Killing Darlings #2 The Nightmare

Here lies yet another of my writing darlings I've found necessary to cull in the latest revision of my book. 

It did serve a purpose, but the whole section no longer fits the rest of the book. Writing about a character's dreams shouldn't be completely taboo (I've read writer's advice which says otherwise, but anything goes if it works for the book you are writing as far as I'm concerned), but as things stand this little section and its surreal descriptions has to go.
I wrote this surreal nightmare scene fairly early on intending to show the main protagonist's doubt about pressure she was being put under to have some form of corrective surgery. At the time I wrote this there was to be a lot more dream imagery in the book, mostly because the story was being told from a point in the future (where the girl is dying and under the influence of drugs). As the first draft took shape, I pulled back from the idea and much of the dream experiences were transmuted into backstory, leaving this section stuck out on its own. It was also interesting to see that my style has changed a lot since writing this; I was trying a too hard to seem like a sophisticated writer, yet coming across sounding like a pretentious amateur. Over-description, alliteration and an excess of adverbs are some of the obvious issues.


The Nightmare
The unlit hospital corridors seem oddly familiar, from somewhere outside shafts of sodium street light enter through the infrequent windows casting muddy islands of illumination into the seas of darkness between. Melanie shuffles along hesitantly, one hand feeling for the guiding solidity of the wall. A further step and her uncertain fingers clutch at empty space and she stumbles forward into the hollow opening of an adjoining corridor.  Melanie's eyes strain to pierce the menacing blackness, a subtle dread clasping her insides with primitive fear. Sensing, rather than seeing them: spindly, angular and many limbed, attenuated metal insects exuding the ozone scent of stainless steel, dry joints squeaking as they reach for her with bladed claws. Melanie's fear only holds her fast for a heartbeat before giving way to flight. She runs, seeking escape through the maze of corridors, a breath behind, the skittering surgical creatures dance through the shadows on pointed feet. Ahead she sees a light. The bright outline of a doorway. Melanie throws herself through into a space of blinding illumination and in that moment of confusion she finds herself upon an operating table, her heavy limbs refusing to obey her, numbed by anaesthetic. Up above, looking down from a gallery, she can see the faces of people she knows: her Dad, Howard, Sue, Robbie, and Cynthia, their comments floating down into the echoing room.
"Yes, it's just a little procedure."
"She'll be a new person afterwards."
"Oh, she'll fit in then; she never did fit in."
"There's hardly any risk."
Around her the mechanical insects reach towards her, their pincers, blades and forceps glinting under the light.
"It's only a paper bag after all."

It is daytime now; golden sunshine shines down on beds of brightly coloured tulips outside the front of the hospital. A crowd of people stand around the front entrance clapping as Melanie is wheeled out wearing a bag, upon the bag is drawn a big smile. The specialist leans over and plucks off the bag with a flourish. The crowd cheer as the new Melanie is revealed, her face, neck, and head covered in Frankensteinian stitches, the corners of her mouth drawn downwards, like a clown, her eyes expressionless and vacant hollows.

Killing Darlings

The 'Kill Your Darlings' advice attributed to both William Faulkner and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch is generally interpreted as telling writers to be objective about their editing. It recognises that writers need to be particularly brutal with those passages that they have fallen in love with in the first draft; chances are those will be the passages they will indulge far beyond their usefulness to the story.

I've been doing this a lot recently. Heck, I may even be turning into a serial killer. The fact that, whilst I'm slicing bits of text off salami fashion from one end of this draft, I'm sneakily scribbling new scenes  elsewhere, is neither here nor there. I'll wait for the third draft before I start hacking those down to size.

But in the meantime, I thought it might be good to share some of these lost souls of novelistic fancy. Summon them up from digital purgatory and allow them a few brief moments of freedom before they fade from existence.

This one is simply called The Duck Dream, I'll give it no further qualification that that.

Is this part of it? No, I think it's now; I'm sitting on a bench in a trim English park with ornamental trees, the sun is warm and I can smell the grass. In front of me is a path that circles a big ornamental pond. On the pond are ducks, lots of ducks. At the other end of the bench sits an old lady, feeding the ducks bread from a big brown paper bag. One of the ducks, a large ugly looking black and white brute, with wrinkles of puffy red flesh about its eyes and beak, peers up at me with that hopeful look that animals have when they think someone might feed them. I look back at it.

'Sorry,' I say, 'I don't have any bread, go to the lady at the end, she'll feed you.'

The duck carries on looking at me for a bit, then opens its beak

  'you have a bag, is there nothing in there?' it says.

'No that's to cover me, I'm different.'

'Seems like a waste of a good bag to me. Why are you trying to do what everyone expects you to, why don't you accept what you are?'

'What do you mean?'

'Look, you wear a bag because everyone else expects you to, they have assigned a place to you in society, you conform to that because you want to fit in and be accepted.'

'Well, yes, I guess so.'

'So, you are effectively letting your own kind down by trying to fit in to the society of the normals, trying to behave like one of them.'

'What? You hardly seem qualified, you've got to be the ugliest duck on this pond and you are behaving just like the others. Apart from the talking bit.'

A passing pug being walked on a long extendible leash trots up some meters ahead of its owner scattering the ducks in all directions.

'Ignore the duck, he's got it all wrong,' the pug says, looking at me with divergent eyes; 'if you want to get anywhere in this world you've got to integrate, be like them, fit into their expectations, if you can't be normal, behave the way they expect you to as a diff. Show them gratitude if they offer help even if you don't need it, laugh at their ignorant jokes, respond to their awkward questions, and pretend you're stupid, there's no point in fighting it.'