Sweating the details…
Filed under Intertubes, Spotted on April 12th, 2008
A repost of the last posting, with some words crossed out and color-coded additions.
When I first saw it I thought mr. Gruber was giving us some sort of insight into his writing process.
Then I saw the exact same thing in some other feed and I realized it has nothing to do with mr. Gruber. It’s actually a feature of NetNewsWire, that highlights the changes in a newsfeed. A diff for rss, sort of.
Here is the before-and-after of one of his latest posts. Notice how improved the second version is, yet how subtle the changes —most of us would not have bothered. Sweating the details. That’s what it takes to become an A-list blogger —or an O.C.D patient.
Before:
Simply the best new movie I’ve seen in years. You can also save a few bucks and get the Cheapskate Edition instead.
One of Hitchcock’s gifts to cinema was the insight that the key to building suspense is to let the audience know something the characters do not. With its title alone, There Will Be Blood accomplishes this before the film even starts. There’s an ominous dread hanging over even seemingly innocuous scenes in the film that wouldn’t otherwise be there — or at least would be lessened — if the film were titled, say, Oil! (which was the name of the Upton Sinclair novel from which it was loosely adapted by Paul Thomas Anderson).
After:
Simply the best new movie I’ve seen in years. You can also save a few bucks and get the Cheapskate Edition instead.
One of Hitchcock’s gifts to cinema was the insight that the key to building suspense is to let the audience know something the characters do not. With its title alone, There Will Be Blood accomplishes this before the film even starts. There’s an ominous dread hanging over even seemingly innocuous scenes that wouldn’t be there if the film were titled, say, Oil! (which was the name of the Upton Sinclair novel from which it was loosely adapted by Paul Thomas Anderson).
