“I'm used to adapting my novels for feature film - it can be challenging to cut and compress three or four hundred pages into two hours of dramatic action.” TwoActionFilmUsedThreeHoursChallengesNovelFourCuttingPagesHundredFeaturesDramaticAdapting Author:Tom Perrotta
“Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. You have a broad sense, maybe, but it's this rash leap. It's like spelunking. You kind of create the right path for yourself. But, boy, are there so many points at which you think, absolutely, I'm going down the wrong hole here. And I can't get back to the right hole. I'm not going to be able to get this section back to the right hole - so I'm just going to have to cut it.” ThinkingWritingKindLittlesI CanIdeasHappensAbleBoysNovelPathCuttingWillingHolesLeapGet BackBroadsSectionsBlacknessRight Path Author:Chang-Rae Lee
“Cut like crazy. Less is more. I've often read manuscripts - including my own - where I've got to the beginning of, say, chapter two and have thought: “This is where the novel should actually start.” A huge amount of information about character and backstory can be conveyed through small detail. The emotional attachment you feel to a scene or a chapter will fade as you move on to other stories. Be business-like about it.” FeelsShouldTwoCharacterStoriesMovingMy OwnNovelCuttingCrazyInformationEmotionalHugeAmountSceneIncludingDetailsAttachmentFadesChaptersManuscriptsLess Is MoreSmall Details Author:Sarah Waters
“Get Carter remains among the great crime novels, a lean, muscular portrait of a man stumbling along the hard edge - toward redemption. Ted Lewis cuts to the bone.” MenHardNovelCuttingCrimeRemainsEdgesBonesRedemptionPortraitsCarterStumblingCrime Novels Author:James Sallis
“There are people already sharing eBooks out there, .. and they do it simply because they love books. You don't buy a second copy of a book, cut the spine off, lay each page on a scanner, run that .tif through an OCR (Optical Character Reader), hand edit the resulting output for errors and then post it online if you don't love the book. it can up to 80 hours to turn a printed novel into an eBook. I figure if someone out there is willing to put in 80 hours of work promoting my book, then I'd prefer they do it in a way that gives a better return to me.” PeopleIfsWayGivingBookCharacterHandsRunningTurnsHoursNovelCuttingFiguresWillingReturnReaderPagesLaysErrorsPostsOnlineCopiesPromotingPrintedEditsSpineOutputReturn To Me Author:Cory Doctorow
“A novel it's different. It's kind of exhilarating not to have to cut to the bone constantly. Oh, well I can go over here for a moment. I can say what I think the guy was thinking or what the day looked like or what the bird was doing. If you do that as a playwright, you're dead.” IfsThinkingWellsKindI CanDifferentMomentsGuyNovelCuttingBirdBonesPlaywrightExhilaratingOh Well Author:David Mamet
“The Thieves of Manhattan is a sly and cutting riff on the book-publishing world that is quite funny unless you happen to be an author, in which case the novel will make you consider a more sensible profession-like being a rodeo clown, for example, or a crab-fisherman in the Bering Sea.” WorldBookHappensCasesNovelCuttingSeaExampleProfessionSensibleThievesPublishingClownManhattanFishermanSlyCrabsRodeoBook Publishing Author:Carl Hiaasen
“I've told youngsters not to write their autobiographical novel at the age of twenty-one; to save it for the time when they're fifty-one or sixty-one. They should write other novels first, to learn their craft; they shouldn't cut their teeth on the valuable material of childhood because they'll never have better material, ever, to work with.” ShouldWritingFirstsAgeNovelCuttingChildhoodMaterialsTwentiesValuableTeethCraftsFiftySixtyAutobiographyTwenty OneYoungsters Author:Laura Z. Hobson
“Some authors write nonsense in a clear style, and others sense in an obscure one; some can reason without being able to persuade, others can persuade without being able to reason; some dive so deep that they descend into darkness, and others soar so high that they give us no light; and some, in a vain attempt to be cutting and dry, give us only that which is cut and dried. We should labor, therefore, to treat with ease of things that are difficult; with familiarity, of things that are novel; and with perspicuity, of things that are profound.” GivingShouldWritingReasonLightAbleDifficultDarknessNovelClearCuttingStyleLaborTreatsProfoundVainEaseDryNonsenseObscureSoarFamiliarity Book:Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“If Im in the bookstore, and I see a 700-page novel, my first thought is, Ooh, how could you cut this down to size and make a movie out of it?” IfsFirstsNovelCuttingPagesSizeBookstores Author:Brian Helgeland
