Being a great editor is hard. You must at once be naive and wise, omniscient and humble, impatient and implacable, sympathetic and uncompromising. You must think like a reader, like a writer, and like yourself. Here are 10 vital strategies to master the contradictions of being a great editor. 1. Critique as a reader, not as a writer You…
Like all writers, I have a fraught relationship with copy editors. I give them my perfect prose and then it’s pick, pick, pick. But I can’t live without one. Today: how to value copyeditors and your own prose, all at the same time. I’ve taken you through the whole editing process this week: idea development,…
Today’s question is simple: how can an editor and author collaborate to make a draft better? The editor must function as “first reader” and provide feedback that explains problems, not just solves them. That’s how you make writers smarter. Assume you’re reading a draft as the main editor for a piece of writing. First, figure out…
CNN host Fareed Zakaria took the feud between CNN and Donald Trump to a new level yesterday, describing Trump as a “bullshit artist.” I’ve reviewed the literature on bullshit, including my own past analysis, and I agree. Trump’s bullshit passes (or perhaps, fails) the sniff test. Here’s the clip: What is bullshit? I’ve tried to be…
You’ve got a decent idea, now write it! If only it were so easy. Poor, uneven, or murky structures can sink you before you’ve started. Today I describe how editors and writers can collaborate on the best structure for a 1,000-word-plus piece, before anybody actually begins writing. What is structural editing? The structural edit is…
Editing is hard. It’s hard to provide useful advice. And it’s hard to take it and use it to make your writing better. This is editing week at Without Bullshit; each day I’ll share my best tips for each of the five levels of editing, as shown in the graphic below. Today: I show how you…
Today, I deconstruct Hillary Clinton’s convention speech, just as I did last week with Donald Trump. Clinton is much more about hope, compared to Trump, who emphasized fear. And her speech featured more real policy, but not by much. One thing I’ve learned from this exercise is how challenging it is to understand a political…
AirBnB CEO Brian Chesky’s latest post responds to accusations from last December that its hosts discriminate based on race. Chesky’s post reads as sincere because of the low density of weasel words, even though he starts off with a huge faux pas. AirBnB’s first response AirBnB first responded to this issue on its blog in May. David…
Donald Trump says “Make America Great Again.” Like his policies, his slogan falls apart if you think about it carefully. It looks in the wrong direction — backwards. Trump harkens back to an earlier time when things were great. When was that time? When America was founded, everyone had a musket, and slaves drove the…