Author: Melva McLean

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Melva McLean

Lost and Found

October 3, 2017 by Melva McLean | 2 Comments on Lost and Found

Over the years I’ve done a lot of freelance fiction editing, mostly developmental. I send off the manuscripts with a critical analysis, a lot of developmental markup and some copy editing. Some of the authors go on to be published; their autographed works are on my bookshelves. Of the ones not published, about half come […]

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What’s in a Name?

October 18, 2016 by Melva McLean | 2 Comments on What’s in a Name?

Last month’s book club choice was from a bunch of bestseller and book club lists. It was one of those “family” stories with a sizeable cast of characters. You know the kind — three or four sisters with partners and/or lovers and children and a couple of pets. I was a hundred pages into the […]

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Writing Wrongs in Fiction

September 6, 2016 by Melva McLean | 1 Comment on Writing Wrongs in Fiction

Last month, Paul Cipywnyk wrote here about plausibility and continuity in novels. But what about in screenwriting? Realistic, plausible details and continuity are equally — sometimes more — important on screen, but it can be challenging to ensure them. Now, it doesn’t matter what you’re writing about or in what time period — the research […]

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Movie Review: Genius

July 12, 2016 by Melva McLean | 4 Comments on Movie Review: Genius

Genius is a movie about the relationship between writer Thomas Wolfe and editor Maxwell Perkins and is based primarily on A. Scott Berg’s biography, “Max Perkins: Editor of Genius” (Riverhead Trade). Perkins worked for Charles Scribner’s Sons for over 30 years. Like Canada’s Ellen Seligman, Perkins was an exacting editor. Like Seligman, his meticulous attention […]

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Film Adaptation Is Just Another Kind of Editing

May 10, 2016 by Melva McLean | 4 Comments on Film Adaptation Is Just Another Kind of Editing

Several years ago, I was a reader for a couple of book publishers, and I had the opportunity to read a collection of short stories by the late Emily Givner. Joan Givner, Emily’s mom and a writer of note on her own, wanted to publish Emily’s stories posthumously and shopped the collection around. I was […]

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The Invisible Vocation in Books

September 1, 2015 by Melva McLean | 2 Comments on The Invisible Vocation in Books

Well, our blog post about Colin Firth playing the great Maxwell Perkins in the upcoming film Genius had a one-day reach of 3,000 viewers. We editors are the invisible and unsung celebrities of the publishing world, so it feels great to get some recognition in print or on film. Hell, we’ll even take word of […]

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It’s Our Turn at the Box Office

August 4, 2015 by Melva McLean | 2 Comments on It’s Our Turn at the Box Office

It’s called Genius, and it stars Colin Firth, Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. Due for release just before Christmas (and award season), the film, touted as “the bio-pic of the year,” is about a book editor.  Yup. You read that correctly. An editor. Colin Firth plays Charles Scribner’s Sons fiction editor Maxwell Perkins in a […]

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An Editor in a Three-Day Writer’s Boot Camp, Part 3

September 16, 2014 by Melva McLean | 2 Comments on An Editor in a Three-Day Writer’s Boot Camp, Part 3

Later that afternoon, I arrived home and plunked myself down in front of a blank screen. It felt like I’d joined the ranks of such writers as Hemingway and Faulkner, Ludlum and Michener, and many others who’d lost manuscripts and had to start over from scratch. Of course, in this day and age, you don’t […]

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An Editor in a Three-Day Writer’s Boot Camp, Day 2

August 12, 2014 by Melva McLean | Leave a Comment

In every good boot camp movie there’s a scene where a tough army trainer leaves the rebellious recruit out in the cold and rain all night or makes them do 1,000 pushups. This is one way to make the recruit begin to sacrifice ego. The other short story boot camp recruits and I didn’t have […]

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An Editor in a Three-Day Writer’s Boot Camp, Day 1

July 15, 2014 by Melva McLean | 1 Comment on An Editor in a Three-Day Writer’s Boot Camp, Day 1

Novelist’s Boot Camp Travel Writing Boot Camp Dissertation Writing Boot Camp Resume Writing Boot Camp Children’s Picture Book Boot Camp Okay, STOP. Right there! Seriously? What could be less suited to boot camp than a kid’s picture book? What’s next? And when did the words “boot camp,” i.e., “a military training camp for new recruits, […]

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The Envelope, Please

January 16, 2014 by Melva McLean | 7 Comments on The Envelope, Please

I was at a film event the other night, and someone asked, “So what do you do for a living?” I, of course, answered, “I’m an editor.” They asked, “What movies have you worked on?” It happens all the time. But the other night, for the first time, someone asked me if I saw any […]

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Continuity in Film and Fiction

June 4, 2013 by Melva McLean | Leave a Comment

Movies are usually shot in location order, not narrative order, which makes physical continuity important. Last week I was watching my favourite crime show, and the female lead wore a blue shirt in an interrogation scene. The camera caught the cop’s dialogue in close up, then cut to a close up of the bad guy, […]

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LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION: A Book Editor in the Land of Cinema

December 4, 2012 by Melva McLean | Leave a Comment

(The first in a series on working as an editor in the film industry.) In 1966, my older sister snuck me into the Windsor Theatre to see an R-rated movie, A Man and Woman, starring Anouk Aimée as a script girl and Jean-Louis Trintignant as a car racer. After that, whenever someone asked me what […]

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