Executive Meddling/Literature

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Editors and publishers often think they can write. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they aren't.

Novels and Short Stories

• Daniel Keyes' first attempt to publish Flowers for Algernon almost ran afoul of this; the editor he took it to demanded that he give the story a happy ending where Charlie keeps his enhanced intelligence. Fortunately, every writer Keyes asked about it told him to refuse.
• TSR/Wizards of the Coast has a lot of it. Sometimes it gets simply bizarre.
  • They told R.A. Salvatore to bring back Wulfgar, or they would do have someone else do it for them. What makes it odd is that Drizzt was clearly the breakout hit character, with Wulfgar as a mostly unneeded sidekick. Salvatore did the best he could, though, and in the end got some good stories out of it and wrote the character out again (this time much as he had written out the barbarian tribes the character belonged to shortly after the character's "death").
  • In another case, Salvatore was told that he would have to kill off Artemis Entreri, as the game was eliminating the assassin class and all assassins in the setting were going to be killed off as part of a ritual to empower the dark god Bane. Salvatore, not wanting to lose a good character, countered that Entreri wasn't an "assassin", but a fighter/thief who killed people for money. TSR backed off. (Later, Wizards brought back assassins as a prestige class for 3rd Edition. Entreri had one level in it.)
  • Spellfire became infamous for editor-carnage. Many plot threads were ripped apart and dangling and characters ended up looking like idiots and/or jerkasses. But hey, there was a fixed edition! Oh, wait - they let the author repair it and then shredded it again.
  • Thornhold was supposed to be the first book of its own series, rather than an extra for Songs and Swords. Then it got shut off, and many a Sequel Hook was left dangling in midair. Elaine Cunningham later used short stories for Best of the Realms anthology to close at least some of these.
  • The Double Diamond Triangle Saga. The series of nine books with Simultaneous Arcs that can be read in different orders, which would show the same plots from different background. Of course, this needs some time to sync all possible criss-crossing plots, check for inconsistencies in the plot, then write, then double check books against setting and each other to ensure continuity... right? How long do you think the authors were given to write this? Here's one line that will tell you nine tomes about TSR. Also, it seems to be a desperate gamble of sinking TSR, which makes it even more of mismanagement. Not only it was absurdly rushed, but the main 3 of 9 books (first, center and last) were written by J. Robert King - mostly MtG author, whose track record with Realms did consist of a few short stories . If he worked closely with Greenwood and Grubb from day one and all authors were given enough of time, there's no reason why the project couldn't shine, or at very least do no worse than most Realms series - but it's not how this was done. The result: this core averages 3.08 and all nine 3.16 on Goodreads' 3 to 5 rating scale (the top is 3.29 of Greenwood's afternoon book - In Medias Res and exposition are his strong sides and fans read him more for lore and characters than plot anyway).
• The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories, a short story by Neil Gaiman is not an example, but it is about Executive meddling, plus truly epic amounts of Adaptation Decay. A writer is called in to Hollywood to work on a film adaptation of his hit novel, Sons of Man, which is a speculative story about Charles Manson being possessed by a demon, and the children he sired of the women in the Manson family coming under the power of that demon, with a sole daughter he had trying to stop them. By the time the ever-changing Hollywood executives are done with it, it's a slasher plot called When we were Badd about a serial killer named Jack Badd who possessed a video game after execution and possessed the kids who played it, with the now-male protagonist saving the day by burning the electric chair the killer was executed in.
  • It ends with the writer's offhand quote of a song lyric being taken out of context and used as the plot for a completely different movie about a woman trapped in a loveless marriage. At that point he gives up and goes home.
  • Gaiman has a long history of Hollywood stresses; in addition to the aforementioned Jon Peters run at Sandman (resulting in what Neil described as "the worst script I've ever read"), he was approached on an adaptation of Anansi Boys. Y'know, the book where the main characters are the children of African deity Anansi, and thus they (and a lot of their acquaintances) are black. The first question asked was apparently, "Is there any way we can make them white?"
• Writers in the Star Wars Expanded Universe have editors going over work and vetoing what they don't think fits into canon. Some of them... aren't all that bright. Timothy Zahn, in a panel summarized here, complains about editors claiming that R-2 can't fly Luke's X-Wing in Specter of the Past.

