Bothersome Words

Case Study: Into The Labyrinth

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Into the Labyrinth

 

Title: Into the Labyrinth

Author: Sigge Eklund (Translator: Katarina Tucker)

Client: Echo Publishing

Brief: Copy edit English translation of Swedish novel.

Job: This was an already successful published book that had been translated for the local market. In this case, the focus was on maintaining the Swedish voice, story and setting, while ensuring it was still accessible to Australian readers. It was important to find the balance between words and phrasing that might simply be unfamiliar, and those that would actually trip readers up.

This edit was largely about “reading and considering”, rather than heavy-handed adjusting. It was an intense if light-handed edit that largely resulted in small tweaks to the text to clarify geographical and cultural terms, and occasional amendments of literal translations, rather than rewriting any of the text.

Case Study: The Shadow’s Heart

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Shadow's Heart

Title: The Shadow’s Heart

Author: KJ Taylor

Client: HarperCollins Publisher Australia

Brief: Structural edit followed by copy edit

Job: The structural edit was done first to take care of some of the “big picture” aspects relating to the plot. This meant it primarily took the form of a report, with only a little mark-up on the manuscript itself. The author then completed another draft of the manuscript before the copy edit, focusing more closely on language, punctuation and grammar, was begun.

In this way, any suggestions and queries that could result in major rewrites, or that required careful reweaving of plot strands, could be undertaken before any hands-on editing – thus avoiding double-handling and also keeping the edit manageable for the author.

Genre-ly speaking

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There’s been a lot of chat about genre on the interwebs lately; in particular, people have been discussing the question of whether one should write according to genre – and according to what sells both to readers and to publishers in the first place – or whether it’s okay to write what you want and hold firm to the belief that someone somewhere will recognise the deep-seated brilliance of your creation, genre (and markets) be damned.

This seems a rather multi-layered question and there are so many different answers and aspects to consider.

Genre is confusing

Genre often means more inside the industry than out. Even passionate readers may only be aware of some of the broader categories and this can cause problems, particularly in areas such as speculative fiction, which most readers I speak to think of as “science fiction and fantasy” – assuming they have even heard the alternative term at all.* There is an understanding among readers that the “science fiction and fantasy” section of a bookshop will also include horror, all the vampire and werewolf fiction they desire, urban and paranormal fantasy, supernatural fiction, and anything else that seems a bit “otherworldly”.
That said, there can be confusion over books that, due to their themes or certain narrative devices, fall neatly under “speculative fiction” and thus find themselves duly shelved with other, more obviously fantastical or science fictional titles. This categorisation may not work well for readers who don’t quite know how to relate to what seems to be, for example, a straight-up detective novel with subtle supernatural elements.

It’s hard to know whether this is a problem of marketing or categorisation. Would such a title do better in general fiction? Would the author be better advised not to write the book at all or to adjust the writing to fit genre conventions? This last seems a great disservice to the original story, but what’s more important – the creation or the success? Are there similar problems in the crime genre which also has various subsets?

When contemplating genre, it’s important to consider who you think will be your main readers – but keep in mind you can’t actually control your audience. For example, YA, or young adult, fiction seems to be growing in popularity, but the definitions of “young adult” differ slightly from country to country (and possibly publisher to publisher). Depending on the title, it’s generally accepted that it’s not just “young adults” but also actual adults who will read YA, as well as children, depending on the book. I recently heard an industry expert say that not only does the Australian publishing industry not call this genre “YA”,** but also that he thought it was really sad that so many grown women (in particular) were reading – and becoming obsessed by – YA novels such as Twilight and other popular series because they were intended for children and he felt they should be kept that way.***

This seems like the voice of someone who would certainly like to keep distinct lines between genres, at least when it comes to distinguishing between adult and children’s titles, but honestly it just doesn’t always seem that clear-cut. I have worked on a number of titles for adults that have later been described in reviews as “young adult novels” – to the author’s surprise and, if the cover labelling is anything to go by, presumably the publisher’s as well.

***

So how do you decide what to write, genre-wise, if you already have a plot and a story in mind? And how does this relate to the common writing advice that’s already bandied about?

Write what you know

This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be an expert, but surely the genre, and indeed the subject matter, should be something you care about and are interested in?****
Writing is not a quick process and it is certainly not a get-rich-quick career. Why would you saddle yourself with a genre and style in which you have no interest? It would be immeasurably hard to write such a thing as well as something you were passionate about and, assuming you were successful, any publisher would be likely to require you to continue to write in that genre, at least initially – thus you would effectively have written yourself into a corner.

Assuming results in donkeys

Or something. There are certainly some clear-cut lines with genre, but there are also books that have crossed those boundaries. If you make assumptions about the publisher or the market and deliberately rework your ideal book to fit more comfortably into an established genre, you are denying the publisher (and your readers) an opportunity to see beyond that. Sometimes categorising isn’t obvious and sometimes publishers slip genre titles into general fiction or even (shhh) literary fiction. The Time Traveller’s Wife, for example, is a successful novel that has been slotted into “general fiction” in most bookshops, but given the time travel elements is certainly speculative fiction, despite the romance within. Sir Terry Pratchett, on the other hand, often says in interviews that he was under the impression that he was simply writing satire until being categorised as a fantasy writer. Elizabeth George is an established crime writer, but it’s the romantic back story of her characters that gets her readers most up-in-arms.

