirts, soggy pits, and lungs that ached with every stupid, humid breath.

See the difference?

In this excerpt, we are Ida Marie. We’re so close in her head that we can hear the quality of her voice as if she’s chatting in our ear. This is deep interiority, the last step before pure stream of consciousness. Did you notice how there were no pronouns in the excerpt? That’s not an accident! How often do we refer to ourselves in our own heads? Infrequently, right? Our focus is usually directed elsewhere.

That’s not to say pronouns won’t appear in deep POV (we need them to describe physical action), but they’ll become less common throughout moments of interiority. The ‘macro’ zoom setting on psychic distance gets us so close to the character that we no longer ‘see’ them; instead, we gain an understanding of who the character is by observing their reflection in the world around them. This is the bread-and-butter spot for first person and third limited deep.

How do we decide when to zoom in/out?

There are a variety of reasons why an author might choose to zoom in or out within the boundaries of the POV they’ve chosen. Here are the three that I believe are the most important to consider while we’re writing:

  • Voice when writing first or third POV

The narrower the psychic distance, the stronger the POV character’s voice will be in narration, and the more the character begins to feel like a real person. Strong character voice can provide a hook and a handhold for readers to become invested in them and the story they’re trying to tell. Zoom in!

  • Managing the reader’s connection and comfort

Though a narrower psychic distance gap is often pushed as a method of strengthening reader connection, there are times when it’s more appropriate to pull back and leave a gap between the reader and the POV character. Authors do so when sitting too deeply in the POV character’s head is uncomfortable and disturbing. This might be the case, for example, when a murder mystery slips into a serial killer’s POV, or when a character commits an atrocity that the author doesn’t want to excuse, sexualize, or romanticize. Zoom out!

  • Show, don’t tell

Larger gaps can work better for technical reasons, too. There will be times when the POV character must transmit information to the reader that, while important to understanding the flow of the story, isn’t itself vital to describe in detail, like a time skip or a scene transition. Writers might zoom out to prevent these scenes from bogging down the story, then zoom in when they want the reader to experience a scene alongside the character: clue discoveries, major reveals, battles, sex scenes, love confessions, etc.

Want to learn more about when it’s appropriate to ‘show’ and when it’s better to ‘tell?’ Check out this infographic.

There’s more to “show, don’t tell”

While there’s more to “show, don’t tell,” mastering psychic distance is a major step towards learning how to strike the right balance in your writing.

Have questions about what you’ve read in the blog post, or more questions about “show, don’t tell” that weren’t answered here? Let’s chat in the comments!

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