For those who are wondering what kind of instruction that might be, my title today is a quote by the goofy character Hedley Lamarr, in the goofy movie Blazing Saddles.
What made me think of it was a post I saw on Facebook the other day from my friend and former Criminal Brief colleague Melodie Johnson Howe:
"Blazing Saddles has just been edited for television. It will air tonight from 8:00-8:07 PM."
The point, of course, was that cutting out the offensive parts for network TV did away with most of the movie. And if you doubt there were a lot of those parts, watch it again sometime, intact. Remember, Blazing Saddles came out exactly fifty years ago--I saw it with several buddies during my first class with IBM (a six-week course on the West Coast in '74)--and we thought it was HILARIOUS. I still think so. But that was a far less politically-correct era, back then, and movie directors, like authors, were able to more freely do that voodoo they do so well.
We all know that moviemakers and writers have to be more careful these days about what they show or say in the course of the story. Sometimes it's about offensive content, but it's also about plain old mistakes in logic or continuity or geography, etc., which I think were more often forgiven in the past than they are today. Most movie addicts know about the gas canister in Gladiator, the bulletholes in the wall in Pulp Fiction, the hands-over-the-ears before the gunshot in North by Northwest, the snow-capped peaks in Arkansas in True Grit, and many others, and mystery novel fans still complain about Raymond Chandler's chauffeur-murder plot hole in The Big Sleep.
I myself make plenty of mistakes in my stories, in the plot and elsewhere. I've usually been fortunate enough to find and correct those during the writing process, but sometimes the editor discovers them, for which I'm always grateful but always embarrassed. Especially if the editor is also a friend, like Barb Goffman or Josh Pachter or Michael Bracken. I should know better, and they know I should know better. On a very few stories, I've made mistakes and editors did not catch them, and I found out about those screwups only after a reader told me about them or I spotted them myself in the magazines after publication. That's really embarrassing.
I hate to admit this, but in one of my stories in the print edition of The Saturday Evening Post, I mentioned that a certain horse was a mare, and then, two thousand words later, said one of the characters "led the horse over to a fencepost and tied him to it." Tied him to it, not her. I can picture Mr. Rogers now, smiling in his sweater and sneakers and saying, "Children, can you say, 'proofread'?"'
For those of you who write shorts, have you ever committed that kind of error? (I'm referring mostly here to plot mistakes, factual mistakes, continuity mistakes, switching tenses, switching POVs, etc.--serious flubs, not grammar/style errors or typos.) If so, did the editors catch them? When editors find problems of any kind and recommend changes, do you always welcome their suggestions? Have you ever refused them? Can you list any examples?
In closing, I recall a piece of unrelated advice given to me long ago by an old friend from Alaska. My wife went with me on one of my IBM trips to Anchorage in the 1980s, and while we were there, a co-worker of mine took us with him for a week on his boat to some of the wild and seldom-visited islands in Prince William Sound. As we were trudging through those woods one day after sighting a bear in the distance, he told us there was a rule hunters follow if they're ever in a situation where they're forced to shoot a grizzly to defend themselves. He said, "You shoot him as many times as you can, then shoot him again, and when you're sure he's dead you shoot him again. Then, when you're positively, absolutely sure, beyond all possible doubt, that he's dead, you shoot him one more time.
That sounds brutal, but it ensures that you won't be dead, which should be your top priority. And that kind of thinking can also apply, in a far less serious way, to one part of writing. When you finish reading your final manuscript and you're convinced it's free of mistakes, read it again, and then when you're absolutely certain it's free of mistakes, before you submit it anywhere, read it one more time.
Now, if only I could make myself do that.
Nice column, John!
ReplyDeleteYep, no one can completely avoid manuscript mistakes that seem stupid when you finally spot them but that somehow survived all previous edits.
When Josh Pachter and I were co-editing The Further Misadventures of Ellery Queen I was working on Ed Hoch's Ellery Queen pastiche "The Circle of Ink," originally published in EQMM. I had to re-type the entire story since we couldn't find a version already saved on the cloud. The re-typing process makes one concentrate on each word and I discovered that a brief case belonging to the Inspector was described first as having been a birthday gift and later as a Christmas gift. I removed the ambiguity but it had sat there unnoticed for years. (By the way, while re-typing every story looking for errors is too time consuming another approach is to read your story out loud before submission.)
