This new manuscript I’m working on (Tales of a Teenage Scream Queen) is sort of pouring out of me. It’s almost scary at times. But scary’s not a bad thing when it comes to writing. Scary can be good. Scary can be your friend.

However, when I’m nostril-deep in a session of story pouring, a ton of excess stuff usually leaks out in the process. What stuff am I talking about exactly? Well, the stuff I tend to creatively vomit during those moments can be lumped into the following four categories:

1) Dialogue

2) Thoughts

3) Characters

4) More dialogue

I love dialogue. It’s one of my strengths. And I love plugging it into my story because it’s so easy for me to write. The good news is that it’s also easy to edit. I can hack and chop and drain dialogue like it’s nobody’s business. Thoughts are sort of the same way. It’s inner dialogue. Head speak. Noggin talk. Brain chatter. Mind mumbling. I’ll quit now.

Characters, though?

*sigh* …characters…

Characters are the best. And worst. They’re the best because they inject the life into your story. Without them you’ve got…well, I’m not sure what you’ve got. A landscape painting maybe. I love my characters. And that’s exactly why they’re the worst.

The worst to kill, that is.

I offed one of my characters today. I’ve been toying with the idea for a few weeks and the more I wrote, the more I resisted. Because that character was amazing. He was so much fun. He was a little piece of me on the page. But he wasn’t needed. And in the end, I had to let the editing dingos eat my baby.

But there’s a silver lining to all of this. I found out rather quickly that killing off my character didn’t mean he was gone for good. Because he was actually just another half of a character that was already there. And after I wiped the blood from my samurai sword of slashery, I quickly discovered that merging both characters solved two problems with one stab.

The character who wasn’t helping to push the story forward or push back with conflict was gone. And the character who was doing both of those things just got another layer added to him.

He’d been onionized.

The sting is still there. When I come across another page with a trace of the former character, I get a little misty-eyed. But he died for a good cause. He died for the betterment of the story. And that’s how you have to approach things like this. You have to do what’s best for the story. If keeping your cast untouched is what tells your story the best, then good. But if you find a character like mine who you love, but he or she just isn’t needed…

Maybe it’s time to unleash the dingoes.

You might be glad you did.