Last time, I talked about murdering your darlings – those pretty bits of prose, those long gorgeous descriptions, the flowering conversations that you adore, but don’t actually serve your story.
But this past week, I had to take that adage a step further. I didn’t murder paragraphs, or sentences, or entire chapters. No, I murdered an entire character.
Honestly? I should have done it sooner. If you’d have been there . . . you would have done the same.* 😉
When I started this little romance novel last fall, I had this idea in my head that Alex had been married, and his wife had left him shortly after the wedding. That evolved into leaving him on their honeymoon. Left the rings on the bedside table, took the airplane tickets, and left him in a hotel room in Jamaica. Which left him a wreck.
But somewhere along the way, that evolved into something more. At some point, I thought that after some time apart, maybe Madison (Alex’s ex) wants him back. Maybe she never stopped loving him, really. Maybe she was just afraid. Maybe they’d gotten married too quickly; maybe she felt like she couldn’t put the brakes on it, but afterwards . . . she was terrified of being trapped in a marriage she wasn’t sure she wanted anymore. Did she and Alex really know each other well enough? Did they start to grow apart while she was planning their wedding? Did they really want the same things? She couldn’t bear to hurt him by calling things off – but she couldn’t bear to be married to him when she had all these doubts, either.
The problem with this scenario was twofold. One, I had trouble believing, even to myself, that Alex would be so devastated over this that he would basically spiral into a depression. Two, this didn’t jive with what Alex kept saying about her. She was a nurse. Sweet, caring. Open-hearted. He adored her. How could he fall in love with someone who would do that? Yes, people fall in love for weird reasons all the time, but this . . . this made no sense to me. Deep down, I knew it wasn’t right.
But I couldn’t seem to let it go.
I wrote her into the novel. I based Alex and Dana’s breakup on Madison’s return. I had her coming back to Alex’s home town, ready to fight for him. She was snide, bitchy. Again, the little voices in my head kept saying but Alex wouldn’t fall for someone like this! I ignored the little voices, because I was in too deep to listen to them. I wrote Act 3. Wrote the final break-up scene where Alex tells her goodbye for good, then goes after Dana. I liked that scene. Liked it a lot. It completed his story arc.
But it left Madison as a flat, one-dimensional caricature, which was always the problem with her. And that just didn’t fit with what I knew, deep down, she was like. She’d lived through the worst of the pandemic, saw her patients die, feared for her own life. Was this a woman who would leave a man she loved? Having seen so much of death, could she really throw away their future life together?
I rewrote the ending. Made her less bitchy and selfish. Made her someone that Alex could have fallen in love with. Which left me with another problem (and I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now): if Alex loved her, and she was this lovely person, why wouldn’t he want her back?
It also left me with another problem: Dana.
The ending was rewritten. Alex broke up with Madison, went to Dana to make the Grand Gesture. And instead of saying, “Of course I forgive you, you idiot,” she said, “Are you freaking kidding me?!”
So I paused. Waited for her to do what I wanted her to do in order to have a happily ever after. She refused. And after a few days, I understood why. How could she ever trust that Alex really wanted her? How would she ever know for sure that she was his first choice? Could she ever believe that, if Madison wanted him back again, he would stay with her? He’d broken her trust. She couldn’t forgive him for that, or forget it. That was a hells to the no.
I wrote more of Madison into the book. Wrote her text messages to Alex, explaining why she left, telling him she loved him. Those told me a lot about her, and her state of mind at the time. Still didn’t solve any of my problems. I had dozens of pages that tried to make her into a.) someone Alex would actually want to be with, and b.) someone he could look in the eye and say “I’m over you and I’m in love with someone else.” I even rewrote what was the midpoint to be a tipping place near the end of Act 2, where Madison came back and saw Alex and Dana together, and Alex was now forced to choose between them.
Madison started to kind of take over the book. Like kudzu.
I wondered if Alex was even still in love with her. Wrote long notes to myself, trying to sort it out. Notes that went like this:
Someone, at some point, has to ask Alex if he still loves Madison.
He’s hurt. Angry. Betrayed. But is he still in love? Everything he tells me says no. Everything I feel from him says no. Everything I feel from him says he’s 100% committed to making Dana stay . . . except that he’s afraid she won’t. Which leaves us with the question, still: is Alex still in love with Madison? If she came back to him, begged him to take her back, would he? Is he still in love with the idea of that future? Is he still in love with her?
In the meantime . . . deep, deep down . . . I was starting to form a theory I didn’t like.
I was starting to think that Madison had to die.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’d eradicated a character from a work in progress, but those characters just got written out, forgotten. This would be actually murdering a character. Not because they were superfluous or because the plot had changed . . . but because doing so would actually serve the book. Because doing so would solve 99% of my problems. Because the Madison I knew, and Alex knew, wasn’t the girl who came tramping back in Act 3 to steal him back from Dana.
So a couple of days ago . . . I did it.
And oh my goodness, I can feel that I made the right choice. Alex’s inner demons and conflicts are greater now, the threat they pose to his relationship with Dana more real. Madison can be the perfect girl in his memory, because she kind of was. And more to the point, I can get back to the way Act 3 should go in a romance novel – it’s the characters’ inner conflicts that drive them apart, not something external. Madison gets to be the funny, sweet, bubbly girl Alex fell in love with, and we know why he’s depressed as hell when we first meet him. Doing that automatically added depth and tension to the novel that it was frankly lacking. Or rather, added real depth and tension to the novel, rather than the forced stuff I was foisting onto it.
All the space that Madison had filled can now go to the actual story, to developing Alex and Dana’s relationship.
And I can tell I’ve made the right choice because the writing is so easy. It was like Alex and Madison were waiting for me to get it right. I can’t wait to write again. Rather than beating my head against the proverbial brick wall, I’m seeing exactly how scenes need rewritten, how to chart Alex and Dana’s story arcs. Even that bloody Act 3 is coming together, finally. Without Madison there to throw a monkey wrench into everything, it’s down to Alex and Dana and the question of will they be able to move past everything and get together?
It was a tough choice. But it was the right one.
So don’t be afraid to murder your darlings. Even if those darlings are characters.
* Lyrics from the amazing “Cell Block Tango” from the musical Chicago. Yes, I can quote something other than Hamilton! Haven’t seen it? Please do yourself a favor and watch one of the Miscast Broadway performances. No, actually, here you go – what I think are the two best Miscast versions of “Cell Block Tango.” Enjoy!
KS Writer & Teacher 