 Guest blog by Janet Costa Bates ‘Kill your darlings,’ a phrase attributed to William Faulkner, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, even Stephen King, means to take out any bit of writing that is not serving your story. Characters, scenes, or phrases - ones that you absolutely love - get ruthlessly extinguished in order to make your story stronger. Makes sense, right? Maybe. But, maybe not quite. These bits of writing are called ‘darlings’ because they’re loved and precious. Your talent was working overtime when you wrote those words. Yet you’re being told to kill them? What kind of madness is that? Don’t do it!  To be clear, I’m not saying to leave those passages in your manuscript. Anything that doesn’t serve your story, does not belong there. You’re going to take that darling out. It will hurt, but it needs to go. Just don’t kill it. Instead, send it on vacation. The Story Island resort is a beautiful place (a file, actually) where those beautiful bits of writing go to relax, drink a fruity drink, and soak up some sun until they're needed once again. In my Rica Baptista chapter book series, Rica is a character who appeared under a different name in a never published middle grade. Most of the rejections that middle grade received were ‘raving’ rejections. Editors loved some aspects of the story, such as the characters and the voice, but, overall, it just wasn’t working well enough. Poor Rica was struggling. That whole middle grade novel ‘went on vacation.’ Then came the day when I decided to resurrect Rica (originally named Addie) and put her into a chapter book. She thrived.
For Rica Baptista: The Box of Possibilities (Candlewick, 2025), my most recent Rica Baptista book, Uncle Moose was plucked out of Story Island and given a major role in the book. He’s about 30 years younger in The Box of Possibilities than he was in the middle grade, but he’s still the slightly off-beat, yet still much loved Uncle Moose. In another unpublished middle grade, Grampy was both caring and fun. He was also dead. We only saw him through flashbacks. But he was so much fun that I brought him back to life. (Being a writer is a pretty powerful thing, even if only in my imagination.) Grampy, grateful to have another chance, had a starring role in Rica Baptista: A Week of Shenanigans (Candlewick, 2024). I’ve written a few historical scenes that don’t fit my contemporary manuscripts, but I hope they will someday find their way into one of my stories. At the risk of being immodest, I’ll say that both scenes would absolutely touch a reader’s heart. But for now, those scenes are sitting in a cabana, enjoying an ocean view while they wait for the right manuscript at the right time. They don’t mind waiting. They’re on island time. Not every character, scene, or phrase will come back from vacation, but that’s okay. Whether or not I use them again, sending them to the island is a lot less painful than hitting the delete button. I just can’t imagine letting go of something that's pretty good. Seriously, I walk around ants and put spiders outside - how in the world am I going to kill anything? Consider setting up a ‘Story Island’ file of your own. Good writing is good writing. It just needs to wait until the timing works.
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