Bill
asked
David Wong:
When you're editing your own work, how do you give yourself "fresh eyes" so you know what should be cut/altered/left alone?
David Wong
Two steps: 1) I let it sit for a few weeks and 2) I print it out on paper. Seeing it printed instead of on a screen does a weird thing where it tricks my brain into thinking it's seeing a brand new thing. Then I mark that up with a red pen (previous "perfect" scenes wind up covered in red slashes) and do the next round of editing based on that. It's a shock to the system - seeing bad sentences and blatant plot holes leap out at you. I don't know if it works for anyone else, I think other people just show it to writer friends to get their impression (or post it online for feedback, if they're not worried about it getting stolen). I usually don't do that, though, my writer friends are all incredibly busy and I wouldn't do that without paying them for their time. And then that would just make it weirder.
More Answered Questions
Timothy Knutson
asked
David Wong:
You have written three of my all time favorite books, and I think a huge part of why I love them so much is the characters, both main and secondary. Even just the characters who tend to wander in for a chapter seem fleshed out and funny. I was wondering how much backstory you personally imagine for your characters that doesn't make it into the book? Do you know their whole lives as you write them?
Friday
asked
David Wong:
By terrible happenstance I walked into a Czech cafeteria, on the big wall TV I saw something that burned my psyche. a Music video for a song called "Informer" by Snow. I had honestly thought that such a thing was only a fiction, created for a twisted horror novel, by a sick mind. Please tell me that it escaped from your mind into reality, or is reality actually so abhorrent that it happened on its own?
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