“Kill your darlings” is a common piece of advice given by experienced writers. You kill your darlings when you decide to get rid of an unnecessary storyline, character, or sentences in a piece of creative writing—elements you may have worked hard to create but that must be removed for the sake of your overall story. Masterclass.com

In the beginning, Gobbledy was the story of a family and the friendships they built with animals in the forest. An adventurous holiday story with cute woodland creatures brought into the narrative fold instead of being presented as ornaments on a tree. The family wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot. The dad was stressed with a heavy workload and layoffs at the ketchup factory. Dexter was still headed toward code red with chickens in the closet. Yet, they were a household looking forward to the holidays despite obstacles in the world. In short, they were happy.

Around that time an agent at Writers House read the manuscript and sent me a message.

This is a middle grade novel.

Really?

Yes.

I had never thought about what category it would fall into. I figured it would be in the book equivalent of Family-Friendly Hallmark Movies . . . not realizing that there is no such equivalent. To someone who doesn’t craft novels for a living, shifting to middle school sounded like a small shift. Easy. Except it wasn’t. Trust me when I say I welcome easy. Rolling out the red carpet for easy is a skill I possess. Changing a novel from family to middle grade requires craft and skill. The agent thought it was a project worth pursuing and though I understood the work involved I went bravely forward, constructing a new draft.

With a revised draft in hand I could clearly see the difference. I could also see something was missing. I immediately set myself to the task of what to add. Plot, character, setting, theme? A lot of rewriting is simple addition. It’s a good place to start, but some rewrites are more nuanced and complicated. I changed elements, added scenes, charted my rising action, wrote a completely new beginning. I loved the story but something was still missing. The missing piece followed me around like a sulky roommate wanting to borrow money and nagged me 24/7.

I asked my husband to read the current draft. A week later he walked into the office and said, “You’ve made it too easy for him.”

“What?”

“You’ve made it too easy for Dexter. He has difficulties in the story, but you always get the sense the family will overcome it together. They love each other. The united Duckworth’s will prevail.”

I stared at him.

It was the simplest, best feedback. The kind writers dream of, pay money for, pray for with twitchy fingers clutching cheap pens.

I’d made it too easy. Because I welcome easy. Which is not allowed. Fiction is a long uphill climb engaged in conflict.

I was living in Pittsburgh at the time and went to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee to buffer the winter chill. All at once, in the middle of pouring a fresh cup, the answer descended from the ghost of William Faulkner. Kill your darlings. A desperately necessary, often misunderstood term. Admittedly, it had never been my favorite writing advice and I’d avoided it for most of my career. Yet, in that moment the concept hummed with clarity.

I stood there stunned, thinking, “Huh. He meant literally.”

I did the sensible thing.

I killed their mother.

Admittedly, it felt weird. This is a middle grade novel. Inflicting trauma isn’t really my thing.

I unkilled her the next day.

Then I promptly killed her again.

I don’t write or read much horror, though some of my closest friends are horror writers. The late, great Jack Ketchum would balk at such squeamish behavior. A close friend and fellow writer, Jeremy Wagner, would have added more blood and buried her alive. Killing people is a part of their natural landscape. Killing is creepy to me. I prefer life in all of its majestic expressions. It made me feel silly. I didn’t want to kill her but someone had to die.

I unkilled her and killed the neighbors instead. While I’d been firmly on the fence about the Duckworth mom, killing the neighbors stood out immediately. That one choice changed the entire tone of the novel. I unkilled them before anyone could set up a crime scene. I returned to the page the next day and killed the Duckworth mom. Again.

All in all, I killed her five times before deciding to leave her in the story but move her to the background. That didn’t work, either. Dexter and Dougal’s mom wasn’t background material. She was a psychologist with her own counseling practice who came home in between appointments to check on her sons after school. Funny and smart and dynamic, she wasn’t a weird supermom caricature. She was well-loved and deeply involved with her life. A woman who guided clients through the therapy process and created a space for her children to grow and learn. Dougal gets his sense of humor from her, Dexter his sense of adventure. The entire household resonates with the beauty of her being.

It sounds simple but it changed everything. Rewriting to the novice is usually all addition, but sometimes a great rewrite is simple subtraction. Removing a prominent element creates a layer of depth that didn’t exist before.

That is the real trick of fiction. Distilling the finest points down a sharp sparkle and then elevating that depth until the story has a soul. From the center of that soul, all good things rise. Which is an awesome, airy-fairy thing to say, but what does that mean? It means that all great stories make a point. And that point is like a compass that constantly leans toward the soul of the story.

With their mother gone, a “stranger in a strange land” theme emerged. Suddenly, I had a call to action. How to make a stranger in a strange land theme warm and festive while meeting difficult, sad events head on and writing straight into the center of the story.

The center is the unknown we can’t see from the edge. The center is the destination after the deep writing dive. A place of wonderous mystery. The place of the soul. I went willingly, polishing my new scythe.
I’d always wondered why there was a term for removing content during a rewrite that we might be deeply attached to until I had to do it in real life. Darlings fill pages and make us hum along at the keyboard but aren’t necessary ingredients of great fiction.

A single choice in a rewrite made a huge difference in the final draft. I wouldn’t change a thing. Not a word. With that, I would like to thank my darlings for dying so this story can live.

I spend a lot of time in the Duckworth household, have come to think of them as family. If I’m being honest, I miss her, just like the Duckworth family misses her. Some may say it would have been easier if I’d included that plot choice in the beginning. I disagree. Because of the way I wrote this novel, she exists everywhere and yet you cannot see her, only perceive her.

She has a name. Her name is Marcy. You wouldn’t recognize a sketch of her face, yet the warmth of her spirit lives on in these pages. She exists in the silent spaces, in between the lines. Like a God Particle, she is the thing we cannot see that holds the entire story together.