Interesting interview with professional editor Dave King over at the Writer Unboxed blog; I suggest checking it out. My favorite take-away concept from the article was this:

Q: What is R.U.E., and what do we need to know about it?

DK: Resist the Urge to Explain. It’s a simple mnemonic that captures the most common editing mistake – explaining elements of your story that you should show to your readers. When you’re first starting out, it’s hard to trust your writing to convey what you need to convey. There’s a tremendous temptation to tell your readers what you want them to know. If you bear R.U.E. in mind, the temptation’s a little easier to resist.

Props to the blogger, Therese Walsh, for being prepared with good questions specific to the interviewee; she did a bang-up job, and I love to see a thoughtful interview. ;o)

Technorati Tags: show don’t tell, R.U.E., writing tips

(This post was transferred from my now-defunct “Unshelved Writing Goals” blog.) 

Sorry for the half-year hiatus; I’m back on track. I’ll soon be moving this blog to WordPress since Blogger just will NOT add categories to their functions, but for now I’ll start posting again regularly. I’ll start off the new year with a link to a writer’s website and podcast, and a quote from the latter that still has me snickering.

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the new Dean Koontz podcast of writerly anecdotes and gentle reminders about his website and latest book. His style is a little more reserved than the casually gabby podcasters who usually fill up my iPod, but he’s personable and charming as he talks about handling butchered movie scripts, editorial eccentricities, a hurricane-tossed cruise with his wife, and his amazing dog.

My podcast quote of the day comes from how he dealt with an editor who kept pushing a particular revision. A less self-assured novelist might have caved. A less courteous novelist might have ranted. Dean Koontz dealt with the editorial blip in grand style.

The book’s setting included a furnace in a garage, and the editor suggested moving it to the more customary basement locale. Mr. Koontz explained that in southern California, few homes have basements, and the garage location for a furnace is quite common. The editor remained troubled, saying this would be a stumbling block for readers. He fixated on this issue, returning to it at each stage of editing, moving his “suggestion” well into the territory of “urging.” Finally, when he told Mr. Koontz that the typeset proofs of the book were here but it still wasn’t too late to move that furnace, Dean Koontz made his move.

Here is the author’s measured response. You’ll have to hear his dry delivery for yourself; check out his first podcast. But here’s a peek:

“All right, I’ll deal with your concern, but I won’t move the furnace. I’ll deal with it in a different way. I’ll explain to the reader about the furnace in the garage. And here’s the paragraph we can insert.

‘In the garage was a furnace, but not just any furnace. An immense furnace. A huge bastard of a furnace, so enormous that the natural gas needed to operate it could have heated the homes of 1,236 families. A furnace of such flagrant excess and ungodly dimensions that no room was left in the garage for cars. A furnace so complex in its engineering and so formidable in its mechanisms that three repairmen had been killed while performing routine maintenance on it. A furnace into which a clever murderer could jam the body of his editor, with every confidence that no speck of evidence would survive the flames.’

His response to that was,’Point taken,’ and the furnace stayed in the garage.”

Love it! In that tongue-in-cheek story about deflecting an editorial annoyance, I hear a writer who has respect for his own abilities but enough humility not to take himself — or life’s little tempests — too terribly seriously.

I recommend checking out the author’s podcast, which has 11 episodes so far, ranging from 6 to 15 minutes each, as well as his website. (Yeah, yeah, and his books too!) (Update: He has since provided another episode … I hope he continues!)

Technorati Tags: Dean Koontz, editing, pushy editor, DropsofBlood.com, Carolyn Bahm, editorial discretion