Trying to adhere too neatly to genre conventions in order to fit can be a mistake. Readers will see straight through it if you aren’t genuine, and it’s important to remember that there’s a reason other books have so easily crossed genre or slipped into “general” or even literary fiction. Russell Davies talks about this in A Writer’s Tale, pointing out that even his comedies have tragic or sad moments and vice versa. His suggestion is that this is what life is like – if the audience is to believe the story, you have to add a dose of reality and that means not being all one thing all the time. This applies to any story if you want it to stop falling flat. It’s where the secondary and tertiary storylines can come in so handily: the romance back story in the crime novel, the tragic spy thriller set in the fantasy novel etc can add depth to a tale that might otherwise feel too two-dimensional if forced to sit wholely trapped within a single convention.

Note, though, that all this still has to be true to you as a writer, to the story you believe in, or it will ring hollow and the reader – not to mention the sharp-eyed editor – will find you out. Genre is about much more than making sure you follow a few conventions. You have build it from the ground up. It will be reflected in the language you use, the world that you build, the characters you choose and their motivations, the plot itself and the interactions between the characters. It will be there in the rules you follow and it will be evident in the rules and conventions you break, the things you don’t show. While it’s true that some genres sell better than others, in the end it comes down to story. A good story told well will always sell better than a humdrum tale told half-heartedly.

What do you think? Should writers “write to fit” or just let the story flow as it will?

There has already been some discussion on this here: Kylie Mason: In Which I use the Words Genre and Convention (following the first Genre Cage Fight at Shearer’s) and here:  Zena Shapter: Should Genre Mean Something Special to You Or Not?

 

*Mostly they haven’t. Hands up those of you in the industry who have heard the old “but all fiction is speculative” line more than five times?

**Which may be news to the authors, editors and publishers I see online regularly discussing the genre using that term.

***Admittedly, said expert visibly cringed when discussing the wave of YA vampire fiction that was in the New York Times bestsellers list at the time and said he didn’t understand any of it, so perhaps not the most unbiased of opinions on that front…

****At this point I find it comforting, salient and, frankly, amusing to turn to Mitchell and Webb to illustrate this point with their series of screenwriter sketches, including this one which proves that you really will do better if you know and care about, for example, spy drama, rather than just making up what you think is required to fit the genre: Mitchell and Webb – Spy Service 
Fast Tube by Casper

On how hiring an editor is just like hiring any tradesperson

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There are many ways to go about hiring a freelance editor to help you with your fledgling manuscript or document. You can trawl through the Yellow Pages, check Google, contact your local Writers’ Centres or dip into the directories of numerous Societies of Editors.

Just as there are hundreds of tradespeople to choose from, so there are hundreds of editors. So you narrow it down. You look for editors who specialise in your subject area. Maybe you take advice from fellow writers, get recommendations.

Finally, you have a list of people who you think would suit your manuscript. So what next?

When you contact a freelance editor and ask about hiring them to go over your work, often they’ll ask to see a sample of your manuscript before they’ll give you a quote for the cost and time it will take to complete the job.

Sounds pretty straightforward, yes? Yet for some reason this process can cause confusion and heartache, and possibly this is because writing is such a personal and creative endeavour. It’s (understandably) hard to suppress the need to impress and the fear of rejection.

The thing is, hiring an editor is really no different to hiring any tradesperson to work for you.* Most people understand that if they want to hire, for example, a plumber, to come and do a specific job, they will need to give them details of the work required in order to get an accurate quote.**

Imagine that you have a house with two bathrooms. One has recently been completely refurbished and just has a leaky tap that still needs repair. The other is completely run-down – all the tiles need replacing, there’s damp and mould. All the fixtures and fittings need replacing. In short, it’s a mess. You track down a tradesman with the right skills to do the job and tell him you have work for him. He agrees to come over to quote. You’re a bit embarrassed by the state of the old bathroom, so you just show him the leaky tap in the impressive new bathroom. He duly quotes for the work. You agree to the terms and he comes back the following week – at which point you show him into the old bathroom…

There is confusion. This is not the work he quoted for. This isn’t even the same job. This work will take much longer. It will cost more. It requires different tools. Both parties become equally frustrated.

This sounds like a ludicrous scenario.

But if you want to hire an editor to work on your manuscript, the principle is the same.

When an editor asks for a sample of your manuscript, they are asking because they need to know exactly what will be involved in working on this text.

By looking at sample pages, the editor can advise you as to what is necessary to bring the manuscript up to the standard you require.*** They can see for themselves whether the job will require a few hours simply correcting minor typing errors, or several weeks reworking awkward sentence construction and providing detailed feedback on better story structure. Often, what a writer describes as “a light proofread” can turn out to be “a heavy copy edit” if the author is hoping this will ultimately be a publishable or submittable work. It’s much better to know this up-front, when asking for the quote, rather than finding out once work has started.

