Noah Baumbach Quotes

You can certainly shorten things and tighten things, we tightened up Jon's walk to Mance Rayder's tent. That was something that got tightened up a little bit because I had shot the hell out of that.

To tell you the truth, I don't edit much at all. Most times, when I have finished the first draft, that's the book. Of course, I work on the page I am on until I am happy with it. I might even say that I try to state the landscape.

Accepting that part of the process of writing is deleting a lot of what you write is soothing, at least to me.

You first do the assembly cut, which is basically the cut that mirrors the script. You've got to start with that.

The idea of being able to polish something for nine months - it's the perfect way to hone your film.

The one thing you don't want to do is go off and keep rewriting. If something's not quite right, it's often about modulating what's already there.

You’ll learn that the key to a great book is editing-grindin g, buffing, and polishing-not writing.

My first cut was three hours and 17 minutes. And then I just became very shrewd about the editing.

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.

Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again.

If I see a phrase that strikes me as ugly, I'll delete it. Or, if I find a way to say something a bit more freshly than it was expressed originally, I'll do it. Ultimately, you want to try to leave behind the best possible paragraph or sentence.

As a very experienced writer once told me, 'It's in the rewrites'.

Anyone who tells you they don't need to rewrite, they're usually the ones who need it worst.

If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.

I'm a fairly fast, but sloppy writer, so I'm a big fan of re-writing, and re-writing again.

Writing for me is largely about rewriting.

The cutting room is where you discover the optimal length of the movie.

Particularly in the final stages I always find that I'm rushed. It's dangerous when you're rushed in the editing stage, most of my early films are flawed in the cutting.

Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.

Rewriting to me means, if I work on it for three days, I've rewritten it.

I never leave a sentence or a paragraph until I'm satisfied with it.

For any writer, the ability to look at a sentence and see what's superfluous, what can be altered, revised, expanded, and, especially, cut, is essential. It's satisfying to see that sentence shrink, snap into place, and ultimately emerge in a more polished form: clear, economical, sharp.

Screenwriting is like ironing. You move forward a little bit and go back and smooth things out.

I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.

Good writing is good writing, but that doesn't mean you can't orchestrate it or tweak it.