Anyway, later Josh pulled the same one on me, pointing out that in the published version of my EQ pastiche "Four Words" that appeared in EQMM at one point, in an aside, the story referred to the wrong character. That had gotten past me an past the EQMM editors. (I fixed the mistake in the narrated version of the story that is on-line at EQMM.)
Sometimes, however, a "mistake" can be intended -- Josh also made an editorial change to another of my EQ pastiches, "The Mad Hatter's Riddle," suggesting a change to the version published in EQMM that would pinpoint where a conversation took place regarding a particular clue (trying to avoid "spoilers" here). But I intended the location to be unknown until the end of the story since uncertainty on that point in fact supported an alternative theory as to who in fact was the author of the clue. (That alternative theory is never addressed in the story but if you are a devoted Ellery Queen fanatic you might have already stumbled upon it.) I caught that "correction" before the story was re-published in "The Further Misadventures of Ellery Queen!"
Hi Dale! Hey, if you and Ed Hoch could make those kinds of mistakes, that makes me feel a little better about mine.
DeleteI think only writers realize how easy it is to miss little things in a manuscript that can later seem so glaring. I honestly do re-read my stories many times before submission, and sometimes I still can't seem to catch them all. And it's amazing to me how many of those can get past the editor as well.
Yes, I agree with the idea of reading the story aloud to try to find mistakes--I'm glad you mentioned it--but BOY that's hard for me to make myself do. And yes, re-typing it would be even harder.
BTW, I think you and Josh have become the leading experts on all things EQMM--congrats to both of you. And thanks for these thoughts, today. Stay in touch!
And of course, the best manuscript error detector is the "Send" button. It makes my mistakes stand out every time.
ReplyDeleteHa! How true, Mike. I honestly try never to look again at a manuscript that has been submitted, because I so dread finding a stupid mistake that I missed.
Delete"Tied him to it, not her." John, don't you know? It should be "Tied them to it, not her."
ReplyDeleteTrue, Jim. I probably offended not only the readers, but the horse too.
DeleteJohn, would you believe I'm on a panel at 2 this afternoon at the Bony Blithe mystery con, on this very topic? The Devil's in the Details! I'll be reporting back on this in a future blog. Melodie
ReplyDeleteMelodie, I doubt any points I made would help the discussion. But I would love to be there to listen to your panel.
DeleteHope all goes well. I don't have to say Have a good time, because I know you will. Do report back to us!
Oh, John, I did that only a few months ago... I sent off a story, and about 5 minutes later I noticed the most glaring error. So I frantically corrected it, and then resent it with a new title and begged the editor to throw out the old one. Sigh...
ReplyDeleteBTW, I am NOT watching any "edited" version of Blazing Saddles. ("Are we awake?" "We might be. Are we... black?" "Yes" "Then we are, but we're very confused.") That and "Some Like it Hot" are two of the funniest movies ever made as is. Nobody's perfect.
Eve, I too have found those kind of errors and sent a frantic note to the editor confessing my sin. In most cases they have thanked me and are in fact able to make the change before publication, but OH do I hate to have to send those kinds of notes. Again, it's a situation I wouldn't have to be in if I'd just be careful careful careful in my proofreading.
DeleteI AGREE, on not watching butchered versions of movies, on TV. I won't do it. Some of the dialogue in the sanitized versions of the gritty crime movies don't even make sense anymore. Don't get me started, on all that.
You know, I had almost forgotten Some Like It Hot--I have the DVD here at home, and must watch it again soon. Thanks as always!
Great "Ouch" post, John.
ReplyDeleteSomeone once told me that the more eyes are on a piece of writing, the more eyes will miss the obvious. I don't know how many people went through the drafts of Dark Gonna Catch Me Here, my 3rd Woody Guthrie novel, and none of us noticed the missing verb in a sentence only about ten pages in...until it was published. Sigh.
