Quotes About Editing

A disk unbeknownst to the director can go to the producer in another city or in another office and that producer can edit behind the director's back much easier than in the old days. Since these dailies are now put on videotape, more kinds of people have access to dailies.

Every film is a puzzle really, from an editorial point of view.

For writers: If you polish a book too much, it'll be flat and shiny and smooth--and not too interesting. It's the little pits and bumps and whatnot that show voice and make a book unique from all the other super shiny flat surfaces

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

There were times in 'Adaptation' during the editing where I really thought, 'Okay, well, this was a noble failure. I tried to do something good, but this is not going to work.'

I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.

The English language is rather like a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib.

If you're working on a computer and you're editing bass, it looks like a warm curvy, sort of feminine object.

With the fight scenes, they would take a video camera and shoot alongside the camera so we would piece it together on the computer and had an extremely rough cut of what we were doing.

The computer brings out the uptight perfectionist in us - we start editing ideas before we have them.

Sometimes you just create a joke out of thin air in the editing room. I'm really glad I've had that experience. It gives me a little more confidence in front of the camera.

Sometimes you just create a joke out of thin air in the editing room. So I'm really glad I've had that experience. It gives me a little more confidence in front of the camera.

Never fails. Every new book I write seems impossible, writes like I'm typing from dictation, edits like I didn't write it, and finishes like I couldn't possibly have written it.

Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.

Polishing: a useful lesson for the hopeful writer. You say your tormented prose doesn't read as well as mine? Neither does mine, at first!

Oh, they'll never believe a woman could solve such puzzles. They'll just assume I'm humoring you by editing it myself and allowing you to put your name to it. She raised her eyebrows. But you wouldn't be. He humphed. They'll never hear me admit it. I will, she said, a smile curving her lips. He shrugged. They'll believe me, not you.

Nowadays people rush into print before they've even finished the proof.

If you can't look a line of dialogue in the face and say exactly why it's there—take it out or change it.

After all, it's human nature to put the best face on things when you know someone will read what you've written. People tend to concentrate on the things they think important, and often enough, they tidy it up a bit for public consumption.

Some writers sit down without a thought of what they are going to say, and they go through draft after draft.

I see myself as a first-draft writer, so when I sit down to write something, the first draft is usually pretty close to the end draft.

So much of writing is about what characters don't say, and in the early drafts, sometimes things get overwritten.

I don't like writing - it's so difficult to say what you mean. It's much easier to edit other people's writing and help them say what they mean.

Seeing the first edit is the worst.