Authors most in need of editing or abridgement

[Jeff423]

My partial list of authors who just have too many words in their stories:

Henning Mankell - the Wallander books.
George R.R. Martin - Game of Thrones.
Lee Child - Jack Reacher books.

I like all these authors and continue to read them but they could do with some editing.

Please feel free to contribute yours.

 

[NYlakesider]

My partial list of authors who just have too many words in their stories:

Henning Mankell - the Wallander books.
George R.R. Martin - Game of Thrones.
Lee Child - Jack Reacher books.

I like all these authors and continue to read them but they could do with some editing.

Please feel free to contribute yours.

I have always enjoyed his work but Tom Clancy in the stories only he wrote was very verbose!

 

[the ringo kid]

A few new books ive bought recently really needed a bit more attn. to editing-and the usage of correct military terminology. For instance-there is NO Iron Cross first Class with Swords--IT'S Knights Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords. etc etc.

 

[FredBart]

Tom Clancy is his later years was the most verbose. He must have been paid by the word. His book " The Hunt for Red October" was concise. After he became rich and famous, his books became too thick and in need of a good editor.

I only read one of the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child ( pen name) but his firearms knowledge was so poor, that I could not finish the second book. Best selling authors ( even from England) can afford to hire researchers to fill provide information about subjects that they know little about.

 

[Rastoff]

John Steinbeck. He never used one word when ten would suffice. Even so, he wrote what continues to be my all time favorite quote from a book:

"In marching, in mobs, in football games, and in war, outlines become vague; real things become unreal and a fog creeps over the mind. Tension and excitement, weariness, movement--all merge in one great gray dream, so that when it is over, it is hard to remember how it was when you killed men or ordered them to be killed. Then other people who were not there tell you what it was like and you say vaguely, "yes, I guess that's how it was."

― John Steinbeck, The Moon Is Down

 

[GKC]

Have you ever tried to read the unabridged "Count of Monte Cristo" ? I did, trying to compare it to the abridged version, and OMG! I think he spent 10 pages describing the dinner table setting in one scene. Back in those days, it was not only the style to write long, involved books, but authors were paid by the word.

In terms of modern authors, I think George R. R. Martin is the worst. After watching "Game of Thrones" I bought his 5 book series. The first three books were pretty good, but the last two were pure misery to wade through.

Likewise was "Gai Jin" by Clavell. I've enjoyed all his other books in the Asian saga, but this one was long, boring, and had a myriad of characters all of whom used multiple names. I thought I was going to have to set up a spreadsheet just to figure out who was who, when, and where.

 

[Marshwheeling]

Verbosity can be a plague in a journalist or a lawyer, but I would be slow to criticize it in a novelist. Cormac McCarthy, for example, has been accused of overwriting, but consider this:


"They rode out along the fenceline and across the open pastureland. The leather creaked in the morning cold. They pushed the horses into a lope. The lights fell away behind them. They rode out on the high prairie where they slowed the horses to a walk and the stars swarmed around them out of the blackness. They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing."

What would you cut?

 

[Absalom]

Nobody beats the Romantic poets in that department.

Try Edgar Allan Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher". He needs something like four or five pages to say "I rode up to an old friend's house, and it looked sorta gloomy".

Or James Fenimore Cooper, "The Last of the Mohicans". Forget that action-packed elk hunt you may remember from the movie. In the book, they stand around some clearing in the forest for several pages of descriptions before someone moves, and then not much happens for a while.

 

[Rustyt1953]

I wish I had the imagination of the great wordsmiths but, my goodness, some of them could be long winded.

 

[Rpg]

We've gotten so conditioned to fast action movies, text messages and video games that we have a sort of ADD when it comes to reading well crafted literature.

Concentrating on a bit of complex literature is off putting for too many folks, much our detriment.

Spend a bit of time reviewing the curriculum in your local high schools and you'll see that there are few lengthy reading assignments, little in the way of writing required of students and "lessons" that rarely exceed 20 minutes. This is what produces college students that lack the basic skills to the extent that many end up in remedial classes before they can take first year classes.

I agree that lots of mass market fiction is poorly done but it seems to be what the market demands.

