Murder Your Darlings:

And other gentle writing advice from Aristotle to Zinsser

By Roy Peter Clark
New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2020

Murder your darlings. Keep your eye

1. on those fancy phrases.
2. Find and cut the clutter. Search for
lazy words, even after several drafts.
On the Art of Writing On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing
By Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch Nonfiction
By William Zinsser
Toolbox: You will write things you love. That’s
wonderful. Enjoy that feeling. During revision, Toolbox: Like William Zinsser, assume that your
though, ask yourself a crucial question. Does that third draft, even your fifth draft, maybe your eleventh
gorgeous passage or that clever thought support your draft, contains too many words. But how can you cut
main idea? If not, take it out. You do not have to clutter if you can’t see it? Test every word. You do
“murder” that darling metaphor. You can save it for not have to keep the reader on the “proper path.”
another story on another day. The word path has the idea of “proper” built in.

3. Learn to live inside words. Recognize both their literal meanings

and their associations.
Writing Well Toolbox: You have language inside you. What a blessing. But what if we flipped the switch?
By Donald Hall What if we imagined that we lived inside the language, a fish breathing in the ocean? Writers
swim inside words. When you see words from the inside out, you learn the absence of pure
synonyms. Sofa is no longer interchangeable with couch. Learn not just the literal meanings
of words, but their associations and connotations.

4. Shape a sentence for the desired

effect. To achieve clarity, put the
5. Work from a plan. Include a lead
or an intro you can write without
main clause first, with subject and referring to notes.
verb together. Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process
By John McPhee
The Philosophy of Rhetoric
By George Campbell, D.D. The John McPhee Reader
Toolbox: Some sentences put the main thought at Edited by William L. Howarth
the beginning, others near the end. The difference
Toolbox: The larger the writing project, the
matters. Sentences that make a point early seem more
more you need a plan. You need it to organize
natural and conversational. Reading those sentences,
your material, identify the parts, and reinforce a
the reader is more likely to focus on the content,
governing idea – a focus. If you lack a planning
and less on the writer. To create a special effect, a
process, you can borrow on from another author,
variation of the pattern with more of a flourish, save
such as John McPhee. An important tool in his
the trumpet blast till the end.
process is the “lead,” a section of up to 2,000 words
that helps the writer and the reader see what is
ahead. Write this passage without referring to your
notes. It will serve as a flashlight that shines down
into the well of the story, illuminating the unknown.
6. Recognize two contradictory meanings of style. Be prepared to abandon the
agreed-upon style of a group to express your individual style.
The Elements of Style
By William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

Toolbox: The meaning of the word style, as in the book The Elements of Style, is mercurial. Just when you think
you’ve contained it, it squirts away, assuming a new shape and significance. Some words with the same spelling
have opposite meanings. If you “sand” wood, you make it smooth. If you “sand” ice, you make it gritty. The
word style is almost like that. With some style books, the goal is consistency: we agree – or not – to use the serial
comma. But style is also an approach to writing that makes an author’s work distinctive. These two definitions
are not mutually exclusive, but they can rub, causing a creative friction. You may have to violate a group’s style in
order to express your individual style.

Vary sentence length to create a Use visual markings to spark

7. pleasing rhythm. Think of each 8. your creative process. Also use
period as a stop sign. them to signify your revisions.
100 Ways to Improve Your Writing: Proven Professional Authors at Work
Techniques for Writing with Style and Power Edited by Robert H. Taylor and Herman W.
By Gary Provost Liebert

Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Notebooks of the Mind: Explorations of Thinking
Sea of Story By Vera John-Steiner
By Ursula K. Le Guin
Toolbox: Draw pictures of your writing ideas.
Toolbox: Short sentences sound truthful. Writers Create maps of your process. Visualize your
use them to grab your attention. Longer sentences revisions. Think charts, diagrams, lists, story
take you on a journey, showing you the snowy, rusty shapes. Use circles, spirals, triangles, pyramids,
cityscape along the edge of the tracks as the train stick figures, and arrows – lots of arrows.
rumbles by. By length alone – short, medium, long – These blueprints can guide your thinking from
sentences send secret messages to the reader. With conception (those scribbles on napkins) through
variation, sentences can take on a musical rhythm, the final changes in the margins of your text.
from legato to staccato. As in music, pleasure comes Even in the digital age, edit on hard copy to
from the combined experience of repetition and better envision both your path and destination.
variation.

