Cut the FICTION FLAB
MY EARLY-CAREER STORIES FELT LIKE SUCCESSES – the settings were rich, the characters well-described, the action robust. Feeling ready to submit them for publication, I showed one of my “final” drafts to a college professor who’d published a few mystery novels. He carefully read the first two pages, then took out his pipe and wagged the stem at me. “This story’s in love with McDonald’s.”
“Huh?” I said, to which he replied, “It’s gobbled up too many Big Macs. It’s all flabby. You’ve got to shake out all those excess words,” he said, flapping my pages around to demonstrate. “What’s left will be the real story.”
I sulked for weeks, but he was right., where a submitted story of his got this scribbled rejection from an editor: . King said that single comment changed the way he revised his fiction.
