Quotes About Editing

They cut about seven minutes from that broadcast, but it was still vital to the story's momentum.

We set ourselves a limit and cut characters which weren't so vital.

When I first started editing a 'Year's Best' volume in the '70s, the job was pretty straightforward - there were three or four monthly magazines to read and a few original anthologies from trade publishers every year.

Once I decided I was happy with something, I'd try to send it off into the world, and either someone would want it exactly as it was, or it would remain in my notebook/laptop, and no one would ever see it. This is probably why I didn't work with an editor until I was 26. The solipsism!

They've got this house style which is writer driven. I heard of one person who sent his script in, and Karen Berger said there weren't enough words in it. Put some more in.

I know I have a problem with semi-colon abuse and have written page-long sentences. Nobody needs to be reading page-long sentences, at least not written by me.

There's the movie you write, there's the movie you shoot and the movie you edit, and often, you find that you're getting the same information out of a scene that you already have and a scene that's actually more powerful, so you have to make the tough decision to take it out.

Sometimes you shoot for 40 or 50 hours for a one-hour show, and you have to make some very hard choices.

From 2005 to 2010, I was exclusively shooting 'The Act of Killing' and then editing it.

It took me a year just to edit 'Shotgun Stories.' Actually, it took me two years to edit 'Shotgun Stories.'

Fight scenes are like learning a dance. You learn it move by move, and then you put it all together and it looks awesome when you edit it together. It's great!

I haven't watched 'Half Baked' in 17 years, since I was editing it. It's like looking at an old picture where you have bad bangs or something.

Rewriting is a large part of the whole job. And get rid of stuff that's not working. Just pare it down until it's a beautiful thing you can hand in, probably late, to your editor.

I have, for instance, silently corrected Jefferson's frequent use of "it's" for "its" and "recieve" for "receive

Does every conversation with you have to be the director's cut?

Writing is like painting; editing is like sculpture.  Same sensibilities, different skill set.

En una ocasión le pregunté a Alfonso Reyes por qué publicamos, y Reyes me contestó: «Publicamos para no tener que pasarnos la vida corrigiendo borradores».

Before Perkins nobody at Scribners had edited so boldly or closely as he did Fitzgerald, and some of the older editors considered the practice questionable. They liked Max and sensed his ability, but they did not always understand him. In small ways as well as large, Max was different.

I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.

Another thing that's quite different in writing a book as a practicing newspaperman is that if you look at what you've written the next morning and you think you didn't get it quite right, you can fix it.

Writing is like shadow boxing. Editing is when the shadows fight back.

The human authors and editors of the Old Testament brought their own experiences and presuppositions to the task of writing. We don't often think about this when we read the Bible.

the simplest way to block out the strangeness of time passing before your eyes is to fix it in place, to edit it down to monuments or potted plants.

I keep going over a sentence. I nag it, gnaw it, pat and flatter it.