"So," Zahn said, with absolutely the driest expression and tone of voice you ever saw, "I pointed out that way back in Heir to the Empire, Artoo flew the X-wing to Coruscant on his own. 'But Artoo can't fly the X-wing.' Okay, in ESB, one of your own movies, Luke's X-wing was inside the Hoth base, but Luke meets it outside. 'But Artoo can't fly the X-wing.' Then later in the movie, Luke tells Artoo, "No thanks, I'll keep it on manual for a while." Manual indicates that there must be an automatic. 'But Artoo can't fly the X-wing.'" "Finally," he said, "I figured out what it was that bothered them. It wasn't Artoo flying the X-wing; it was his docking the ship with the Starry Ice without the aid of tractors." He added exactly three words to the existing scene, with Faughn now telling Luke that the Starry Ice had a pair of half-ports "with tractor assists". The editors were happy, and all was well.

• • One that did work out was that Lucasfilm shot down Timothy Zahn's original name for the Noghri which was Sith, to explain why Darth Vader was known as the Lord of the Sith. The reason, of course, was that Zahn didn't realize that George Lucas already had something very different in mind for the meaning of that title.
  • In the New Jedi Order novel series, Anakin Solo was killed halfway through at the insistence of George Lucas. Lucas had decided that since there were prequel-era novels starring Anakin Skywalker being published at the same time, and Anakin Solo was set to be the main hero of the second half of the NJO story, readers would be confused by both eras having a main character with the same first name.
    • Later events made fans theorize that George Lucas realized that he had virtually identical stories for Anakin Skywalker and Anakin Solo (hope of the Jedi Order, deep connection with the Force, skill with technology, and oh yeah, a fall to the Dark Side that plunges the Galaxy into war, destroying a republic). So in the end, they killed off Anakin Solo and gave his fall to the Dark Side plot to older brother Jacen.
• Legendarily, Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land was pared for both size and content to meet publisher demands. Thankfully, the editing was done meticulously by Heinlein himself, so the novel came out more or less as intended. Following his death, the unedited version was released by Heinlein's widow. Your Mileage May Vary on which version is better.
  • Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars originally ended with the title character killed by an explosion as a direct consequence of the plot and her personality. His editor forced him to change it to an ending where she survived, albeit critically injured and in a coma. The existence of the original ending was a well-known bit of Heinlein trivia but no one knew exactly how it had played out until the publication of a special edition with both endings.
• Harry Potter: The first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was meddled with to become ... and the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States. Executives argued that kids "wouldn't want to read anything with 'philosopher' in the title". (Some even argued that Americans wouldn't know what a philosopher was.)
  • The British publisher did their own meddling on the first book. They were the ones who insisted the author go by J. K. Rowling since it was felt boys wouldn't want to read a book written by a woman. They also wanted to cut the troll scene where Harry and Ron save Hermione.
• Lindsey Davis' Falco novels suffered similar fates of Americanisation, or would have, had she not been adamant. See here for her very funny article about it all. Read "A Gentle Corny Rant" on this page.
• Terry Goodkind's book Wizard's First Rule had at least one instance of the use of the titular rule scratched out by the editor. Maybe it was for the better, since we all know where it went from there...
• The final book in the third Warrior Cats series had its name changed from Cruel Season to Sunrise because HarperCollins felt the original title was too sad and not appropriate for the younger readers. Not only does this cause a lot of confusion with the final book of the second series (Sunset), but changing the title still doesn't change the fact that the book is sad. To make things even more mindboggling, the authors were allowed to use the phrase "cruel season" in the blurb of the very next book.
• In something of a case of Tropes Are Not Bad, The Andalites of Animorphs were originally Rubber Forehead Aliens, to make it easier on the inevitable TV series. However, Scholastic asked for a more imaginative one, resulting in this design. It also led to just about every alien looking bizarre. Unfortunately, Applegate was proven right, when the TV series only featured Andalites a few times a season with laughably bad animatronics.
• Umberto Eco once wrote a humorous piece, "Editorial Revision", about (fictitious) editorial changes for the better in famous literary works; for example, "The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot originally started like this (not exact quote): "April is the cruellest month. But March isn't very good either".
