Quotes About Editing

And remember always, "More ought to be scratched out than left.

Everything we wrote was submitted to the editors above us, grizzled Korean War pilots with buzz cuts and an encyclopedic knowledge, who would routinely bounce our copy back and demand "fixes" ("More color," "Doesn't track," or simply "Huh?" written in the margin).

A work is completed without deference to a husband, an absurd epic of maudlin childhood is about to be sent to a pimp, before a husband is allowed to correct it," he said seething. "You would only tinker with it," she said fearless, though fearing.

He had only just made the Elysian deadline; hanging onto the typescript until the last moment in case there was something still to be done; two sentences turned into one, one sentence broken into two, the substitution of a slightly resistant adjective to engender a moment's reflection, in short, the joys of editing, all carried out without forgetting the art that disguises art.

Though the evidence from Scripture for editing and compiling is obvious and irrefutable, our failure to deal with it bit by bit in the past places us in jeopardy when we see a rather massive dose of it all at once.

The evidence for editing and compiling is most obvious in Proverbs and Jeremiah, thus establishing the principle that the words of inspired messengers may in fact be handled in such a manner. Once the principle has been established, we need not be alarmed if we find more subtle clues of editing in other biblical books. Editors may have been at work on them as well. Why not?

I have never met a writer who didn't need an editor, and an editor without a writer is a person without a job. It is a fraught and often-imperfect relationship, of course, dating back to the beginning of time. You remember; after God moved upon the darkness, he proclaimed, "I've put in place some very wondrous illumination here!" And Mrs. God gently suggested the more pithy: 'Let there be light.

Ev'n copious Dryden wanted, or forgot,The last and greatest art—the art to blot.

I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.

There is a kind of structure for a story that was peculiarly compelling for the radio. I thought I had invented it atom-by-atom sitting in an editing booth in Washington on M Street when I was in my 20s. Then I found out that it is one of the oldest forms of telling a story - it was the structure of a sermon.

I watch comedy on TV, and it's too cutty for me. I get a little jarred, and it succeeds. It's not like it's not working, and I look at certain things, and it has the cutting... it's not like I'd make terribly different cuts, but for some reason, it moves too fast for me.

I'm attracted to directors in general because I appreciate the work and the job they have to do. I watched the post-production, I watched the pre-production... post-production is something that I'm very interested in and I did spend a lot of time in editing rooms when I was young pretending to be sick.

My father's films are often very slow for the modern audiences, which are used to a lot of editing. It's the audience that watches the film instead of the director dictating the reaction he wants from you.

With bad movies, I have this image in my head of the director and the editor in the editing room watching a scene that is not happening, looking at each other and saying, 'Put some music in there.'

As an actor you have to bring to the table your creative input. But when a director like Ridley Scott says I want you to do this this way, you know when he gets to the editing room he has a reason for it. It's like watching a masterpiece.

When you're in the editing room, the dangerous thing is that it becomes like telling a joke again and again and again. Eventually, the joke starts to not be funny. So you have to be careful that you're not throwing the baby out with the bath water.

TV and film taught me to think cinematically. Teaching others to edit, for example, provides a great deal of insight into the millions of ways in which given elements can be put together to tell a story.

I once had a story editor ask me not to use the word 'placenta.' I wanted to say: 'Now tell me again how you got here?' Oh, right, an angel of God placed you into the bill of the stork.

I have dictated stories from an airport after writing the story out in longhand on the plane that I got from phone interviews and then was applauded by editors for 'working magic.'

Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don't have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.

It's one of the most liberating things I experience in writing - letting yourself get rid of a gesture or character or plot point that always nagged, even if you couldn't admit to yourself that it did.

I always feel that whatever isn't necessary shouldn't be in a poem.

I can't believe there is a poet who hasn't eagerly put down a word one day, only to erase it the next day deciding it was sheer lunacy. It's part of the process of selection.

Everything's always got to be character-based. We know we can't, if we're sitting in the editing room, watch the sequence for more than 20 seconds without a character having a point of view or moving the action forward; my brain just shuts down, or I start thinking about my laundry.