… or, how Yahoo News landed an advance copy of David Maraniss’ Barack Obama: The Story.
A friend sent Obama a manuscript for editing, Obama wrote back with five tips:
1) “Careful about too many adverbs, particularly describing how people speak (Paul asked disbelievingly, etc.) It can be cumbersome and a bit intrusive on the reader”
2) “Resist the temptation of easy satire…Good satire has to be a little muted. Should spill out from under a seemingly somber situation.”
3) “Try to get the basic stats on the characters out of the way early {Paul was 24} so that you can spend the rest of the story revealing character.”
4) “Think about the key moment(s) in the story, and build tension leading to those key moments.”
5) “[W]rite outside your own experience…I find that this works the fictive imagination harder.”