9. Tune your voice for the digital age. Experiment with language and forms of delivery.
Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age
By Constance Hale and Jessie Scanlon

Toolbox: I studied classical piano as a boy, using muscle memory to master works by Mozart and Beethoven. But
I was enjoying rock ‘n’ roll. To play like Little Richard required me to change the way I listened to music. I had
to learn chord progressions and improvisations. In the same way, writers in the digital age must expand their
range. Readers now expect not just a conventional voice, but a distinctive one, a writer willing to experiment
with language. This means not getting trapped in the jargon of technology, writing on a richer variety of cultural
experiences (the Bible and Twitter), using colloquial language to achieve sophisticated effects, and, at least on
occasion, finding a way to combine high seriousness with deep irreverence.
 Turn the dials that adjust the way you sound as a writer. Read the work aloud
10. to make sure it sounds like you – or a little better.
The Sound on the Page: Great Writers Talk about Style and Voice in Writing
By Ben Yagoda
Toolbox: Think of your writing voice as a version of your amplified singing voice. If you were on stage, you
would be singing into a microphone and through a sound system, where your voice would be influenced by
certain controls: volume, bass, treble, echo. Your writing voice has those kinds of levers too: whether you use
I or we; whether you write stories or reports; whether you quote Aristotle or your local street philosopher.
Learn how to manipulate these levers to discover and deliver your best writing voice.

Learn the steps of the writing Keep writing; things will get
11. process. Good writing is not
12. better. Never be discouraged by
magic, but it’s full of surprises. the inadequacies of early drafts.
The Essential Don Murray: Lessons from Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
America’s Greatest Writing Teacher By Anne Lamott
Edited by Thomas Newkirk and Lisa C. Miller
Toolbox: No writer writes the perfect story, one
Toolbox: Before you master the requirements perfect word at a time. In writing, perfect is the
of your particular genre, understand the steps enemy of good. Since imperfection is necessary,
of the process all writers must climb: finding it also becomes desirable. Never be discouraged
story ideas, gathering the material you need, by early problems in a text. It is a cognitive
discovering a focus, selecting your best stuff, distortion to think that “shitty first drafts” – to
envisioning a structure, building a draft, use Anne Lamott’s earthy term – make you a
revising all parts of the process over time. For shitty writer. With experience, you will learn
each step, you can find strategies that will help that such early writing is not sculpture, but clay,
you solve problems and make meaning. the stuff in which you will find the better work.

13. Write freely to discover what you want to say. Use a “zero draft”
Writing without
to move you toward a first draft.
Teachers: Techniques Toolbox: Writers help themselves by writing sooner than think they can. Before a
for Mastering the first draft, try a “zero draft,” early scribblings that may not even reach sentence form.
Writing Process Freewriting – fast drafting without self-censorship – is another path toward liberation.
And In these early forms of writing, the goal is not communication. You write here to compile,
Writing with Power remember, and gain knowledge. “What do I already know?” you ask yourself. “And what
By Peter Elbow do I still need to learn?”

14. Say it loud: “I am a writer.” Assume the identity of a writer, especially at

moments of self-doubt.
Becoming a Writer If you Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirt
By Dorothea Brande By Brenda Ueland

Toolbox: A goal of mastery of any craft is self-identification. Consider the difference between task and role;
becoming and being; craft and a sense of mission and purpose; the how and the why. Many play golf and music
but do not think of themselves as golfers or musicians because, after all, they are not Tiger Woods or Jimi
Hendrix. If you write, a day may come when you identify yourself as a writer. You are not the Scarecrow. You
don’t need a credential to prove you have a brain. Your credential is your writing. Learn to take encouragement
anywhere you can find it.
 15.
Develop the writing habit. Find a reliable work space, free of
distractions, where you can aim for a daily level of production.
On Writing: Toolbox: Stephen King offers an odd bit of advice: that you should read bad writing so you
A Memoir of can learn what not to write. More practical is the way in which King serves as a role model of
the Craft productivity, a prodigious one to be sure. He claims he can write a novel in a season. That’s four
By Stephen books per year. This pace comes from the elements of a writing habit: a reliable and comfortable
King place to write, the equipment and materials you need, protection from the distractions of
television or digital media, a self-imposed daily target – up to 2,000 words a day. I promise you
will not reach his standard, and neither can I. But we don’t have to. We can scale it down as fits
our personalities and responsibilities. Regular writing is a habit you should not kick.

16. Understand the value of storytelling. Guide readers in identifying danger to

avoid and people who will help.
On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction
By Brian Boyd
Toolbox: Reports convey information. Stories expand our experience. We have brains big enough to give us
language, and that gift allows us to tell stories – nonfiction and fiction. The purposeful writer can draw energy
from the two essential benefits of storytelling:

• We can identify dangers to our survival: a disease, an outlaw, that storm brewing in the Gulf.
• We can teach ourselves how to work together to achieve goals and solve problems.