• In a minor example, Jim Butcher originally wanted to call the first book of The Dresden Files Semiautomagic. For whatever reason, the editor or publisher didn't like it, and so he called it Storm Front instead, creating the trend of two word titles with each word having the same number of letters.
• A positive example: Isaac Asimov wrote a story in which energy beings come to Earth and purchase Jupiter from humanity to use as an advertising billboard for their passing ships. Asimov titled the story "It Pays", but an editor, without consulting Asimov, changed it to "Buy Jupiter". Asimov, being the punster that he was, liked it so much he used it as the title for the paperback collection which contained the story.
  • Another Asimov example features his most famous work, I, Robot. The first story, "Robbie", was originally titled "Strange Playfellow", but was changed, and the collection itself had a different name until Asimov was convinced to make it I, Robot (there was already another work by another author with the same name, and he felt bad about taking the name, but his publisher convinced him otherwise).
• Jules Verne initially made Captain Nemo a Polish aristocrat who was fighting Russians after his family was killed by Russian soldiers during the ill-fated January Uprising. His editor, Pierre-Jules Hetzel feared that this might cause diplomatic problems because Russia was allied with France at the time. With Franco-Prussian War looming on the horizon Verne was persuaded to make Nemo a mysterious stranger fighting the British and later (in The Mysterious Island) he made him an Indian Prince while retaining motivation (family lost during the brutal quelling of Indian Uprising).
• The German publisher "Aufbau Verlag" loves meddling with their translations of classics. Most glaring example is Victor Hugo's Les Misérables - from somewhat about 1400 pages (in original length of the German translation) they left about 900. They cut out Valjean's theft on Petit Gervais, several of his My God, What Have I Done? moments, a good chunk of Marius' backstory, the characterization of several important minor characters... and also quite a few of Hugo's Author Tracts.
• The Twilight Saga was originally supposed to be two books long, going straight from Twilight to Breaking Dawn. (Then called Forever Dawn.) It was Stephenie Meyer's editor who suggested that Bella's senior year be drawn out, resulting in New Moon and Eclipse. (It was also suggested that Forever Dawn was "inappropriate" for young adult audiences, though.)
• The Jungle was subjected to this by Doubleday. The original edition published by the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason was singularly focused on the hell the main characters, an immigrant family, go through because they are poor, are not fluent in English, and because the businessmen run everything and was obviously meant to make readers see the horrors of wage slavery. Doubleday, however, was a corporation, and it therefore didn't take too kindly to The Jungle's criticism of corporations and the ways in which they exploited their workers. They forced him to make the family less ethnic, amend some passages so that their lives were not so unfair, and make the passages about the tainted food more graphic. Most people read Doubleday's edition and they were singularly focused on the unsanitary conditions of the factories making food products and the book is now taught as an exposure of the corruption that led to tainted food. The only hint that American history textbooks will give as to the disparity between Sinclair's intentions and the public's response is his quote "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident hit its stomach."
• In probably one of the most heinous examples, L.J. Smith was fired from writing her own series. The article speculates that this was because they didn't like the romantic pairing she was planning on going with in the ending, but as far as I'm aware, no reason has been officially given. Shipping: Serious Business.
• Spoofed in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, in which Greg's comic strip Creighton the Cretin is edited so instead of the character eating his math test, Creighton the Curious Student is asking the teacher a math problem and saying to visit during office hours.

Magazines

• This brought Cracked down. Tabloid owner Dick Kulpa bought the mag, and as a cost-cutting measure, turned most artists' and writers' pays to flat-rate instead of by page. As a result, many veteran writers/artists left, such as Walter Brogan and John Severin. Kulpa was literally running the mag from his kitchen table, plastering it with tabloid-like covers, constantly delaying releases, and overall ruining the mag through his lack of experience. After that, an anthrax attack briefly stopped things. Finally, the mag was re-tooled as a "lad mag" like Maxim for three issues before dying and coming back to life as a highly popular humor website.

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