Chris Traeger and Ben Wyatt. In Parks and Rec, Chris Traeger is enthusiastic and positive and loves every idea and every person. So the state of Indiana hired him because he’s an encouraging even when he disagrees. But they partnered him with Ben Wyatt, who is a numbers cruncher and shoots down any idea that isn’t feasible. Ben said, “Chris came in and got everybody pumped up and feeling great and then I came in and slashed their budget to ribbons.” When I rough draft, I’m all Chris Traeger. But in the real world, we also need a Ben Wyatt, and that’s my editor.
Editing is addition by subtraction. The goal in editing is to cull the herd until everything that’s left is good. But usually the creator gets excited and says, “Ew, Ew, gimme the wheel for a minute, I got something…” So often in the edit the work actually grows.
Editing attempts to see the whole, how does this part serve the whole? If it does, where does it fit to best do that? If it doesn’t, it’s gone, no matter how good it is.
The editor must be ruthless and not fall in love with the paragraphs. Because they may need to be sacrificed for the whole. That scene or chapter or paragraph or character, if it doesn’t improve the quality of the whole, needs to be removed, no matter how much work you’ve put into creating it. People refer to this as “killing your darlings.” (If it helps you, and it does me, save that work in a new document, perhaps it will grow into its own thing later.)
Some editing guidelines…
- Introductions say why
- Conclusions are crescendos
- Don’t tell me, show me. (Stories and word-pictures are louder and stickier than accurate explanations.)
- When in doubt, leave it out
- A single, unifying thread
- Read it aloud (I use a teleprompter. This does many things. It helps flow of thoughts and transitions and alerts to monotony and flow of ideas and overall length, precise word choices become so much clearer. It helps with style, clarity, flow, length, and tone too.)
- Pacing – have we gone on too long without an attention getter? The best attention getters are there to communicate, not just draw readers back.
- Is this boring? (If you can’t keep their attention, you don’t deserve their attention.)
- Length: Is this short enough to be clear and focused? Is this long enough to get the message across? Is anything essential left out? Is anything unessential left in?
- Jargon, explained or removed
- Redundancy removed
- Antecedents replaced with their referent (this, that, it’s, they etc.)
- Trust the process
From ok, to good, to awesome. The difference between the high end product and the economy product is not usually basic function, but materials, fit and finish. In other words, the edits. You can upgrade an inexpensive guitar and make it amazing. That’s editing. But it takes time and skill.
You might think that if it’s God, it is beyond edits…but I suspect that’s not the full picture. Jeremiah has been edited from the Hebrew by the time the Septuagint was produced in Greek. And the New Testament tends to exclusively quote the Greek, though our modern Bible’s translate the Old Testament from the Hebrew. Many bible books were revised in the telling and remembering, before they ever made it to the page. We can see the evidences of editing in the gospels too (Matthew is Mark’s gospel reworked and expanded.) The issue is that the Holy Spirit is in both the first draft and the edits. Did you know that nearly all the scholars agree that the woman caught in adultery story in John chapter 8 wasn’t in the original version of John’s gospel? So does that mean it isn’t true? I don’t think so. According to many people’s ideas about how inspiration works, it should be thrown out. It was added in the edit. And I think John’s gospel is stronger with it included. Do you believe that the Holy Spirit can brood over you during the edit just as strongly as in the original moment of inception?
Collaborating with others is often a big part of what makes editing effective…as well as scary. The identity conversation gets loud and can shut down the objectivity quickly. If you’re a writer and you have an editor who reads your manuscript and marks it up and suggests rewrites…then even though they’re your ally, the process often feels like they are your sworn enemy. It’s one thing for YOU to kill your darlings, something else entirely for another person to suggest doing so. Don’t invite them into the edit unless you’re serious.
When the movie credits are rolling, sometimes I want to know just how much freedom the editors had in the cutting room? How much of the final movie is the director, and how much is the editors? I’m curious. Because with the little videos I’ve made I know that the majority of the work is done in the edit. Every minute of video seems to cost me an hour of editing. The ratio of impact on the final product is probably 30/70 with the edit being the 70%.
Never become your own follower. Be humble enough to contradict earlier versions of yourself. Don’t be too proud to edit your work. Some people would feel foolish to publicly say, “I’ve changed my mind.” They think that’s an admission of failure. In politics they call that person a flip-flopper. Now, if you flip and flop based on what sells or what benefits you in the moment, just to please a crowd or make money and avoid disapproval, yeah, that’s bad. But when a healthy moral compass and due process of arriving at truth is what informed and formed the decision to change your mind, that’s not a flip-flop. That’s you refusing to foolishly become your own follower, and to keep following the truth instead.
Always reforming/editing. One principle of the reformation is “semper reformanda,” always reforming, always revising, always changeable, always learning. I refuse to become my own follower.
