The Editing Process Quotes

The editing process, for me, is both the most fun and the most frustrating. It's the most fun because you get to see it actually piece together. But if one thing is off, it can be frustrating trying to figure out exactly what it is that's bumping you, so you try a hundred different things. ~ Scott Foley

A lot of directors prefer the solitude of the editing process, but I revel in the craziness of what a film set is. ~ Alan Parker

My Ancestor Series of adventure-thrillers run like a raging river. I'm now in the editing process with my next thriller, "The Apothecary." Please go to my website for excerpts, synopses, and book trailers of all my works: http://www.gracepublisihing.org. ~ Marshall Chamberlain

When I go into the editing process, I re-look at the original intuitive thoughts and then it becomes the written performance or text work. Because they look quite big there's this assumption that there isn't much editing, but that's a huge part of it. ~ Sue Tompkins

David and I got cut out the editing process on that. We were able to affect it more than not. We sent in our notes, we were able to see cuts. We weren't allowed to see dailies and we weren't allowed to sit in the editing room and just work. ~ Bob Odenkirk

I'm really happy to have the chance to talk about the editing process. It's something that I think doesn't get the weight it deserves, especially with the rise of self-publishing. ~ Sarah Dessen

When I'm really entrenched in my writing, I seem to go through mini-writer's block cycles that usually last a week or so. They make me moody. My husband has a routine to help me get through the blocks. He forces me to take a day off, and he insists on my relaxing and taking in other forms of art to recharge my creativity. It actually works really well, but whenever I'm that into my work, I won't take a day off willingly.

I do have a system for when I have a novel idea. I like to research a whole lot first and take notes by hand, and then I outline and figure out the plot based on the history and research. Next, I write everything I can as quickly as I can without worrying about grammar or even writing well. Then, I go back and read through and start fixing things. It's kind of like a process to create the framework then I can go back in and make other layers shine.

Making the rest of the layers, really known as the editing process, is where things get crazy. I don't have a system for it because it's kind of a journey of discovery. I'll know things are wrong, but I won't always know how to fix them. When I discover the solution, it might take the story to a place I never would have guessed.

That happened a lot for A White Room. In the beginning I only had the idea for the first half of the story and just the story of Emeline – none of the subplots or stories of the other characters were there yet. Not even John's story. It was just Emeline u ~ Stephanie Carroll

If you're writing a screenplay for a feature, you don't have any involvement with the casting process, the editing process, the set design, the costume design, or any of that stuff. ~ David Benioff

I'm more relaxed about how the editing process will create a performance and that, in a way, gives me a sense of freedom. ~ Ralph Fiennes

In the editing process, I delete what I do not want to use, move what remains around if necessary and add elements that I feel will make my visual statement as clear and understandable as possible. ~ Gerald Brommer

I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it. ~ Alice Englert

I have produced all my music videos. Love to get behind the camera and get involved in the editing process. ~ Antoniette Costa

And so you try your best. Sometimes you go in with one thing, with one desire and come out with something else. In the case of The Aviator it was to create a Hollywood spectacle, but by about the second or third week of shooting you just want to literally survive it. Because don't forget, I also go through the editing process too, and when the film is released I have to talk about it. So, I take all of that very seriously. ~ Martin Scorsese

The editing process, to use a slightly grim analogy, is like the slow suffocation of lots of babies. It's like, which finger do you want to cut off first? ~ Edgar Wright

Learn to enjoy this tidying process. I don't like to write; I like to have written. But I love to rewrite. I especially like to cut: to press the DELETE key and see an unnecessary word or phrase or sentence vanish into the electricity. I like to replace a humdrum word with one that has more precision or color. I like to strengthen the transition between one sentence and another. I like to rephrase a drab sentence to give it a more pleasing rhythm or a more graceful musical line. With every small refinement I feel that I'm coming nearer to where I would like to arrive, and when I finally get there I know it was the rewriting, not the writing, that wont the game. ~ William Zinsser