“Douglas Adams did not enjoy writing, and he enjoyed it less as time went on. He was a bestselling, acclaimed, and much-loved novelist who had not set out to be a novelist, and who took little joy in the process of crafting novels. He loved talking to audiences. He liked writing screenplays. He liked being at the cutting edge of technology and inventing” WritingLittlesJoyProcessEnjoyTalkingTechnologyNovelAudienceCuttingEdgesEnjoyedNovelistsScreenplaysInventingCutting Edge Book:The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Source: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“There are always differences when you adapt a novel to a film. A novel is longer so you're automatically cutting out elements and introspection but this is actually a film that stays very close to the novel.” FilmDifferencesNovelCuttingElementsIntrospection Author:Nicholas Sparks
“Imitation both unconscious and conscious is par excellence the educational method of the family. It is plain that a considerable part of the adaptation of living beings to their environment, i.e., of beings that are born plastic, is passed on from generation to generation through imitation. Were this not so, much if not all of the road traversed by one generation would have to be travelled by the next generation from the very beginning and without short-cuts. Consequently there would be little chance for the novel adaptation, the propitious individual variation, that constitutes progress.” IfsLittlesWould BeNextIndividualBornChanceNovelEnvironmentCuttingProgressGenerationsConsciousMethodExcellenceEducationalUnconsciousPlasticImitationAdaptationNext GenerationVariationShort Cuts Author:Elsie Clews Parsons
“I don't try to take a person out of our world and put them into my world; that wouldn't work. It's sort of like bad Photoshop: If you see something Photoshopped together - and even if it's done pretty well - the eye catches on it. That happens a lot when people try to cut and paste people from our world into their fourteenth-century historical romance novel.” PeopleIfsWorldTryingWellsPersonsDoneHappensEyeTogetherRomanceNovelCuttingCenturyHistoricalWorking ItOur WorldRomance NovelPhotoshop Author:Patrick Rothfuss
“In a novella, a whole lot of crap can happen, and you can build momentum and suspense and leave room for a surprise or three. Stories are cut down to the most essential elements, and novels (this might be an unfair generalization on my part) are big fat clumsy efforts where the reader can snooze for a couple chapters and miss nothing of consequence. Hence my love for the middle way.” WayWholeStoriesBigsMightHappensThreeRoomsEffortNovelCuttingMiddleMissingReaderCoupleEssentialsElementsConsequenceSurpriseFatsSuspenseChaptersUnfairCrapMomentumClumsyGeneralizationMiddle Way Author:Robert Reed
“If you take a big epic novel and you shoot it, when you get to the editing room you notice that it has 2 million climaxes, which fill the whole 90 or 100 minutes. Then you realize you can't cut them out because if somebody is dying and you cut that out it seems like they just disappear from the film.” IfsWholeBigsSeemsFilmRealizingRoomsMillionsNovelCuttingMinutesDyingDisappearEpicEditingClimax Author:Pirjo Honkasalo
“Radio, or at least the kind of radio we're proposing to do, can cut through that. It can reach people who would otherwise never hear your work, and of course I find that very notion inspiring. Radio stories are powerful because the human voice is powerful. It has been and will continue to be the most basic element of storytelling. As a novelist (and I should note that working my novel is the first thing I do in the morning and the very last thing I do before I sleep), shifting into this new medium is entirely logical. It's still narrative, only with different tools.” PeopleShouldFirstsHumansKindHas BeensStillsDifferentStoriesLastsCoursesVoiceSleepPowerfulMorningNovelCuttingElementsToolsNotesNotionRadioStorytellingMediumsNarrativeNovelistsLogicalShiftingHuman Voice Author:Daniel Alarcon
“The lessons learned in journalism also apply. Writing for NPR has taught me to cut a piece in half and then in half again - without losing the essence. Apply that to the swollen prose of a bulky novel and you might reveal a beautiful work.” WritingMightBeautifulHalfNovelPiecesCuttingTaughtLessonsLosingEssenceJournalismProseSwollenLesson LearnedNpr Author:Julianna Baggott