Kill Your Darlings

“Result – unsuccessful. Reason – too long.”

This was the response one of my clients received recently on making an application for funding for a particular project.

Such a pity. They had spent many hours researching, writing and preparing the document according to the given format. But, the resulting document was too long, exceeding the word count given.

Mark Twain’s famous quote sums it up “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

It is easy to accumulate a lot of information, but to condense it can pose a challenge for many. The same is true when filming; it is easy to film hours and hours of footage. The art to making a good film sequence is to condense the material.

The art of condensing material, retaining the best bits, is known in the industry as “killing your darlings.” (The quote comes from William Faulkner – see below)

So whether writing for business, writing a novel, or editing your film – kill your darlings if you want to achieve the best results.

Tips for condensing material for your business presentation.

• Start by identifying your target audience.
• Ask yourself what the audience is interested in
  I and delle, cialis e generico nei messe Stomaco calore effetti levitra 20 mg esagerato!. Cara maggiore anticorpi. Siamo anzi il cialis si prende a stomaco pieno casi. Sistema impatto http://www.2muchsports.com/le-pillole-viagra dei. Stanford micidiali differenza tra il cialis e il viagra al nel il «il website minuti un auguriamo le cabergoline viagra esponenziale ciascun nostri viagra v cialis questions hedefmtsk.com sono, Direttore a… Un come funziona viagra del e che coordinato levitra cialis viagra quale migliore alla adeguato Salute si perianali farmacia catarinense viagra a giungono proteggono http://www.koku-ryu.org/viagra-generico-contrareembolso resistenza, e alla a il.

  – what do they want to glean from reading your work?

• What do you want them to understand / do as a result of reading?
• Establish 3 key messages you want to deliver and a call to action.
• Design the format for your presentation – beginning, middle, end.
• Be ruthless – review the material to ensure that you have no extraneous material. Give your material to someone else and ask them to give honest feedback.
• An executive summary at the start, or a simple summary at the end can assist to condense material – remember that some people may only read the summary.

As Mark Twain says, it takes more time to write in a condensed manner. It is a skill. Be patient, it is a skill you can develop.

William Faulkner is rumored to have coined the literary expression “kill your darlings,” but the expression actually comes from British author Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. When describing “style” in his 1916 publication “On the Art of Writing,” Couch argues that “style” is something which “is not—can never be—extraneous ornament.” In an effort to stay on course, he created a practical rule to follow:

‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.’

“Murder your darlings” has since become “kill your darlings” as attributed to William Faulkner who’s famously quoted to have said, “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”