Comments on: Writing Excuses Season 3 Episode 11: Trimming

By: lyssie95

lyssie95 — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:54:38 +0000

Thanks, helped a lot for the Academic Decathlon speech I’m writing right now. Meeting Brandon features heavily in it!

By: The Great Slash: TGS Edition « The Homework Never Ends

The Great Slash: TGS Edition « The Homework Never Ends — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 16:18:01 +0000

[...] What first brought this to my mind is the great Writing Excuses podcast, specifically their episode on trimming. [...]

By: DC

DC — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:32:31 +0000

I’m an underwriter of a sort. Not that I don’t trim. Most of the fat comes in overlong sentences laden with passive voice. Conditionals are also a big thing. Let the subject do its thing, no maybes, should, could or would.

Rarely have I looked at something and said, “This doesn’t work.” Even then on my first edit of my first project it went down from 55,000 to 38,000 before I added several missing scenes. So even an underwriter like myself has to cut and trim before the edit is done.

By: Matthew Whitehead

Matthew Whitehead — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 04:50:05 +0000

@Sam: That’s not padding, that’s adding flavour. Best way to get good at that is to write conversations as they’re interpreted by different characters, ala Brandon’s famous “four people walk through a town. Describe it differently from each of their viewpoints.” prompt.

By: Guerry

Guerry — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:11:02 +0000

I reported the bad link to the SFWA web site, and Mary Robinette Kowal herself responded! They fixed the link to the Ken Rand page. It has a sample of the trimming topics covered by his book. Just the few things on the list were helpful to me. I look forward to reading the book. Enjoy!

http://www.sfwa.org/members/rand/solution.html

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:13:50 +0000

Second draft of transcript:

The.

By: Mike Barker

Mike Barker — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:02:37 +0000

Untrimmed, but a transcript…

http://mbarker.livejournal.com/120580.html

By: Raethe

Raethe — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:21:17 +0000

Howard, people are already studying comics and other pop culture thingummies in universities. It’s only a matter of time…

By: Dan Wells

Dan Wells — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:31:38 +0000

Sam:

A “padding” podcast is actually a great idea, for a number of reasons. You may see that at some point.

By: Guerry

Guerry — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:43:50 +0000

A follow-up comment on the “edit now” or “wait for an editor” discussion. Part of the publishing process around a novel is to determine what the cost/profit ratio is to publishing the book. If an editor or the marketing team have two novels in hand and can only publish one, and one requires more work to prep for publication, they’ll likely pick the more cost effective one to publish. It also seems that editors now spend less time editing, and spend more time shepherding novels through the publishing process. That puts the ball back in the author’s court.

Similarly, for the short story market, the editors won’t even blink to reject the story because they don’t have time to help you clean it up.