Keeping those ends in mind will help you connect your craft to a higher purpose.

17. Prefer the complex human narrator. Try alternatives to the all-knowing or
completely unreliable storyteller.
How Fiction Works
By James Woods
Toolbox: When you write a story, figure out who is the teller. Who is my narrator? What does that person
know? What are his or her motives and backstory? What is the limit of that person’s knowledge? We used to
have two choices, narrators who were reliable or unreliable. A third choice is called the “free indirect style.” It
is not easy to master, but worth the effort. It lends credibility to the narration by replacing omniscience with a
degree of uncertainty, an unsteadiness that reflects the way humans actually know the world.

18. Write for sequence, then for theme. Readers want to know what happens next
and also what it means.
Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology
By Northrop Frye

Toolbox: For as long as there have been stories, authors have played with time, and so can you. We say that life
is experienced in chronological order, but that does not take into account dreams or memories. Stories have
the power to distract us from daily life and plunge us into narrative time. Our experience of story time differs
with each reading. Our first reading is usually sequential, a compulsive drive to discover what happens next. At
some point our memory takes control. “What happens next?” is replaced by “What does it all mean?” Those
questions give writers a dual responsibility. We attend to both what happens and what it means. We move from
scenic action to matters of theme, myth, and archetype.
19. Distill your story into five words – maybe three. Use the “premise” or other
tools to articulate what your work is really about.
The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives
By Lajos Egri
Toolbox: There’s a quality in prose I call “altitude.” It describes that moment when the story “takes off”
from what happens to what it means. In the last chapter, the Canadian scholar Northrop Frye describes this
movement in an academic way. Playwright Lajos Egri taught a more practical way. He believed in writing
a “premise,” a short sentence that summarizes what the work is all about. “Great love defies even death”
describes the premise of Romeo and Juliet. You may not have the premise in your bag of writing tricks, but
you need something like it. The capacity to encapsulate has different names in different writing disciplines:
the theme, the nut, the point, the angle, the take, the thesis statement, even the hoo-ha (an old Yiddish
exclamation of surprise, in this context slang for the moment a reader figures out what a piece of writing is
about). Say it in five words.

Add dimension to characters. Report for story. Gather what you

20. Flat ones are useful; round 21. need to make nonfiction read like
ones feel more human. a novel.
Frank Sinatra Has a Cold: And Other Essays
Aspects of the Novel By Gay Talese
By E.M. Forster
The New Journalism
Toolbox: Novelist E.M. Forster became famous Edited by Tom Wolfe and E.W. Johnson
among teachers of literature for drawing a
Toolbox: A gift of language lets us fabricate
distinction between “flat” characters and
stories, describing actions that never happened
“round” ones. The more complex, the more
by characters who never existed. Most of us
crazily human characters feel, the rounder they
associate words like story, yarn, tale, or fable
are. Flat characters are easy to recognize: they
with making things up. Authors of nonfiction
are types – at worst, stereotypes – but at best
can take the stuff of everyday life and weave it
compelling embodiments of a single trait. Any
into something that is experienced as a novel
character details that add a degree of tension or
is. The most effective – and ethical – method to
ambiguity – the chef who loves fast foods, the
create this “reads-like-fiction” effect is immersive
feminist addicted to pornography, the pacifist
research or reporting. Spend a day with a
who owns a gun – drives us and the reader
gravedigger. Collect character details, scenes,
toward roundness.
dialogue, points of view. Together they create that
experience we call “story.”

22. Anticipate
narratives.
the needs of readers. Deliver urgent information or compelling

Literature as Exploration
And
The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work
By Louise M. Rosenblatt

