From the course: Creating a Short Film: 02 Writing
Join today to access over 22,600 courses taught by industry experts.
Throwing away the best parts
From the course: Creating a Short Film: 02 Writing
Throwing away the best parts
- Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner is credited with saying, "In writing, "you must kill your darlings." This idea has been cloaked in all kinds of equally horrifying language, but the point is the same. As writers, we have a tendency to fall in love with the things that we write. It might be a line of dialogue, a cool character, a fun scene, a brilliant plot twist. But the idea of killing darlings is that we must be willing to sacrifice our favorite pieces, our darlings, for the greater good of the whole story. Now, I should point out that this is really for stories, especially you standard three act, American cinema style stories. European cinema doesn't have such stringent rules, so it isn't as necessary to cut and eliminate things. On The Assurance, we had several darlings that had to be put down, unfortunately, and it was tough. When we decided to do the rewrite, we realized that we needed to focus on Korda'a. That means that we needed to connect to her more, so we got…
Practice while you learn with exercise files
Download the files the instructor uses to teach the course. Follow along and learn by watching, listening and practicing.
Download courses and learn on the go
Watch courses on your mobile device without an internet connection. Download courses using your iOS or Android LinkedIn Learning app.