Authors most in need of editing or abridgement

[gregintenn]

As far as editing goes, I doubt Elmer Keith was ever accused of being a grammar instructor.

On the abridgement front, I always thought Ayn Rand must have been paid by the letter.

 

[Kiwi cop]

I got one of the last Tom Clancy penned Jack Ryan books for Christmas a few years ago. I finished it at 01:00 am on December 26th.

Led Child verbose?. His writing style is short concise sentences with little to think about.

Took me three attempts to get through Lord of the Rings. I never bothered to read The Hobbit.

My biggest gripe with writers is unending use of commas. Some editors insist on "sets" of commas, two in a sentence, and seem never to have heard of the Oxford comma system. Write it like you would speak.

 

[Mule Packer]

Years ago, my eighty-year old dad claimed that he solved the problem of laboring over books whose authors were somewhat "overly verbose" by taking one of those televison-ad speed reading courses.

I asked him how he liked it. "It was great!" he said. "I read Tolstoy's War and Peace in only 30 minutes!"

"You've got to be kidding!" I exclaimed. "What was it about?"

He looked at me, smiled, then very calmly replied, "Russia."

 

[Rastoff]

Anyone here ever subscribe to the Reader's Digest book club? I was part of it for a couple years. They do a fantastic job of shortening great books. Every month I'd get a book that contained four books in short form. It made books like, "For Whom the Bell Tolls" much nicer to read.

I don't know why I ever stopped that...

 

[rwsmith]

And also editing..

Also good editing isn't as easy to come by as in past years. It's kind of like painting. A good painter needs someone to tell him when to stop.

 

[Absalom]

That's a clever take on it, but you and I both know you're oversimplifying it.

Well, yes, you got me, I actually like Poe. But he is so easy to make fun of ....

 

[crazyphil]

"My temptation is always to write too much. I keep it under control so as
not to have to cut out **** and re-write. Guys who think they are geniuses
because they have never learned how to say no to a typewriter are a
common phenomenon. All you have to do is get a phony style and you
can write any amount of words." Ernest Hemingway

 

[Wise_A]

Dan-friggin'-Simmons. The Abominable was a pretty good book, despite being a massive disappointment. There's no way to explain it without ruining it.

Everything this guy writes follows the same thread: nothing happens for 450 pages, and then you get to find out if you were wasting your time. The length of the narrative presents a huge gamble.

And sometimes, you lose:

Steven King

The Stand

Look, you wanna cut about 200 pages out of Sleeping Beauties, go right ahead. Keep your hands off The Stand.

 

[rwsmith]

Hemingway was the opposite....

He never used more words when one would do.

I think one of the toughest reads I've had was 'A Tale of Two Cities'. One of the few times I've resorted to Cliff's Notes to keep it straight in my head.

When I was a kid I thought Melville could have left out all the stuff in Moby Dick that didn't have to do with whale hunting, but as I got older I appreciated all of his ruminations, even the entire chapter on why the whale was white.

Which Jack Reachers is the one where he went to his old command and found everything had changed, a woman is accused of something and they take off and end up infiltrating some secret fortress, kill all the guards and get to the bottom of the whole deal? I thought that one was way too wordy. They seemed to get into endless pratfalls, just to fill pages. I did like the parts where five or six guys thought that they 'had him'.

I don't mind long books, if they are only as long as they need to be. I don't like to waste time reading fluff.

My sister had a box set of four books called, "Reader's Digest Teen Age Treasury". Each volume was filled with the most fantastic true stories. From the Andrea Doria to a fighter pilot being marooned on an island trying to get out out of Korea when his plane was hit. At the end of each was a 'book section', where I learned about Buddy, the first seeing eye dog and "The Amazing Crusoes of Lonesome Lake. These books were in the fifties and just recently I've come across references, maybe on this forum, to the Lonesome Lake book.

It's said that Reader's Digest was made to be readable at a simple level, but the stories were well written and a fifth grade level back in the 50's was a tad higher than it is now. I wore out that box set, and a few months ago I found one on Ebay and got it. I'm 'reducing' my possessions and I've donated a lot of books to the library, but I'm going to keep that. They definitely helped along my love of reading.

 

[Tom S.]

Steven King

The Stand

It

Under The Dome

Those three pale in comparison to his Tower (Gunslinger) collection. It's an 8 book collection (IIRC) that could have been done in far fewer volumes, and the longer it went on, the weirder and more verbose it became.

 

[Tom S.]

Dan-friggin'-Simmons. The Abominable was a pretty good book, despite being a massive disappointment. There's no way to explain it without ruining it.

Everything this guy writes follows the same thread: nothing happens for 450 pages, and then you get to find out if you were wasting your time. The length of the narrative presents a huge gamble.

And sometimes, you lose:

Look, you wanna cut about 200 pages out of Sleeping Beauties, go right ahead. Keep your hands off The Stand.

Which version of the Stand - the original or the 'enhanced' version? The Stand was, by far, my favorite King novel, even with the glaring error of Harold using a Colt Woodsman in .38 caliber.