Years ago, when I was a high school teacher and advisor of the yearbook, five different people checked every page number in the index before we agreed it was ready to go. The editor included an impressive piece of artwork along the outside border, too. It identified the page as the IDEX. Fortunately, someone caught that one.
i interviewed two diabetic friends to get the symptoms of insulin shock correct in Blood On the Tracks, then somehow messed up anyway. A reader emailed me to let me know.
Barb Goffman, Michael Bracken, and I resolved several issues in my story in Murder Neat. A main one was how many disguises does one character have, i. e., does a woman appear in the story under two or three names. We clarified everything, and I have the final corrected version in my downloads files. Somehow, the book that you probably have on your shelf gives my story a title that's different from that final edit. None of us know how it happened.
The collection Peace, Love, and Crime features stories inspired by songs from the sixties. One story has a huge error that most sixties music fans probably noticed. It doesn't affect the plot or outcome of the story, but I'm sure someone has pointed it out to the author and editor.
Sadly, it's a lot easier to spot mistakes in other people's work, isn't it?
Steve, there's a school of thought that if a story/novel is written smoothly enough and is easy enough to read, there's more of a possibility that the reader will get so caught up in the story he/she might not see tiny errors in the text. I doubt that's true, but I always like to remember it when I screw up.
DeleteI love your examples, and I do seriously hope my story in Peace, Love, and Crime isn't the one you're talking about.
YES, it is SO much easier to spot errors in others' work than in your own. I was reading a Jesse Stone novel awhile back (all the Stone novels are written in third person) and at one point, instead of saying "Jesse said," it was written as "I said." An obvious error that the editor let slip past. (Probably because Robert B. Parker novels didn't require heavy editing.) And I bet I know what caused that error: Parker also wrote the Spenser novels, all of which are written in FIRST person--and I suspect he simply had a lapse and reverted, in that one instance, from third- to first-.
Thanks for your thoughts, and take care!
I'm certainly not immune to making my own blunders, John. I might have mentioned this here before — and, if so, well, repeating it now is just another blunder! — but the solution to the dying message in my second published short story revolves around the fact that the victim wanted to write a capital B but died after writing the part that looks like a 3 at the right and before writing the vertical line at the left. I wrote the story that way, and EQMM's then-editor Fred Dannay (half of the Ellery Queen writing time and editor-in-chief of the magazine) published it that way ... and it took a sharp-eyed reader to point out that nobody *ever* writes a capital B by writing the 3-shaped part first. Oopsie!
ReplyDeleteWHOA, Josh--I love that example. And I also love that somebody (a reader, you said) actually caught that mistake, because it's something I never would've thought about! An error, yes, but so hard to catch, I'm not surprised that it sailed through the editing process undiscovered. Interesting!
DeleteDuring the few years, I've edited my manuscripts more and more. I would get the feeling either something was off or a scene/section wasn't in the right place. I would either cut a word/phrase/sentence or move the scene/section elsewhere. More than not, it turned I was right.
ReplyDeleteJustin, main thing is, you've come to the point where you're aware of when something's not working, and know to change it. It sometimes takes awhile to reach that point. Now that you can self-edit and make those corrections yourself, the manuscripts you submit will always be better. Good for you!
DeleteIt wasn't too long ago I read a manual on how to avoid mistakes in manuscripts: The title had an error in it! Early on I was so embarrassed by errors, felt like a failure...thought pro writers never made mistakes. Now I have read aloud, and it helps immensely. My biggest sin is forgetting hair color. But, then again, people change, don't they?
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess that manual was on manuscript mistakes, not title mistakes. I love that!
DeleteHey, all of us have had our characters change hair color now and then, and eye color too. I think my biggest problem is (or was, I hope) missing a name change during the course of the story. What I mean is, I would create what I thought was a good name for a character and then, later, come up with a better name. When that happens in the middle of writing the story, you have to make SURE you change to the new name EVERYwhere, and not leave the old name hanging around anyplace.
These stories can be a juggling act, but they're still fun. Thanks for the thoughts!
