Sometimes in order to make a piece of writing stronger you have to remove something. Whether that's a conversation between two characters, a whole scene, a whole narrative thread or maybe even a whole character. In today’s episode I unpack the common piece of writing advice to ‘kill your darlings’ and share some of the provocations and writing tasks that have helped me cut material from my latest draft. I speak about: - Stepping back and looking at your play as a whole rather than its individual parts. - We often default to adding something to our draft to improve it, but subtraction is just as important. - How to know when to add something and when to take something away. - When not to kill your darlings. - Why going for clarity in each moment of the script isn’t the same as being vanilla. - Some prompts for cutting dialogue, cutting drama beats, cutting key events, cutting scenes, cutting narrative threads, cutting whole characters and cutting stage time. I reference: - Episode 28 ‘Character Development’ - Episode 38 ‘Stay With the Story’ - Mark Ravenhill’s series of tweets '101 Notes on Playwriting' See Monument at Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre! By Emily Sheehan directed by Ella Caldwell February 20 - March 10, 2024 Book now: https://www.redstitch.net/monument-2024 See Frame Narrative at The Old Fitz Theatre! By Emily Sheehan directed by Lucy Clements March 8 - 30, 2024 Book now: https://www.oldfitztheatre.com.au/frame-narrative