Editing Approach Quotes

I don't do any editing while we're making the movie. I sit down and watch it all with my editor, we make longhand notes on pads, and then we begin our work.

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?'

I think with one exception I've never changed an opening sentence after a book was completed.

I won't rewrite on set, but I'll just trim the fat.

'Waiting For Guffman' was different right away from 'Spinal Tap,' because we didn't show the interviewer. That person became invisible immediately. That created a different way of tuning it and ultimately editing it.

Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.

I think I'm succinct to the point of trying to write the two-word novel. Editing my work almost never means taking anything out but rather adding, because I'm always stripping down. I tend to under-write rather than over-write.

I'm not a mother of children, but I'm a different type of mother where my approach to design is more in line with nature. It's less about dictating and more about editing and listening and allowing something to grow. So I nourish and let the material express what it wants to be.

[Bill Shawn] didn't edit the writers very strongly, but he knew what he wanted.

I had never seen anyone edit the way that I edit before I did it, and it's just what felt right to me.

I know I'm a better editor than I was when I began, twenty years ago. I'm less scared of the text, I'm less scared of the writer, and, crucially, I no longer believe that I have to leave my mark on every story.