A Million Little Edits

A few weeks ago, mediabistro.com hosted an evening with the author/editor team behind Oprah’s new find, A Million Little Pieces, James Frey and Sean McDonald, where, among other things, Frey explained how they whittled a manuscript of 550 single-spaced pages down to something publishable:

“A lot of times I’d say something in three paragraphs and I could’ve made the point effectively in two and the third would just be a paragraph of angry ranting. So we’d just cut it out. There were a couple of sort of minor stories, lines that were sort of shaved or removed entirely. There wasn’t anything that was that important that was cut away. To Sean’s credit, I think he did a very subtle job of doing it. Because I would usually just cut the shit he’d say. There’d be big red marks or ‘X’s’ through paragraphs so I’d just cut it away, turn, send it back.”

(We’ve got a significant extract up for free, but to read the full conversation, you’ll need an AvantGuild membership…)

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.