Invention of the Spnife

When my brother was young, he thought he'd revolutionize the cutlery business. He was sick of having to remember the names of and use so many different utensils. He didn't like washing them afterward, either. So, in a genius plea to save himself all the trouble, he did what it seems only children can do efficiently, and created a new piece of silverware.

It's name? The Spnife!

(Pronunciation: spe-knife)

The Spnife eliminated all other utensils because it combined everything into one. Here is a very, very rough diagram (sorry for the hideousness in advance) of what the Spnife would look like;

The new utensil consisted of the already lunch-pail-popular spork (fork on the top, spoon in the middle) with sharp knives on the sides for easy slicing. Then, instead of three utensils per person, you'd only have to wash one.

The Spnife posed a few safety hazards, though. First, if you were trying to eat a chicken breast or steak with the Spnife, there'd be no way to hold down the meat while you sawed at it. In essence, you'd still need two Spnives which equals more dishes. Also, and perhaps most alarming, if you were using the Spnife in its spoon function (say, with soup), you'd put the Spnife in your mouth and then slide it out to get the soup off the spoon part. This would result in the knife ends slicing your cheeks open like the Joker.

Recently, my brother and I were reminiscing about his childhood invention, and he said, "Yeah, I think I'm going to have to abandon the Spnife idea."

This admission (though it is 10 years in the making) turned out to be a fantastic piece of advice for my writing. I'm sure you've been here too: You write something you think is stunning and fantastic (first draft) and then you reread it and realize that it doesn't work. What went wrong? Sometimes it's a matter of revise, rewrite, and revise again until the piece works. Other times, you have to abandon the Spnife. This is true not only for fictional inventions found in fantasy and sci-fi, but also for faulty characters, extraneous scenes, and over-explained metaphors.

It may take 10 years (though let's hope not), but in the end, you have to abandon the Spnife. As William Faulkner said, "In writing, you must kill all your darlings." Stephen King then took it a step further, "kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings."