Editing Advice Quotes

Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counselling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, 'How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?' and avoid 'How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?'

The advice I would offer to any writer is that even when you think you have revised your book to the point where you cannot look at it again, it is time to sit down and revise it some more.

Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.

A lot of young filmmakers bring their movies to my dad because he always gives lots of good editing ideas and notes. He'd be a good film professor.

Most articles and stories are improved significantly if you delete the first page of the manuscript draft.

Almost all novels are improved by cutting from the top. On their first pages, authors parade those favourite effects which disgust the impartial reader.

To say that creative writing courses are all useless is almost as silly as saying all editors are useless. Writers of all levels can benefit from other instructive voices.

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.