The first thing we do, we kill all the darlings!

The title of this blog post combines a bit of William Shakespeare with William Faulkner.  I'm fairly confident neither William will sue me.

Faulkner's quote actually was, "In writing, you must kill all your darlings."  What did he mean by that?  My interpretation is he meant for writers to look, as they edit their stories, for passages with clever phrases, little jokes, or humorous anecdotes—the passages that made them smile as they wrote them for the first time.  Then they are to ask...