Good Day all! Thanks for swinging by, whether you're starting here, or you clicked on my link from the awesome, Sarah Hegger's blog, *smiles all around* welcome! This week on RWW: The lovely Carrie Elks, author of the Love in London series, has spoken: Stephen King famously said that it's necessary to 'kill your darlings' when editing your work. Do you have anything you had to remove from a book that you're still proud of? Or something that embarrasses you so much it will never again see the light of day? If you're feeling really brave, share some of it with us! I'm going with a simpler answer than I originally thought on this. I have plenty of lines, paragraphs, chapters, to choose from here, but really, what I want to discuss is . . . Ellipses. I love ellipses. They really are my darlings. They bring out the pause I need, the trailing off of a characters thoughts, or . . . Well, you know what I mean. :) I use them a lot. Because my own thoughts trail off into an ellipses from time to time, so I figure . . . why shouldn't the people I write about use them as well? Right? I didn't think it was that bad, after all. However . . . my very first manuscript came back to me from the editing room with a note pointing out just how much I over-use them. Let's just say . . . it was an eye opener. Yeah, it stung. But who doesn't love a good grammar lashing? I got it. I mean let's face it . . . I am an over-user (the first step in conquering your problem is to admit there's a problem. Yes?). These days, you won't see them as much in my books, but that's because I make a concentrated effort not to keep most of them. It doesn't mean they are not peppered throughout my first drafts though . . . A part of me cries every time I delete one but . . . I'll live. And so will my story.
* * * * * * * * * Okay! That was fun right? Learn something new? Probably not. LOL You know me too well. How about we learn something about Steven Mitchel's darlings next? Come with me to his blog and find out who and / or what he likes to kill. Thanks for stopping by! |