{"id":2994,"date":"2015-04-12T09:31:23","date_gmt":"2015-04-12T13:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/tatar\/?p=2994"},"modified":"2015-04-12T09:31:23","modified_gmt":"2015-04-12T13:31:23","slug":"editors-tough-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/2015\/04\/12\/editors-tough-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Editor’s Tough Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"12-YAFICTION-JP1-master675\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/04\/12\/business\/media\/the-barbed-pen-behind-the-best-sellers-of-young-adult-fiction.html<\/p>\n

John Green still vividly recalls the opening line of a stinging critique that his editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, delivered after reading an early draft of his novel \u201cThe Fault in Our Stars.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe first sentence was, \u2018I really enjoyed reading the first draft of this promising and ambitious novel,\u2019 and the rest was 20 pages of her tearing it apart,\u201d Mr. Green said. \u201cHer editorial letters are famous for their ability to make you cry and feel anxious. They\u2019re very long, very detailed and very intimidating.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

One of her more memorable barbs described an overwrought climactic scene as reading \u201clike bad John Green fan fiction,\u201d Mr. Green recalled. He changed the ending.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mr. Green didn\u2019t suffer an ego bashing in vain, at least. In its revised and polished final form, \u201cThe Fault in Our Stars,\u201d a novel about two teenagers with cancer who fall in love, became a monster hit.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/04\/12\/business\/media\/the-barbed-pen-behind-the-best-sellers-of-young-adult-fiction.html John Green still vividly recalls the opening line of a stinging critique that his editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, delivered after reading an early draft of his novel \u201cThe Fault in Our Stars.\u201d \u201cThe first sentence was, \u2018I really enjoyed reading the first draft of this promising and ambitious novel,\u2019 and the rest was 20 pages […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2125,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2996,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2994\/revisions\/2996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}