Executive Meddling/Literature: Difference between revisions

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* Daniel Keyes' first attempt to publish ''[[Flowers for Algernon]]'' almost ran afoul of this; the editor he took it to demanded that [[Completely Missing the Point|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.

** 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, [[Viewers are Morons|readers would be confused by both eras having a main character with the same first name]].

** 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.

* Terry Goodkind's book ''[[Sword of Truth|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 [[Author Filibuster|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, [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|the authors were allowed to use the phrase "cruel season" in the blurb of the very next book]].

* [[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]] [[Incredibly Lame Pun|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 {{spoiler|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.

* Jules Verne initially made [[Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea|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|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 Tract|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."