Kill Your Darlings: The Art of Revision — 2. Content

Second element in this series: Kill Your Darlings: The Art of Revision
(Please read the Introduction, if you haven’t already.)

CONTENT

All content and characters should have a story reason for being included in the book. If it doesn’t have a story reason, then delete it. Otherwise, it’s a needless distraction for the reader.

As Elmore Leonard famously advises in his 10 Rules of Writing, leave out the parts that readers tend to skip. His novel Hombre is an excellent example of this. If you ha...