Toolbox: Good writers anticipate the needs of readers. In an emergency a reader may need “just the facts.”
Another reader may benefit from an elaborate narrative that offers pleasure as well as wisdom. At times
the writer stays in the background so as not to distract the reader from urgent information. At other times,
the writer steps forward in a way that calls attention to the writer’s craft. Ask yourself: What is my reader
looking for: to carry away information, or to experience something richly aesthetic. Each need calls for a
different set of tools.
23. Embrace rhetoric as the source of 24. Influence the emotional responses
language power. Use it to move of your audience. Drive readers and
your best words out of hiding. viewers to the conflicting emotions
of pity and fear.
Quintilian: On the Teaching of Speaking and
Writing Poetics
Edited by James J. Murphy By Aristotle
Toolbox: Anytime you hear what strikes you
Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters: Storytelling
as a great speech, ask yourself “What makes
Secrets from the Greatest Mind in Western
it great?” The answer requires examining a
Civilization
text, whether it is a sermon, lecture, campaign
By Michael Tierno
speech, eulogy, or TED Talk. From the ancient
to the modern, teachers of rhetoric offer Toolbox: If you have ever sat in a dark movie house
reliable tools for making meaning and being with tears in your eyes, you have experienced a
persuasive. They have a million names for feeling that Aristotle describes as catharsis. Yes,
these strategies (like hyperbole!). You need people have been crying in theaters for more than
only a few to build your writing muscles: 3,000 years. Where do those tears come from?
establish a parallel pattern, then give it a Aristotle argues that a catharsis is the purging of
twist; juxtapose elements that don’t easily sit emotions – a physiological venting of pity and fear.
together; and place the most emphatic word or It’s easy enough for a writer to bring tears to your
phrase at the end of a sentence, or better yet, of eyes. Just allow a child to go missing, or instead,
a paragraph. to be reunited with her mother. Tragedy requires
more. At the beginning we must move closer to the
character, admiring his virtues, hoping he survives
and triumphs. When terrible things happen to that

25. Sign a social contract with the

reader. Be transparent about
character, we can pity him. But we most also realize
that the forces that threaten the hero threaten all of
us. There is fear in our tears.
your methods, especially with
memoir and the personal essay.
Write to the level of your reader –
The Situation and the Story: The Art of
Personal Narrative
26. and a little higher. Learn the tricks
By Vivian Gornick that make a text easy to read or, if
The Art of Memoir you prefer, hard.
By Mary Karr
The Art of Readable Writing
Toolbox: What constitutes responsible By Rudolf Flesch
practice in genres such as the personal essay
or the memoir? The answer is wrapped in How to Take the Fog Out of Writing
controversy. Many writers think of these as By Robert Gunning
hybrid genres, real-life stories distorted by the Toolbox: Since the 1940s, certain writers
limitations of memory. A strict interpretation and teachers have tried to make prose more
holds the memoirist to the same standards comprehensible to readers at different educational
as the journalist. There is an implied social levels. I might write differently for a kindergarten
contract between the writer and the reader. class than I would for a law school seminar. That
Yes, memory may be faulty or inadequate, but said, some great prose – Charlotte’s Web comes
there is a difference between the failures of to mind – can be read with pleasure and insight
memory and intentional fabrications. The best by readers who are eight years old or eighty. The
way to reconcile these differences is through algorithm of comprehensibility is not difficult to
the strategic virtue of transparency. At the learn and requires no calculators. Shorter words and
beginning of a work – not at the end – let us shorter sentences slow down the pace of information
in on your techniques: Composite characters? in a good way. Each period is a stop sign. While
Conflated scenes? Invented dialogue? If you useful to some with technical knowledge, jargon –
don’t want your reader to know what you’re niche language used by experts – and long words
up to, avoid that strategy – or label your work delivered in long sentence and paragraphs clot the
fiction. flow of meaning for a general audience.
27. Learn the strategies that make reports reliable. Monitor your bias and unload
your language.
Language in Thought and Action
By S.I. Hayakawa

Toolbox: When it comes to communication, reports are the building blocks of democratic life. Self-government
and responsible enterprise depend on the report. A report differs from a story or an essay or a letter to the
editor. To understand how best to write a report, consider its opposite: a text that spins or shapes the truth.
Subjectivity, partisanship, and bias can never be eliminated from a report, but they can be tamed in the interest
of impartiality. There are methods to build reliable reports in every field of endeavor. Pay attention to the
connotations as well as the denotations of words; learn how to unload the language; offer a variety of points of
view – not just two; avoid false equivalence. In an era of misinformation, propaganda, and vicious conspiracy
theories, we need reports.

28. Write to make your soul grow. Transform the disadvantage of suffering into the
redemptive advantage of powerful writing.
Like Shaking Hands with God: A Conversation about Writing
By Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer
Toolbox: A teacher met an author who had just published a book about his time in prison. “You’re lucky,”
said the teacher. “How’s that?” “You have such interesting experiences to write about. A bad experience for
me is forgetting where I parked my minivan at the mall.” For the writer, disadvantage becomes advantage.
Kurt Vonnegut makes sense: To write a good story, take a sympathetic character and place him in horrible
circumstances to see what he’s made of. If you need models, look no further than the holy books – from Job to
Jesus. Righteousness never means escape from suffering.

