Friday, May 17, 2013
by Neil Fein
Editors make the text flow well, we chop out inconsistencies. When you hand a manuscript to an editor, the process can seem like a bit of a black box: Words go in, slightly smoothed-over words come out. When you send a manuscript to a freelance editor, it may seem like you’re throwing your book into the void.
The reality is a bit dull. We sit there and read the words. We think about them, and make suggestions. We do this for hours and hours and hours until we’re immersed in the world of your book. The rest is just details. Do we read the book once through slowly, or make multiple passes on the text? Do we want the book in one giant Word file, or a bunch of little ones?
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Friday, May 3, 2013
by Neil Fein
Whether the narrator is the voice of the author or a character telling us the tale in first-person, your narrator is a character in your story. And omniscient, all-knowing narrators shouldn’t be all-knowing; it makes them bland. Limiting what the narrator knows is an effective way to make a book seem more relatable and realistic.
Viewpoint is a slippery thing. When you’re using first person–as I’m doing right now–what the narrator should know is easy to figure out: The narrator knows exactly what the main character does. But when you’re using third-person, that narrator can know anything at all, and things get a little trickier.
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Friday, April 26, 2013
by Neil Fein
Ambiguity can be the enemy of comprehension, but artistry can override this. The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey is a great example of this. Depending on who you ask, 2001 is either an ambitious piece of cinema or a dull, incomprehensible film. Critical analysis of Stanley Kubrick’s space-age epic will often come up with creative solutions to fill in missing data. Theories abound as to what this briefest sketch of a story is actually about. What is the monolith, exactly? Is the glowing star-child in the final scene meant to be the next step in humanity’s evolution? Why did HAL murder the astronauts?
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Friday, April 19, 2013
by Neil Fein
I’m typing this in Schwarma Express, a Highland Park restaurant. There’s a Toshiba flatscreen here, tuned to CNN. Joe the interviewee is saying, “There’s a lot that people don’t know.” The news anchor is trying to pull more details out of Joe. And that’s really his name. Joe is bald, black, and wearing a pinstripe suit and a blue striped tie. Theres’s an FBI hotline number on the screen. There are blurry, pixellated images of men wearing baseball caps backwards, in tan and not Red Sox blue.
My experiences in Boston are limited. I caught a game in Fenway in the nineties–the Red Sox, then the underdogs, lost. And my family took a tour of historical sites when I was about 8 or 9 years old. But in 2010, I shipped my bike to Boston and rode to New York City over the next week.
I remember meeting my friends for lunch more than I remember the city itself, and my memories of Rhode Island and Massachusetts are far more vivid than those of the day I spend escaping the city. This morning, I woke up and then made the mistake of looking at the news. Boston is a mess now, closed down for a manhunt. I left my house to be around other people, and this restaurant is now empty. It’s time to pay and move along.
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Friday, April 12, 2013
by Neil Fein
“My brother-in-law edited the manuscript, but they changed my voice. The story didn’t feel like me any more.” I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard this from clients. Editing can mean one of a few things, but it does not mean rewriting the manuscript to what the writer’s brother-in-law–or friend, or co-worker–thinks it should be.
I’ve written about this before, and I’ll write about it again: Let’s get straight what editing is and what it isn’t. But, since this is a mild rant, let me say one thing: Having your friends and family read your work can give you unqualified praise, or maybe good advice. And there are pro editors out there who, frankly, don’t know what they’re doing. I’ve done a few clean-up edits! But maybe, in addition to writing a cathartic rant, I can clear up some preconceptions here about what a good editor does.
Imagine this:
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Friday, April 5, 2013
by Neil Fein
After the rousing success of our last week of flash fiction, I’ve been eager to do another one.
- Length: 500–750 words
- Date: May 20–24
- Theme: “The End”
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Posted in Fiction, Meta |
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Friday, March 29, 2013
by Neil Fein
I edit books–it’s what I do as a professional. But I also am a musician on the side, and, a few times a year, get a job as an audio tech. I’m a professional at these things as well. A career counselor once told me this is called a composite career.
A few times a year, some festival or business or convention organizer needs performers or speakers to be made louder. They pay me be the guy behind the mixing board. So I pack my car with a few hundred pounds of speakers, amplifiers, mixing board, microphones, and a couple of giant Tupperware crates filled with cables; unpack it and set it up; and plug performers into the system to make them louder. “Audio tech” or “sound reinforcement engineer” or “sound guy”–I’m the guy behind the mixing board who will be there for a couple of hours after the event is over, and was there before it starts.
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Posted in Audio, Editing, Music |
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Friday, March 22, 2013
by Neil Fein
Fiction may be the glamor child of writing, but it too has elements that are, kindly, drudgery. Fortunately, help is at hand: Questions dealing with topics like research and summarizing plots and character information have been asked and answered over on Writers.stackexchange.com, and their answers can help make these chores a bit easier.
Writers is a pro and enthusiast Q&A site built by users. Instead of wading through a lot of random discussion to get to the good stuff, the best answers are always voted to the top.
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Friday, March 15, 2013
by Neil Fein
Today may have to end up being a skip day here on the Nose; I had work to finish, and later in the morning developed a corneal abrasion. Feeling better after a nap, but my eye still hurts. Will try to put up at least a post of interesting links later this evening, but no promises.
Instead, allow me to plug my band, Baroque & Hungry. We’re playing for St. Patrick’s day this Sunday. Full details are in ,a href=”https://www.facebook.com/events/487058894686484/”>this Facebook event, or immediately below:
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Friday, March 8, 2013
by Neil Fein
The Associated Press recently sent an update to subscribers of its style guide, with the following entry:
husband, wife
Regardless of sexual orientation, husband or wife is acceptable in all references to individuals in any legally recognized marriage. Spouse or partner may be used if requested.
AP is a news organization, and its style guide, which encourages text to be concise and headlines short, is designed for newspapers. This update could easily be seen as a reaction to the recent legalization of same-sex marriages in many US states. Unfortunately, the situation isn’t that simple.
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