Editor as Story Scholar

professional ethos where an editor actively and continuously studies the art and science of storytelling as a second vocation. This involves reading books on narrative structure, screenwriting, and mythology (e.g., by Linda Aronson, John Yorke, Christopher Booker) to build a deep, theoretical understanding of why stories work. This scholarly pursuit provides a powerful arsenal of tools for solving structural problems, restructuring narratives, and wringing every drop of story from the footage, as this knowledge is the 'bread and butter' of the craft.