Write to delight and instruct. Often you can accomplish one or the other, but
29. you are at your best when you can do both.
The Epistles of Horace
“Ars Poetica” (or “Art of Poetry)
Translated by David Ferry
Toolbox: Perhaps you are a poet. Or you write headlines for a big-city tabloid newspaper: “Headless Man in
Topless Bar.” Better still, maybe you are both. Poets and headline writers both compress language for meaning.
They also play with words. The higher purposes of good writing are ancient and enduring: to delight and
instruct. One effect can exist without the other, but when they are combined the writer climbs to the top of
the mountain. For your most public stories, look for subjects that are both interesting and important. Do not
try to fool readers into thinking that all interesting things are important. But do try to make important things
interesting so readers will pay attention and, when needed, take action.

30. Become the eyes and ears of the audience. Write from different visual
and aural perspectives, from a distance and up close.
In Search of Toolbox: More than ever, writers write with sound and visual elements – from photographs to
Light: The videos to spreadsheets. This multimedia versatility has been more than a century in the making.
Broadcasts Our hero of the craft is Edward R. Murrow, who helped invent broadcast news on both radio and
of Edward R. television. Even without pictures, he would write to help listeners “see,” in both the visual and
Murrow, 1938 – cognitive sense. One of his best strategies was to vary the distance between himself as a narrator
1961 and what he was witnessing. He could stand atop an urban landscape and describe what he was
Edited by seeing in the sky, or he could walk into a concentration camp and describe the smell of a prisoner,
Edward Bliss Jr. the tatters of his clothes. The camera on your smartphone is a valuable writing tool. Or turn your
notebook into that camera. Write down what you see.
31. Choose advocacy over propaganda. Never appeal to readers’ base instincts, and
challenge those who do.
Brave New World Revisited 1984 Amusing Ourselves to Death
By Aldous Huxley By George Orwell By Neil Postman
Toolbox: Learn the difference between advocacy and propaganda. One appeals to rational self-interest, the
other to emotion and the baser instincts, such as fear of the stranger. This does not mean that emotion is out
of bounds for the advocate. Stories – about child abuse, for example – ignite righteous anger and a desire for
reform. Here is the key: Stories filled with emotion must be based on fact. Check every fact. Develop a BS
detector that helps you sense when a message or messenger is trying to exploit you.

32. Be a writer – and so much more. Use all your resources to see the whole sky.
Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life
By Natalie Goldberg

The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling
By Charles Johnson
Toolbox: Accept that you are a writer. But being a writer is only one of the roles that you play. You may also be
a musician, a photographer, a mechanic, a yoga instructor, a bartender, a chaplain, a baker, or – what the heck – a
candlestick maker. Of all these and many more, writing is the craft into which you can incorporate the others.
The more you draw from your various experiences, the more integrated and authentic your writing voice will
become. You will experience life more intently, you will see with more insight, you will feel with more empathy.
Like Jimi Hendrix, you will kiss the sky.

From Little, Brown

About the Author of Murder Your Darlings

By some accounts, Roy Peter Clark is America’s writing coach, devoted to creating a nation of writers. A PhD
in medieval literature, he is widely considered the most influential writing teacher in the rough-and-tumble
world of newspaper journalism. With a deep background in traditional media, Clark has illuminated the
discussion of writing on the internet. He has gained fame by teaching writing to children and has nurtured
Pulitzer Prize-winning authors such as Thomas French and Diana K. Sugg. He is a teacher who writes and a
writer who teaches.

For more than three decades, Clark has taught writing at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in
St. Petersburg, Florida, considered among the most prominent such teaching institutions in the world. He
graduated from Providence College with a degree in English and earned his PhD from Stony Brook University.
In 2017 he received an honorary degree from PC and delivered the commencement address to cap the school’s
centennial celebration.

In 1977 Clark was hired by the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) as one of America’s first
writing coaches and worked with the American Society of Newspaper Editors to improve newspaper writing
nationwide. He has taught writing at news organizations, schools, businesses, nonprofits, and government
agencies in more than forty states and on five continents.

Among his clients at Poynter: The New York Times, the Washington Post, national Public Radio, USA Today,
CNN, Gannett, Microsoft, IBM, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Disney, AAA, the World
Bank, and countless colleges and universities. He has appeared on Today and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Clark has authored or edited nineteen books about writing, reading, language, and journalism. Humorist Dave
Barry has said of him: “Roy Peter Clark knows more about writing than anybody I know who is not currently
dead.” He plays keyboard in a rock band. He lives with his family in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he has
become famously fond of pelicans.