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Steven Saus


Last Updated: 6/8/2009

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Gender: Male
Status: Married
Sign: Sagittarius

City: DAYTON
State: Ohio
Country: US
March 3, 2008 - Monday 

Category: Writing and Poetry
Having just spent a good three and a half hours rewriting a group's proposal, I have one main point that is needed out in the public sphere:

One person should be the final rewriter and editor for the project, and that is their entire job.

While each of the four persons who had contributed to that proposal had done a fine job, thier styles clashed horribly.  Both details (how and when they abbreviated, usage of dashes, i.e., and e.g.) and broad stylistic strokes (sentence structure and pacing) were radically different from one section to the next.  

This is the concept fiction writers refer to as "voice".  None of the "voices" already existant were *bad* - but they were different from each other, and disconcerting to the reader.  This is less of a problem in a group presentation, when there are visual cues to indicate a new voice.  But in a fifteen page proposal it is difficult to indicate a large enough break without utterly disrupting the document_

But why should you make sure that the editor (rewriter) has no other job?  For the same reason one doesn't normally see an editor's own work inside an anthology they're editing.  Even if there is no actual conflict of interest, it is all too easy to give that impression.  Not to mention the simple fact that editing (and rewriting) is real work too.

This doesn't mean that the "group leader" should be the editor or rewriter.  The costumer or set designer isn't the director or producer of a movie - but they have an important role, too.  Your writer should be a good writer - and should share some sense of "vision" with the group. 

Students:  Keep this in mind as you're prepping for your spring projects!

22:29
 
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