Except for typos, there is often a reason for the mare/he mistakes. I was writing as a legal editor by day and for a short story of mine the editor caught that I kept spelling "statue" as "statutes" and "president" as "precedent." When I took over as a trade magazine editor, it had just made a costly mistake under my predecessor. The date on the July issue was printed as "August." Again, the explanation is simple: when you're proofing the July issue you're already working on August. That's a mistake you only make once. On my arrival, we solved it by getting permission from the Post Office to have the mailing label placed on the opposite side to what was required so that it covered the date. Speaking of a different type of mistake that popped into my mind while reading John's opening here, I was playing a movie trivia game with younger people and the question to me was, "Where did this quote come from--"We don't need no stinkin' badges." I answered, "Treasure of the Sierra Madre." They said , ""No, Blazing Saddles!" I had to explain that Mel Brooks was parodying "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" by ripping off the line, just as Hedley Lamarr was ripping off the line of John's title from Cole Porter's song "You Do Something to Me."
ReplyDeleteNow THAT's funny. I never would've thought first of Blazing Saddles, because I saw Treasure of the SM so long ago, I would've pictured the steenking badges scene without ever remembering Harvey Korman had repeated the quote in the later movie. (Just another reminder that so many young folks never had the pleasure of seeing and loving those older "greats." Or hearing those older songs . . .)
DeleteAs for mare/he, no excuses there. I just wrote the one thing and then totally forgot about it when I later got to the need to reference it and assign it a gender.
Earlier today, as another example of a near-miss, I finished writing a story in which a character tells another than he'd seen no other cars except his in the front driveway of the house where the story is set. Then, shortly afterward, another character leaves the house and gets into her car, which *has been parked in the front driveway all day*. Fortunately I caught that screwup and fixed it, as we do with most of our mistakes, but I can also easily imagine not catching it and sending the story off soon to some editor who'd probably think Good God, what was this writer thinking? The solution, I guess, is (1) pay more attention to what you're writing and (2) check and recheck it later.
Thank you, John, for the comment. By the way, I love the way you overcame the issue-date problem.
The owner of an independent record company told me about the liner notes for a Little Jimmy Dickens album. A barefoot Dickens stood at a statuesque 4'10". The liner notes had been read and reread by everyone involved. It was only after the album came out that the description of the three-foot ten-inch Jimmy Dickens was finally noticed.
ReplyDeleteI have a short story that involves a horsebit cheek piece circa 700 B.C. and Lysistrata. No one, not I, not my writers group, not the editor, noticed that I screwed up the math until classicist Bill McCormick read it. I blamed the mistake on the dumb main character.
Paula
Paula, you have to watch those record companies--they'll shrink you fast!!
DeleteAs for your writing error, I'm not surprised Bill caught it--he has a good eye. Now and then I've been an early reader for some of his stories before he submits them, and I've rarely found many mistakes.
Good move, blaming the main character. One writer told me that if he writes a story where his character goes to a country he (the writer) isn't familiar with, he just writes it in first person and makes the character unfamiliar with the country also--so he isn't suspected to know a lot about the place when he gets there.
Thanks, Paula!
The uncut version of Blazing Saddles is, I believe, preserved in the Library of Congress - and is still one that amuses, along with the original Producers.
ReplyDeleteBack when everything was handraulic, I had a piece accepted by one of the weeklies - though I had seen the mistake (a plant flowering in the wrong month - a no-no with the eagle-eyed readers) and sent in a correction. The original was accepted, and printed - garnering 2 or 3 reader comments about Peonies. But the corrected version was returned, with a rejection slip...
I put it down to speed of production (after banking the cheque) so left it at that. It was back when magazines 'bought' exclusive rights, so the mistake was safely locked away.
But it did teach me to check facts, and to leave any MS for a month, and then go back to it with 'fresh eyes'.
John Connor
Chief Cook and Bottlewasher
Murderous Ink Press
Hey John! Yep, The Producers is a good one as well.
DeleteLove your account of the rejection of that corrected version of the story! And I agree with your advice to let a manuscript sit for a month and revisit it--it's a good practice--but I have a REALLY hard time making myself do that. Oh well.
Thanks for visiting SleuthSayers!