Murder Your Darlings Quotes

“Open this book to a random page. With a pencil, mark any word or phrase that you think does not contribute to the meaning of a passage or chapter. 2. Pick another page. As an exercise, imagine that you have been assigned to cut 10 percent. Mark the candidates for deletion.”
― Roy Peter Clark, Murder Your Darlings: And Other Gentle Writing Advice from Aristotle to Zinsser

“Test the power of your own arrangement of words with these exercises: 1. For fun, take a paragraph with five or six sentences and reformat it so that each sentence exists on a single line. Examine each sentence to see which words and phrases appear in the beginning, middle, and end. 2. Try to identify the main clause, a group of words that could stand independently as a sentence. There may be more than one. If there is just one, where does it appear: closer to the beginning or the end? 3. For each clause, notice the position of the subject and verb. In general, the closer they are together, and the closer both are to the beginning, the easier the sentence will be to read. 4. Notice the language you save for the end of your sentences, especially the end of the paragraph. Even if the subject and verb come early, you can save something special for the end. Be alert for interesting language that gets lost in the middle of a sentence or paragraph. Can you move it to the beginning or end, where it will get more attention?”
― Roy Peter Clark, Murder Your Darlings: And Other Gentle Writing Advice from Aristotle to Zinsser

“1. If you think of something clever by all means write it down.
2. Ask yourself, “Am I including this because it provides the reader with a memorable and delightful piece of evidence to prove the point of my text, or is it beside the point even though it reveals what a good wordsmith I am?”
3. If you decide to murder that passage, remember that you have another choice, you can save it in a file or journal. It may work well in a different context.
4. You may not be able to make these judgements on your own. Trust an editor or a writing friend to help.”
― Roy Peter Clark, Murder Your Darlings: And Other Gentle Writing Advice from Aristotle to Zinsser

“Imagination without skill makes a lively chaos. Skill without imagination a deadly order.”
― Roy Peter Clark , Murder Your Darlings: And Other Gentle Writing Advice from Aristotle to Zinsser

“Books have a way of finding you when you need them.”
― Roy Peter Clark, Murder Your Darlings: And Other Gentle Writing Advice from Aristotle to Zinsser