I recently stumbled on this article by Thomas E Ricks, a journalist specialising in military and national security issues. Already the author of five well-received books, he sent the manuscript of his sixth off to his editor with the confidence of a professional who reckons he has done a sound job. His editor, however, told him it was a complete dog and he needed to tear the whole thing up and begin again ... How Ricks reacted to that, and what he now thinks of his editor's response, is well worth reading.
I can't help but wonder how different things could have been if Knopf had allocated Paolini an editor who was prepared to beast him for his own good, as Moyers was prepared to beast Ricks. I suppose that, given that the self-published edition of Eragon had already sold fairly widely, there wasn't much that could be done to it beyond what actually was done - the tidying up of obvious absurdities such as five-foot swords being carried unnoticeably in a knapsack. And perhaps, to be fair, a proper professional rewrite might well have destroyed the whole appeal of Eragon, which lies in the fact that it really is just a teenager's mash-up of his favourite fantasy books; kids loved it because it was the kind of book they might have written had they been of a scribbling tendency.
But just suppose that when the manuscript of Eldest landed on his or her desk, the editor had taken one look and said 'Won't do, son. You're not scribbling for fun now; this is a professional book contract and you need to do a proper professional job. Scrap this, this and this: remodel that, that and that: cut out a minimum of 30% of the verbiage; re-submit it, and then I'll go through it with a blue pencil - it's not worth the effort of doing that yet.' What would have happened?
Of course the poor Paochild would have been shattered: it's only too obvious that throughout their home schooling of him his parents had only ever praised their darling's creative efforts. Quite possibly his parents would have been furious, and said 'How dare you criticise our boy genius, and try to tamper with the fruits of his natural creativity! If nasty Knopf won't print his every precious word, we'll go to a publisher who will!' (Though, how easily could they have broken the contract with Knopf? I confess I know nothing about the terms of publishing contracts. And if they could, how likely is it that another mainstream publisher would have picked up the manuscript of a sequel that the publishers of the original novel had rejected as a complete dog?)
But if he had been put through the discipline of accepting criticism and rewriting, Eldest and the subsequent bricksmight have been made into perfectly decent sensbily-sized books without creating any conflicts with Eragon, since(precisely because Eragon consists almost entirely of elements cribbed from decent books) few of the real absurdities were yet canon. Paolini might even have learned to let dust collect on his thesaurus and write decently. And how much happier would he have been? I'm sure that, somewhere deep down, he senses that he's stuck in an extended childhood, playing with his expensive toys in that family compound while his mommy puts his clean laundry back in his wardrobe, cooks his favourite meals, and praises her special snowflake's genius.
I can't help but wonder how different things could have been if Knopf had allocated Paolini an editor who was prepared to beast him for his own good, as Moyers was prepared to beast Ricks. I suppose that, given that the self-published edition of Eragon had already sold fairly widely, there wasn't much that could be done to it beyond what actually was done - the tidying up of obvious absurdities such as five-foot swords being carried unnoticeably in a knapsack. And perhaps, to be fair, a proper professional rewrite might well have destroyed the whole appeal of Eragon, which lies in the fact that it really is just a teenager's mash-up of his favourite fantasy books; kids loved it because it was the kind of book they might have written had they been of a scribbling tendency.
But just suppose that when the manuscript of Eldest landed on his or her desk, the editor had taken one look and said 'Won't do, son. You're not scribbling for fun now; this is a professional book contract and you need to do a proper professional job. Scrap this, this and this: remodel that, that and that: cut out a minimum of 30% of the verbiage; re-submit it, and then I'll go through it with a blue pencil - it's not worth the effort of doing that yet.' What would have happened?
Of course the poor Paochild would have been shattered: it's only too obvious that throughout their home schooling of him his parents had only ever praised their darling's creative efforts. Quite possibly his parents would have been furious, and said 'How dare you criticise our boy genius, and try to tamper with the fruits of his natural creativity! If nasty Knopf won't print his every precious word, we'll go to a publisher who will!' (Though, how easily could they have broken the contract with Knopf? I confess I know nothing about the terms of publishing contracts. And if they could, how likely is it that another mainstream publisher would have picked up the manuscript of a sequel that the publishers of the original novel had rejected as a complete dog?)
But if he had been put through the discipline of accepting criticism and rewriting, Eldest and the subsequent bricksmight have been made into perfectly decent sensbily-sized books without creating any conflicts with Eragon, since(precisely because Eragon consists almost entirely of elements cribbed from decent books) few of the real absurdities were yet canon. Paolini might even have learned to let dust collect on his thesaurus and write decently. And how much happier would he have been? I'm sure that, somewhere deep down, he senses that he's stuck in an extended childhood, playing with his expensive toys in that family compound while his mommy puts his clean laundry back in his wardrobe, cooks his favourite meals, and praises her special snowflake's genius.