Product Description

Hundreds of books have been written on the art of writing. Here at last is a book by two professional editors to teach writers the techniques of the editing trade that turn promising manuscripts into published novels and short stories.

In this completely revised and updated second edition, Renni Browne and Dave King teach you, the writer, how to apply the editing techniques they have developed to your own work. Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an expert editor would go through to perfect your manuscript. Each point is illustrated with examples, many drawn from the hundreds of books Browne and King have edited.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8439 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-01
• Released on: 2004-04-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.com
There's not much of the old-style editing going on at publishing houses today. Renni Browne, veteran of William Morrow and other publishers, founded the Editorial Department in 1980 to teach fiction writers the techniques professional editors (many of whom have gone independent) use to prepare a manuscript for publication. In this book, she and senior editor Dave King share their accumulated expertise in a series of brilliantly compact lessons. One page from their simply and markedly improved version of a scene from The Great Gatsby alone would make a compelling advertisement for their techniques. Very highly recommended. --MTB

From Library Journal
Both novice and seasoned fiction writers can ensure themselves greater publishing success by correcting textual problems before submitting their manuscripts to an editor. This exemplary instruction manual offers readers the wisdom of two experienced editors who focus on writing/editing techniques (the mechanics of dialog, characterization, point of view, etc.). Adhering to fiction's underlying principle of "show and tell," this lively text includes both good and bad examples in each lesson. At the end of every chapter is a tip checklist to match against one's own work and two or three exercises with which to practice and reinforce the chapter's topic. A superb tutorial for anyone wanting to learn from pros how to polish fiction writing with panache.
- Cathy Sabol, Northern Virginia Community Coll., Manassas
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 11, 1993
"A superb tutorial for anyone wanting to learn from pros how to polish fiction writing with panache.

"Both novice and seasoned fiction writers can ensure themselves greater publishing success by correcting problems before submitting their manuscripts to an editor. This exemplary instruction manual offers readers the wisdom of two experienced editors who focus on writing/editing techniques (the mechanics of dialogue, characterization, point of view, etc.). Adhering to fictions' underlying principle of "show and tell," this lively text includes both good and bad examples in each lesson. At the end of every chapter is a tip checklist to match against one's own work and two or three exercises with which to practice and reinforce the chapter's topic."

Customer Reviews

A wonderful tool for editing your work.
This book is an excellent resource for any writers looking to get their fiction up and running for publication. The instructions are very clear and well stated. The examples are very helpful. I especially enjoyed the use of "The Great Gatsby" as a comparison of good writing and poor writing. The end of each chapter provides a checklist of topics covered (for quick use while editing your own documents) as well as some exercises to practice editing on your own.

The topics covered include: writing to show your story, characterization and exposition, point of view, proportion, dialogue mechanics, dialogue sound, interior monologue, easy beats, breaking up long passages of text, repetition (and how to use it effectively), sophistication and voice.

The book also includes and index, a section for answers to the exercises and a selection of selected reading.

All in all this is a very helpful book and one that I will use while editing my fiction. I also recommend using this book with "Plot and Structure" by James Scott Bell.

A breezy read
Renni Browne and Dave King have written a better than average book on craft for fiction writers. It covers the following topics:

1. Showing not telling
2. Characterization & exposition
3. Point of view
4. Proportion
5. Dialog mechanics
6. How the text sounds
7. Interior monologue
8. Beats (character actions between bits of dialog)
9. Sentence/paragraph/chapter breaks
10. Repetition
11. Sophisticated versus amateur style
12. Voice

They include passages from works of famous writers as well as of clients of their own editing service in showing how to address errors. They also provide exercises, and in the appendix, suggested answers to those exercises. Excellent.
The book is certainly worth reading, but I am concerned they missed the forest for the trees in certain places. The best example of my concern is in the first chapter on showing not telling. The authors take issue with the following line from F. Scott Fiztgerald's The Great Gatsby:

The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially.

The "problem" is the ly-adverb "confidentially". The authors suggest it would be stronger to eliminate this adverb explaining the girls' emotion, and instead write the following:

The two girls and Jordan leaned their heads together.

Their rule is to avoid using adverbs to tell the reader which emotions the characters are experiencing, and instead convey their emotion by dialog and actions. This is a perfectly reasonable rule, and I agree it should be followed, most of the time. In the above example however, the rewritten version doesn't quite convey what Fitzgerald intended. There could be many reasons for the girls to have leaned their heads together. They could have been tired from the party and from the alcohol they consumed, for example, and simply flopped their heads to one side in exhaustion. The notion that they leaned closer to gossip was lost when the word "confidentially" was removed. To address this, we could give a more detailed explanation of exactly how they leaned together. Here is my suggestion:

The two girls and Jordan leaned their heads together, glanced from side to side, and lowered their voices.

A problem with my version however, is that the longer explanation might interrupt the flow of the scene. None of us can get into Fitzgerald's head, but I'd like to offer a reasonable guess regarding his reason for using the dread ly-adverb. Most of us have a mental image of how a group of gossiping girls behaves. The word "confidentially" encapsulates this mental image, and adequately conveys the mood of the scene. It's a shortcut, and if it's not overused, it can be effective. I sense the authors are too rigid in the application of their rules.

FINAL QUESTION: Would The Great Gatsby have been a better novel if F. Scott Fitzgerald had not made "mistakes" like the one above? I doubt it. For me, Dave King and Renni Browne lost credibility when they began line editing a novel of that stature. Most readers agree the novel has an essence that goes beyond such mechanical issues. That's what I meant at the beginning when I said the authors may have lost the forest for the trees.

A Tool You Should Have
Any craftsman needs an appropriate mix of the right caliber tools in the chest. For writers, this is one such tool.

There's a lot of subjectivity in what gets published. Times and tastes change. Successes of yesteryear might be viewed more skeptically today. The authors make no bones about this as you have the opportunity to practice editing on some great works. That's not to say those works were flawed in any way. You are simply modernizing them, bringing them up to standard that the authors feel is more marketable now. If that's what you're aiming for in your writing, read on.

12 chapters give you the basic nuts and bolts for editing your fictional manuscript. Each chapter uncovers the red lights that could earn your work rejections. Copious examples are used with good explanations of the key points. And like most how-to books, this one gives you a few exercises at the end of each chapter to try your hand on the skills just taught.

The book is an easy read, with some points fairly obvious and others a bit more subtle. It's the packaging up of all these skills together that equips you to play the ruthless editor role. You might not agree with all the advice given or even like it. I had my moments for sure, but in general I consider this a solid blueprint that I'll apply to all my fictional writing now.

If I had one complaint about this book, it would be its length. Just a few more chapters drawn from the authors' collective experiences would have rounded out this reference superbly. As it is, though, it's still a very valuable tool for your collection. Use it, and be a better editor.

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