Well, I would tell Danny. I'd probably edit for Josh. That is if there was
anything worth editing.
"Joshua Roberts, you had better get your butt on the move!" Danny
hollered as he walked down the stairs.
I was nervously waiting for them to leave as I pretended to watch TV in
the front room.
"We're going to be late."
"So the hair crisis is under control I see."
"A stray hair will never win between a bottle of gel and a gay man," he
declared with a smile. "Joshua!"
"I'm coming. I'm coming."
I heard his sandals click on the stairs and I waited to see if the mental
image matched the real one. To my non surprise it did. ~ Kaitlin Scott

Only God gets it right the first time and only a slob says, Oh well, let it go, that's what copyeditors are for. ~ Stephen King

We usually say things we mean when we speak without thinking; they just tend to get us in more trouble because they lack the editing that softens the blow or avoids the point. ~ Christin Lovell

You'll learn that the key to a great book is editing - grinding, buffing, and polishing - not writing. ~ Guy Kawasaki

To make a movie charming, you have to be playful on all levels and open to ideas, and you have to have an idea for how to do that within the confines of the shooting schedule and editing and all that. ~ Lasse Hallstrom

You never know what you do that could be totally out of left field, which actually might work and give something fresh to the whole scene, to the character, whatever. If you have that with a director who then knows how to shape it, either in the direction, in the moment, or in the editing, then that's good. ~ Robert De Niro

Editing fiction is like using your fingers to untangle the hair of someone you love. ~ Stephanie Roberts

Once I'm in the editing room, forget about what I intended to shoot. I take a cold, hard look at what I really did shoot, and then I edit that because, if you try to edit what you intended and you missed somewhere, that will show up. ~ Doug Liman

When I made YouTube videos, I am the one who's uploading it, I'm the one who's editing it, so I'm very in control of what I'm sharing and not sharing. Whereas in music, it's a lot more of pouring my heart out and kind of just putting it out there for the best. ~ Troye Sivan

Music is where I have the most creative freedom, but I love producing. To me, that's kind of where all the action is. You get a chance to have your hands in every aspect of a film. From picking a director, sometimes picking a writer, to the actors, the wardrobe, set design, editing, music, and marketing. ~ Ice Cube

Dolce & Gabbana is like our child. The editing of a collection before a show is a tough call, as we would like to show everything! ~ Stefano Gabbana

Minimalism is the constant art of editing your life. ~ Danny Dover

My mum was a librarian, and she brought home a lot of interesting books, and we just read and read. I suppose I didn't really think I could be a writer myself until I was working in editing in my 20s and discovered that actually, the books that came in were not very much like published books. ~ Margo Lanagan

That's editing, if I may say so. Choosing the shot. It's telling us everything. It's telling us things we don't even know it's telling us. It's not just telling us what these characters think, it's telling us what we think. It's manipulative as hell, there's no getting around it, but then all movies are manipulative. When people complain about a picture that's 'manipulative,' what they really mean is it's not very good at its manipulations, its manipulation is too obvious. ~ Steve Erickson

The sheer vital energy of the Woolfs always astonishes me when I stop to consider what they accomplished on any given day. Fragile she may have been, living on the edge of psychic disturbance, but think what she managed to do nonetheless -- not only the novels (every one a breakthrough in form), but all those essays and reviews, all the work of the Hogarth Press, not only reading mss. and editing, but, at least at the start, packing the books to go out!

And besides all that, they lived such an intense social life. (When I went there for tea, they were always going out for dinner and often to a party later on.) The gaiety and the fun of it all, the huge sense of life! The long, long walks through London that Elizabeth Bowen told me about. And two houses to keep going! Who of us could accomplish what she did?

