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…)