Killing Your Darlings

A lesson from Stephen King

In Stephen King’s renowned book, On Writing, he talks about the discipline of editing. There’s a lesson he highlights as critical yet too many writers fail at. Kill your darlings. The dialogue that you wrote may bring a smile to your face but it doesn’t belong in the story. You must be ruthless in your edits.

I feel this is done in companies. Especially with products or culture. There are plenty of things that can be cut out but aren’t. Most companies are obdurate. There’s value in playing it safe. Thus making it resistant to change. (And then going out of business — examples: Sears, Kodak, Blockbuster)

An exercise you can try is testing the extreme. What if you had to kill all your darlings except one? What would the company look like? This could be having only one product. One part of the culture you value. One industry left to serve.

By focusing on the small it will help you see things that weren’t there before.

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