I have found errors in many of King's books. There are only two possible explanations, either he doesn't take time to research things or he makes them intentionally to see what reactions they create. I wouldn't rule out either explanation, or even a combination of the two.

 

[rwsmith]

I bothered to read the Hobbit....

I got one of the last Tom Clancy penned Jack Ryan books for Christmas a few years ago. I finished it at 01:00 am on December 26th.

Led Child verbose?. His writing style is short concise sentences with little to think about.

Took me three attempts to get through Lord of the Rings. I never bothered to read The Hobbit.

My biggest gripe with writers is unending use of commas. Some editors insist on "sets" of commas, two in a sentence, and seem never to have heard of the Oxford comma system. Write it like you would speak.

I was advised to read the Hobbit. I did and never bothered to read the rest of the series. I have an unreasonable dislike of that form of fantasy.

 

[CAJUNLAWYER]

I am a wordsmith by trade and have learned over the years that a good brief should be BRIEF and written on about the third grade level if you want the judges to read and understand your point.
Believe it or not what has helped my writing is posting on this forum. You have to keep your message short, pithy and attention grabbing.
Too bad I can't use emoji's in briefs. ( Can't use cuss words either )

 

[NYlakesider]

I am a wordsmith by trade and have learned over the years that a good brief should be BRIEF and written on about the third grade level if you want the judges to read and understand your point.
Believe it or not what has helped my writing is posting on this forum. You have to keep your message short, pithy and attention grabbing.
Too bad I can't use emoji's in briefs. ( Can't use cuss words either )

Add the jurors to your above bolded and the initials K.I.S.S. come into play. Sort of Little Things Affect Little Minds!

 

[KKECK5]

Dean Koontz..........How many sentences to you need to write to decribe that it's morning.... Yeah Hi the sun's up....

 

[Ed Fowler]

"Madison", by Lynn Cheney - looks like someone threw a bunch of paragraphs at an editor who was on vacation. Some interesting stuff, poorly organized and lots of junk thrown in.

 

[crazyphil]

He never used more words when one would do.

I think one of the toughest reads I've had was 'A Tale of Two Cities'. One of the few times I've resorted to Cliff's Notes to keep it straight in my head.

When I was a kid I thought Melville could have left out all the stuff in Moby Dick that didn't have to do with whale hunting, but as I got older I appreciated all of his ruminations, even the entire chapter on why the whale was white.

Which Jack Reachers is the one where he went to his old command and found everything had changed, a woman is accused of something and they take off and end up infiltrating some secret fortress, kill all the guards and get to the bottom of the whole deal? I thought that one was way too wordy. They seemed to get into endless pratfalls, just to fill pages. I did like the parts where five or six guys thought that they 'had him'.

I don't mind long books, if they are only as long as they need to be. I don't like to waste time reading fluff.

My sister had a box set of four books called, "Reader's Digest Teen Age Treasury". Each volume was filled with the most fantastic true stories. From the Andrea Doria to a fighter pilot being marooned on an island trying to get out out of Korea when his plane was hit. At the end of each was a 'book section', where I learned about Buddy, the first seeing eye dog and "The Amazing Crusoes of Lonesome Lake. These books were in the fifties and just recently I've come across references, maybe on this forum, to the Lonesome Lake book.

It's said that Reader's Digest was made to be readable at a simple level, but the stories were well written and a fifth grade level back in the 50's was a tad higher than it is now. I wore out that box set, and a few months ago I found one on Ebay and got it. I'm 'reducing' my possessions and I've donated a lot of books to the library, but I'm going to keep that. They definitely helped along my love of reading.

More writers should follow this Hemingway practice:
"I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of s---,
I try to put the s--- in the waste basket."

 

[watchamacallit]

Clive Cussler

Cussler has long since ceased writing the Dirk Pitt books and the current publishing crew are ridiculously sloppy. My favorite sentence: "He ordered them to initiate the initiative."

 

[soFlaNative]

Too bad I can't use emoji's in briefs.

Why not?
Wear whatever you'd like.

 

[WR Moore]

One of the biggest problems with the Readers Digest condensed books was the selection of subjects. I read a few of them, and for the most part, if I hadn't been sick and bored out of my skull, I'd never have touched them. Despite several tries while ill, I never did get through "The Simarillion". Author stole shamelessly from the Nubeilungenlied anyway. I've never been able to read Robert Ludlum, the guy who took over for him and I've lost my taste for the guy who took over for Clancy.

I got two very good pieces of advice on report/memo writing while I was working. The first was my direct supervisor told me to write for an 8th grade level. The other was when my manager at the time gave me a book titled "How to get your point across in 30 seconds". That worked out to about 1 page. Did help in getting things done.

About convoluted writing. During a grad school law class I had to read Baker (or was it Adams?) vs California. About search and seizure. 55 pages of legal sleeze by 7 or the 9 members of SCOTUS. I read that thing 7 times before it dawned upon me that the bulk of it was "I hold with my learned brethern in assent/dissent, but they greviously err in their reasoning. The correct points of law are.........."