Mar
17th
2013
Killing Your Darlings · 3:15pm Mar 17th, 2013
Well, Borg finally did it.
After months of planning, I'm finally going over School Daze with a fine-toothed editing comb. I knew there were still things I could clean up, and I'm finally doing it.
Apparently something happens to my writing style at about chapter seven where there's less editing needed. I blame Discord.
But, WOW. I now see the Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, and it is EVERYWHERE.
The title comes from a phrase I heard on Golden Vision's podcast. "Killing Your Darlings" is defined as pruning sentences you love but know need to leave.
So, has anyone else ever created something and then had to force themselves to take a critical look back at some point?
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Paleo Prints · 313 views
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Will you mostly be looking for spelling errors and such? I'm guessing no major plot points will be changed, right?
Hope you manage to work out all those issues.
Oh absolutely, and it is beyond frustrating! Usually it's for the best though
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I intend to fix the awkward writing I encounter. For example, I had a problem with "tell not show" early on. As an example, in the individual version.
Twilight reclined on her haunches, taking in a large breath of her friend's earthy smelling house. Briefly reminding herself not to sit on the worm composting bin, the depressed librarian racked her brain for ways to help. She made a promise to herself; she WOULD solve this friendship problem.
"There must be some way we can work this. Why not take it to the parents? They see all the effort you put in. Look at all the work you grade at home, Cheerilee. There's as much paper out her as I have at home, and I live in a library! "
Cheerilee reflected on the families she had met in her few years teaching. "I'm afraid even a good reputation can't pay this bill. You saw the tally." Twilight backpedaled as a suddenly animated earth pony met her almost nose-to-nose. "Do you know how long they suspend a teacher for this level of damages?" Her pale green eyes quivered with apprehension as she pushed forward into contact with Twilight. "FOREVER. I'll never work in Ponyville again. They'll send me to the frontier, or move me to an inner-stable school where kids carry pies to class. Maybe they'll build an inner-stable school in the frontier just for me."
The purple unicorn melted under the intense stare of her friend. Tears run down her lavender cheeks.
"You can't leave. Nopony else understands all the words I use," she said. "NOPONY."
Suddenly small scaled feet kicked open the door. "I got your smelly dirty plant tools!"
Spike had chosen that moment to walk in, carrying a bundle of gardening equipment from the shed out back. Whistling and bobbing his head to the sounds of the classic 80's K-Colt subsidiary station that perennially filled the house, he dropped everything as he saw the two touching mares.
"Wow. Is this, like, Lyra and Bon-Bon stuff?"
Not very descriptive, and a little repetitive. Here's the rewrite.
Twilight reclined on her haunches, taking in a large breath of the house's earthy smell. Her eyes flickered sideways to the odor's source, and she caught sight of the opened worm composting bin, where a beautifully made yet unfinished sandwich was being broken down into waste.
Twilight shivered as she levitated the lid back. She racked her brain for ways to help, and made a promise to herself; she WOULD solve this friendship problem.
“There must be some way we can work this. Why not take it to the parents? They'll see all the effort you put in. Seriously, look at all the work you grade at home, Cheerilee. There’s as many papers spread out here as my house, and I live in a library! ”
Cheerilee eyes darted along the wall over several end-of-the-year class pictures. “I’m afraid even a good reputation can’t pay this bill. You saw the tally.” Twilight backpedaled as the suddenly animated earth pony met her almost nose-to-nose.
“Do you know how long they suspend a teacher for this level of damages?” Cheerilee's green eyes quivered with moisture as she pushed forward into physical contact with Twilight. “FOREVER. I’ll never work in Ponyville again. They’ll send me to the frontier, or move me to an inner-stable school where kids carry pies to class. Maybe they’ll build an inner-stable school in the frontier just for me.”
The logic chains in Twilight's brain melted under Cheerilee's raw stare, and she also felt tears start to form.