I'm not suggesting that throw away novels like most popular fiction can't stand improving. Only that what makes for popular fiction tends to be dumbed down.

 

[Watchdog]

Have you ever tried to read the unabridged "Count of Monte Cristo" ? I did, trying to compare it to the abridged version, and OMG! I think he spent 10 pages describing the dinner table setting in one scene. Back in those days, it was not only the style to write long, involved books, but authors were paid by the word.

Well, The Count of Monte Cristo was originally published as a serial, so if he was paid by the word, I could see why he'd drag out some descriptive passages.

He also had a fascination with food and fine dining and the settings in which dining took place. almost at the end of his life, he retired to the countryside and wrote an incredible cookbook titled Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine. It's about 1500 pages long, I think.

Dumas died in 1870, shortly after finishing the cookbook.

 

[Watchdog]

My partial list of authors who just have too many words in their stories:

Lee Child - Jack Reacher books.

I liked the early Reacher novels, but now I genuinely believe someone should tell Lee Child to quit while he's ahead.

 

[6518John]

"Faulknerian".

William Faulkner was so bad about this his style was actually named—"Faulknerian." Moreover, there was a yearly contest to parody that went on for 15-20 years and ended in 2005 I believe.
Contest

I always felt his writing was gibberish.

"There was a wisteria vine blooming for the second time that summer on a wooden trellis before one window, into which sparrows came now and then in random gusts, making a dry vivid dusty sound before going away: and opposite Quentin, Miss Coldfield in the eternal black which she had worn for forty-three years now, whether for sister, father, or nothusband none knew, sitting so bolt upright in the straight hard chair that was so tall for her that her legs hung straight and rigid as if she had iron shinbones and ankles, clear of the floor with that air of impotent and static rage like children's feet, and talking in that grim haggard amazed voice until at last listening would renege and hearing-sense self-confound and the long-dead object of her impotent yet indomitable frustration would appear, as though by outraged recapitulation evoked, quiet inattentive and harmless, out of the biding and dreamy and victorious dust." —Absalom, Absalom!, by William Faulkner

 

[LVSteve]

This is a subject close to my heart right now. I am currently editing a technical paper that started as 370 pages. I'm about 50% done and the page count is now 316, and I expect to be well under 300 by the time I am done.

The main issue is that the author has written a chronicle, not a technical report. Why report results and techniques that were found to be in error? It's like he is justifying his time on the job. That's not what the customer asked for. He also has an aversion to using the same technical term more than twice in a paragraph. As a result, he has tried to invent new terms that just confuse the average reader and baffled the the uninitiated. Unhelpful.

 

[Rule3]

Steven King

The Stand

It

Under The Dome

 

[6518John]

Well, The Count of Monte Cristo . . .
He also had a fascination with food and fine dining and the settings in which dining took place. almost at the end of his life, he retired to the countryside and wrote an incredible cookbook titled Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine. It's about 1500 pages long, I think. Dumas died in 1870, shortly after finishing the cookbook.

Perhaps he should have named his masterpiece the "Count of Monte Crisco!"

 

[Watchdog]

Nobody beats the Romantic poets in that department.

Try Edgar Allan Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher". He needs something like four or five pages to say "I rode up to an old friend's house, and it looked sorta gloomy".

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

 

[UncleEd]

I think there is a progression in some writers' works.

First book published, glad to get it published and guided
by first rate editors.

Second book published, success has come and editors
are a bit reluctant to edit too heavily.

Third book published in three-book contract and writer
jumps publishing house afterward because he doesn't
like his talents being edited by a heavy hand.

New publishing house and writer gets away with murder
because he's a success and who's going to get in the
way of such talent?

And so on.

Blessed the writer who appreciates and welcomes his
editors and their advice throughout the writing career.

Oft times, being succinct takes more time than to just
rattle on, confident in one's own genius.

P.S.: I think this critique is too verbose and welcome
a professional editor but none of you on this forum.

 

[Marshwheeling]

"I wrote you a long letter because I didn't have time to write a short one."

 

[susieqz]

hermn melvil.
moby dick could be great novel if you chopped 100 pages out of it.