LIFE, edited. What if there are creative cycles in our lives that macro and micro this principle of creativity and editing? What if we create in some seasons of life and revise or edit in other seasons of life? What if we took time to edit our thoughts and measure our words before releasing them out into public? What if, instead of giving people our crappy first drafts, in the name of being real and authentic, we gave them our best work, once it’s finished? I think that’s what Scripture consistently means when it talks about being slow to speak, and measuring our words carefully.
The crisis of reading the editor’s remarks. And what about that frustration and identify crisis and despair and deep fight or flight desire to quit that the writer experiences when the manuscript comes back marked up in red pen? Two days of eating ice cream straight from the tub, and calling your friend to pout and rant…and then finally, getting up the head of steam to begin tackling the rewrite of a book you already thought was exactly how you wanted it. What are some life applications of that process? You know the author invited the editor into that process because the author already knew the best chance for the publisher to run with it, and the best chance for the readers to love it, is to submit it to the scrutiny of the objective third party whose judgments you trust. But it’s still horrifying and feels like death. I wonder how many of us simply run away from that process as much as possible, and how much poorer our lives are as a result.
First half, last half? I wonder if we create in our first 40 years of life and edit in our last. I wonder if some of us go through marriage after marriage because we refuse to believe what the editor is telling us.
The biblical word “repent,” is a form of life-editing. It doesn’t mean to apologize or to feel horrible over something you did, though often those things come along for the ride. The real word means to rethink on the way to a redo. Meta = change. Noia = mind. Change your mind. Think again. Rethink. You’re an author and you’re writing a story with your life. Repentance means to edit your life. To rewrite the parts of the story that aren’t serving the plot and the character development.
The greek word for sin, hamartia, means to miss the mark. The little adjustments you make after you see you were to the left and down, that’s an edit.
Editing is an essential part of the work, and life. You sit back, go over what happened and what we chose. And we make adjustments. We make changes. It isn’t done, even after it’s done. You may be done for today, and out of steam. But that doesn’t mean it’s done. Come back to it when you’ve taken time off. Revisit it later. What works? What doesn’t? How do we adjust?
Live a better story. I’m permanently captivated by the idea that we are the authors of our lives, and we’re writing a story with our choices. And I’m fascinated by the idea of living a better story. Would you want to read the story of your life? If you could read that book, what changes would you want to make to the book? What would you edit out? What would you edit in?
Sometimes we want a life that wouldn’t make a good story. In real life, the difficulties are the things we wish would go away. In the story, the difficulties are the necessary things that provoke the characters to make hard choices, bad choices, or good ones. A story about things going well is not worth writing, but we assume that’s the ideal life, and it isn’t. We were made to rise to the challenge, and do hard things, not be carried away to paradise on beds of comfort and ease. Every good story involves things falling apart. But that’s not the ending. That’s the beginning of the real story. The story of paradise is only given a couple chapters in the bible. The rest is about what the characters choose after things fall apart.
What might this look like on the daily? The careful meditation and reflection at the end of the day doesn’t have to necessarily be written down to matter. We’re sitting back letting the Lord edit our lives. We don’t need to worry…tomorrow as we go up to “preach without notes” what he and I talked about together the evening before will affect what flows out of us. I don’t have to memorize it for it to go with me.
Paul Simon’s beautiful song, “Rewrite”…
I’m workin’ on my rewrite, that’s right
Gonna change the ending
Throw away the title
And toss it in the trash
Every minute after midnight
All the time I’m spending
Is just for workin’ on my rewrite, that’s right
Gonna turn it into cashI been workin’ at the car wash
I consider it my day job
‘Cause it’s really not a pay job
But that’s where I am
Everybody says “The old guy
Workin’ at the car wash?”
Hasn’t got a brain cell left
Since VietnamBut I say Help me, help me
Help me, help me Ohhh Thank you
I’d no idea That you were there
When I said help me, help me
Help me, help me Ohhh Thank you
For listening to my prayerI’m workin’ on my rewrite, that’s right
Gonna change the ending
Gonna throw away my title
And toss it in the trash
Every minute after midnight
All the time I’m spending
Is just for workin’ on my rewrite, that’s right
Gonna turn it into cashI’ll eliminate the pages
Where the father has a breakdown
And he has to leave the family
But he really meant no harm
Gonna substitute a car chase
And a race across the rooftops
Where the father saves the children
And he holds them in his armsI said Help me, help me
Help me, help me Ohh, Thank you
I’d no idea That you were there
When I said Help me, help me
Help me, help me Ohhh Thank you
For listening to my prayerWorkin’ on my rewrite
Good writing is just normal writing that has been edited. A good life is just a normal life that has been edited. Invite the Holy Spirit in. Make the changes. Keep after it. Trust the process. 70% of the magic happens in the edit…