Quotes About Editing

A good novel editor is invisible.

What a good novelist does with a throwaway that serves no fictional purpose is throw it away.

Many first-time novelists end up rewriting their first two or three chapters, trying to get them 'just right.' But the point of the first draft is not to get it right; it's to get it written - so that you'll have something to work with.

That's what happens nowadays with people working on computers. They can so easily fix things with their mouse and take out all the, 'Oh, somebody coughed in the background; we need to take that out' - or somebody hit a bad note. Those are all the best moments.

The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.

have helped me make corrections or clear a few things up. And as always, I am most deeply indebted to my wife, Cathy, for her editing, suggestions, wise counsel, and so very much more.

Those sentences are somewhat clotted

Someday we may consider it unethical not to use germline editing to alleviate human suffering.

A vast amount of preparation, really, to arrive at the innocuously brief moment of decisive action: the cut—the moment of transition from one shot to the next—something that, appropriately enough, should look almost self-evidently simple and effortless, if it is even noticed at all.

discontinuity also allows us to choose the best camera angle for each emotion and story point, which we can edit together for a cumulatively greater impact.

one way of looking at the process of making a film is to think of it as the search to identify what—for the particular film you are working on—is a uniquely "bad bit." So, the editor embarks on the search to identify these "bad bits" and cut them out, provided that doing so does not disrupt the structure of the "good bits" that are left.

my war on commas. They are a pestilence. They must be stopped.

it is only when one writes a book that one realizes the true power of MSWord, from grammar checks to replace-alls.

I just wish my mouth had a backspace key.

As to the Adjective: When in doubt, strike it out.

How to find blog post typos: 1. Click publish.

The written English we want is clean, clear prose. I choose my words carefully – not elegant, not stylish, just clean, clear prose. It means simplifying, polishing and tightening.

I would have written something shorter, but I didn't have time.

writing is making a mess, and then working and reworking to create a beautiful piece.

That's also part of having great editors -- they can sort of be honest with you and say, "I see where you're headed with this, but I don't think it's there yet. Dig deeper, babe, and come back with something more." And that's what you do, you dig waaaaaaaay down and you walk around the block eight million times and then you have it -- shazam! And it all comes together in something soooo much better than you thought you were capable of.

Should novels generally be 600 pages? No, they should not. Half of writing, maybe 3/4 of writing, is editing. This seems to be a thing that has not gotten through to them. It's my impression that you could get rid of half of most of these books. These people are not good enough to be this long, but they're apparently also not good enough to be shorter.

I have friends, some of whom are spectacularly good writers, who really want someone to edit them. I don't register that impulse. It's like the impulse for wanting a dog.