“You can’t leave," Twilight said as she poked Cheerilee with a hoof. "Nopony else understands all the words I use,” she said. “NOPONY. The data sampling levels out a eighty-seven percent for Rarity, and everypony else has a straight drop of at least six percentiles.”
Something between a snuffle and a giggle rose out of Cheerilee. "Twilight, you actually compiled data on this?"
Twilight shrugged in return, smiling despite the wetness on her face. "You knew who I was when we started hanging out, 'Lee."
The two friends stared at each other for long moments, silent and smiling. Suddenly, a small and scaled foot kicked open the front door. “I got your smelly dirty plant tools!”
Spike had chosen an interesting moment to carry in the bundle of gardening equipment from the shed out back. Whistling and bobbing his head to the sounds of the classic 80’s K-Colt subsidiary station that perennially filled the house and yard, he dropped everything as he saw the two tearful mares stare into each others' eyes, their faces almost touching.
“Wow. Is this, like, Lyra and Bon-Bon stuff going on here?”
Twilight turned a mortified shade of magenta, but Cheerilee only smiled.
“Spike,” she asked calmly. “If we said 'yes,' would you really have any idea what that would actually entail?”
He looked toward Twilight, blushing and hiding her face, then turned to Cheerilee, whose heaving chest contrasted with a calm expression. Spike shrugged. "Um, No.” He sat down with a hopeful look. "Do I finally get an explanation? Twilight changes the subject when it comes up."
Oh my God, have I ever. I got done writing my first draft for The Social Experiment, and I was a little proud of it, and then I had one of my buddies from SALT take a look at it. Short of it is, he tore it apart, and I finally saw just how clunky the prose, how forced the dialogue, and how rushed the pacing was.
It hurt like non-writers wouldn't believe, and I almost quit because of it, but after about three months of sitting, and rewriting, and editing, I had my first featured story, and something I'm truly, honestly, totally proud of.
I had to delete my favorite scene in getting Levee on EQD. 700-800 words of beautiful, amazing, humorous character development. It was wonderful. I loved that scene. And when it came time, I had to cut it to make the story better.
But
You do what you must. The weak endure what they must and the strong do what they can, and the story had to lose that to be strong.
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And I'm so happy that I get to read your gripping and heart-twisting Twiamel because of it.
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Thanks for the words, Cyne. They mean a lot.
Lavender Unicorn Syndrome?
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"Lavender Unicorn Syndrome occurs when, instead of using a characters name or a pronoun, you repeatedly use other descriptors for them, such as "the baker," "the ninja," "the dragon."
Common in Fan Fictions, the term spawned from the Friendship is Magic /fic/ board where writers would refer to Twilight Sparkle as "lavender unicorn" rather than using her name to describe when she was doing something."
-Urban Dictionary
Generally, I tend to avoid Lavender Unicorn Syndrome by way of my meticulous nature. In More Than A Stallion(which you should totally read by the by), I use character names almost every other sentence because there tend to be three or more in one place.
Heck, even when there was only one character sitting on a rooftop and thinking to himself, I use his name. This is just to remind the reader just who is thinking, because after nearly two biglong paragraphs of cluttered and messy thinking, one needs a refresher to see what the body is doing while the brain is occupied.
I also don't really have to kill my darlings, because as More Than A Stallion is a comic book crossover, I get to keep in some of my more inspired and emotionally charged paragraphs.
I think I've murdered a chapter out of just about every fic I've written over 10 chapters long. Normally they're kind-of ill, and limping anyway, so I consider it a mercy killing. And to be honest, I don't just kill them outright, I tend to throw them to the bottom of the Gdoc where I can use them as live organ donors in the event there is anything yummy left on them that other paragraphs need.
Cupcake, anybody? They're fresh.
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Yeah, I usually end up with a Gdoc of quotes and interactions unused after every story ends.
oh my god the lavender unicorn syndrome I was too scared to say anything about it the whole time