Tetris edit
v.— «Like my editor, you have probably already grasped that Tetris editing involves moving a chunk of story—a quote, a tip, an anecdote, even just a well-turned phrase—further and further down the length of the piece, trying it out in various spots in the narrative, until you finally find a place it fits. Just like in the game. If you get to the bottom of the story and haven’t really found a spot for it, it’s probably one of those darlings you need to slaughter.» —“In Which A Phrase Is Coined” by Magazine Man Somewhere on the masthead Jan. 19, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...