There may be a lot of self-involvement in A Writer's Diary, but there is no self-pity (and what has to be remembered is that what Leonard published at that time was only a small part of all the journals, the part that concerned her work, so it had to be self-involved). It is painful that such genius should evoke such mean-spirited response at present. Is genius so common that we can afford to brush it aside? What does it matter if she is major or minor, whether she imitated Joyce (I believe she did not), whether her genius was a limited one, limited by class? What remains true is that one cannot pick up a single one of her books and read a page withou ~ May Sarton

Embrace constraint. What you get in return is the art and craft of editing your own life, weeding out what is and isn't necessary. ~ Biz Stone

The essence of cinema is editing. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

You have to know what you're shooting. Don't just make your movie in the editing room and just get everything you can on the day. ~ Patrick Wilson

You'd have thought that after twenty years editing murder mysteries I'd have noticed when I found myself in the middle of one. ~ Anthony Horowitz

In terms of identity? I'm a commercial fantasy writer, looking to entertain my audience with fantastical tales that mix history with myth and magic. That's something humans have been doing for a very long time, and I like being part of a long tradition of storytelling, whether that's ancient tales shared around a campfire or modern podcasts.
...
I'm currently editing a scene that involves winged lions and smoke-conjured armor, so I'm not certain I'm the best writer to ask about truth. But that being said, words and stories have great power and I think setting a scene that pulls from the real world but is set in a fictional one can cause readers to reassess and question things in a way they might not have otherwise. ~ S.A. Chakraborty

Don't be dismayed by the opinions of editors, or critics. They are only the traffic cops of the arts. ~ Gene Fowler

Editing is simply the application of the common sense of any good reader. That's why, to be an editor, you have to be a reader. It's the number one qualification. ~ Robert Gottlieb

I am hard at work on the second draft ... Second draft is really a misnomer as there are a gazillion revisions, large and small, that go into the writing of a book. ~ Libba Bray

We achieve originality of style not by avoiding the influences of others but by blending them into a combination that has not been heard before. ~ Scott Norton

Our emotional valence – positive or negative experiences – affects not only how we narrate childhood events, but also which memories we retain. The interplay between a person encountering environment experiences meshed with self-editing of various aspects of their complex memory system results in a person becoming more than a collection of memories: a person creates their personalized version of a self. A person integrates many experiences into creating their being. Personal encounters with other people as well as moments of personal solitude contemplating ideas and personal existence congeal to form the depiction of a self. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

A harsh reality of newspaper editing is that the deadlines don't allow for the polish that you expect in books or even magazines. ~ Bill Walsh

Rule #1: Writing is for the creative brain. Editing is for the critical brain. Separate them appropriately. ~ James D. Beers

I never go to the monitor. I just look at the camera monitor and my favorite part of all of the directing, except for the writing and editing of it, is right when we're rolling and they do lines and I'll say "Try this, try this, try this." ~ Will Gluck

The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer. ~ Steve Martin

And after you've done the acting, there's a lot of places you can put your input - in the editing, in the production of it, in the rewriting of it and so on. ~ Paul Reiser

You have to find the movie in the editing room, and it can't be four hours; it has to be two hours. ~ Peter Landesman

Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a Speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one. ~ George Orwell

The idea that a film is created in the editing room - it's only a certain kind of movie that's made in the editing room and it's not one that I really want to see. ~ Ethan Hawke

I try and shoot as often as a can, I cross shoot. I have at least two cameras rolling at the same time. So I'll have two actors or two sets of actors at a time so everybody's basically on camera. So when they improvise we have everybody's coverage. And you can then go in the editing room and find the energy still stays there. ~ Denis Leary

There's some things that you learn as you're shooting, and as you're editing that are key, because when you start you don't have the brain that can finish it. You don't really know what it is, and that's the key job; figuring out what you actually have, not what you're dreaming of having. ~ Mike Mills

I'm a fierce editor! I don't edit out things that I began by saying, usually. The editing is on the micro level - a comma here, a word there. ~ Lydia Davis

I am a part of the old school where I feel that purity of the language should be retained. But English is a constantly evolving language where new words are being added to the dictionary, so I don't see any harm in experimenting with the language. Only poor editing standards need to be improved. ~ Ashwin Sanghi

When I'm editing, it's such a tough call, and I get challenged on it all the time. You've got to go with your gut - sometimes when you look at a photograph, you just know it's the shot. Sometimes it's about the connection, or about the simplicity of the composition. ~ Russell James

The hunger for knowing is what excites me. I get to geek out about editing, be on set, give notes to writers - I love it all. ~ Sue Naegle