Tips From An Editor (Page 1 of 2)

So you think writing well is an ego thing?   That there aren't principles involved, as in any other discipline?

How many guesses before you reveal the answer?
My guess is- get rid of the ego, make it understandable to many.(I'm not saying you are egotistical, just speaking in general to all writers)

Most of Shakespeare's plays are performed as he originally wrote them.  The writing is timeless.

Here's one of my favorite Shakespeare poems:

Come away, come away, Death

     Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
     Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
            O prepare it;

My part of death no one so true
            Did share it.

     Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown:
     Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
     Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
     To weep there.
                                 (Twelfth Night, I I, 4)
.

I think the secret to write the same way you would talk.  Well maybe clean it up a little, but good writing is no more formal than good speech, although it can be better organized.

Anyway that's what I learned a few years ago.

And now it's easier because it's considered okay to just split infinitives even in writing!

Naturalness is important, yes, but of course, what is natural to one person is unnatural to another.  We speak differently just as we write differently. There are people, but not very many, whose speech is
as precise and concise as written speech ideally would be. They sound natural, because it comes naturally to them, but again, this is not the norm for most people.

I was surprised the first time i was sent an interview for editing. I had assumed that the many interviews I'd read were verbatim exchanges.  Nope!  I had to edit the run-on sentences, the repetition, and cut out the a lot of words.  And I've done the same with every single interview I've edited since then.

So yes, artichoke, we need to clean it up, as you said, but usually quite a bit more than a "little."

Anyone want to try their hand at revising this sentence?

The question as to whether she would go out with him remained to be seen.

LOL...very funny, Auendove!

Actually, I LOL'ed when I first posted that sentence for
revision--it's so terrible.  I would revise it thusly:  She wasn't sure she wanted to go out with him.

Let's see what others come up with in revising your mess of a sentence!