When you’re considering which pages to send to the editor, then, it’s important to keep in mind why they are asking for the sample in the first place:

It’s not because they are short of reading material – they don’t need the whole manuscript at this point, and it’s unlikely that they need all the back story.  The editor won’t be reading for enjoyment or to get a feel for the story at this stage, they just need to see what work and time is involved in the edit.

It’s not because they want to see how well you can write. At least, not the way you might be thinking. You are potentially hiring this editor to work for you, not the other way around. Although they will be giving you feedback at the end of the edit, it should be honest feedback that you have asked for. Remember, this is not someone who is going to offer you a publishing contract. This is not part of a submission process. This is not about impressing anyone.
Sending through the five shiniest pages you have worked on solidly with a writing group may well prove to the editor that you have talent, but it won’t help with the quote if the other 450 manuscript pages turn out to be littered with disjointed dialogue, poor spelling and faulty grammar. It is in both your interests and the editor’s to send an “honest” sample so that you can get a proper quote.

As a writer, you will be understandably protective of your work. Editors know that you want to make sure that the person who will be working on your words really “gets” it. We know how important it is to you that we grasp every nuance. But these are concerns for the editing stage, not the quoting stage, even if it is tempting to add a few more chapters to the sample, and to send only the cleanest and best pages through. The finer details of the story don’t come into the calculations as to how many hours it’s going to take to correct all the punctuation and grammar, or whether it is likely to need a structural edit rather than a proofread.

Once you have the quote in hand, you can decide whether or not it suits your purpose. If this is your first time hiring an editor, make sure you’re really ready and keep in mind what that quote was for. That might sound stupid, but the perfectionist tendencies that see writers send in their most polished pages for a quote are the same ones that result in major rewrites post-quote. In theory there is nothing wrong with this, of course, except that an editor who has quoted for a 50,000 word manuscript will be just as surprised on receipt of a 150,000 novel as a tradesman would be on discovering that a bathroom refit suddenly also includes a kitchen refurbishment.****

What do you think? Does the quoting process send you quivering into a quandary over the perfect sample pages? Are you an editor? What are your tips? Do you drink tea, and if so, what’s your favourite?

 

*Editors probably work a little more quietly but they likely consume just as much tea. If not more.

**I know. You’re all just aching to tell me your home renovation/tradie horror stories. That is an entirely different blog topic. I shall not be moved. This is my metaphor, which is full of sunshine and happiness, tradesperson-wise.

***This is actually another important point – what sort of standard does the document need to be? Do you just want to get it to the next draft? Is it to be used in-house? Does it need to be publishable? Submission-level? Do you want to learn from the edit? This affects how the editor approaches the job as much as the style of edit.

**** In editing, this is an extremely common phenomenon. I didn’t even have to exaggerate the word count. I’m not sure how common the home renovation scenario is, to be fair, but I am not sure I have ever received a manuscript that hasn’t been worked on “just a bit” between quoting and start of editing.

Manuscript Assessments

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Getting a professional review can be an important stage of your manuscript development. An assessment by Bothersome Words will give you honest feedback that will help you take your manuscript to the next stage.

Editing and Proofreading

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Bothersome Words provides professional editing services to both trade publishers and private clients, including writers who are just starting out, those who are developing their work for submission, and independent authors planning to self-publish.

Writing Services

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If you need someone to cover your story, Bothersome Words can draw on over 12 years of experience writing magazine features, business articles, marketing campaigns and blogs to fit the right words to your message.

Best Australian Blogs 2011

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I first started this blog back in January this year after finding myself repeating the same comments about wording and structure in numerous manuscript assessments and reports. At the same time, I realised I was getting identical editing questions from nervous authors who were understandably worried about handing over their precious manuscripts for the first time.
Outside work I found I was having conversations with people trying to start editing careers who were having to dig to find all the information they needed about the industry – just as I had had to when I was starting out. Although there is a lot of information about writing and publishing available, it seems the editorial process can be a mystery for those who have not yet gone through it. Sometimes it seems it’s a mystery even for those who work regularly with editors!

I genuinely love working with authors and new editors – it’s no secret that writing and words are my passion* ­– but I found I was spending a lot of extra time putting together advice and information in separate emails instead of actually editing. Plus, I had pages and pages of spare notes that hadn’t made it into editorial reports for varying reasons – all that time and energy spent explaining different writing problems for nothing.

Originally, I had thought I’d just put a FAQ up on my static website, but those notes kept growing with every editing project – more than would make sense for a question and answer page on a business site. Once I’d decided on a blog, I realised I could also explore some other areas of writing and editing – there are lots of writer blogs, I thought it would be interesting to show what it’s like to work with writers and words from the other side.

I’m not usually one to enter competitions, but when I saw the Best Australian Blogs competition advertised, I thought I should probably enter Bothersome Words – not because I expected the blog to win, but because everyone knows it’s very hard to get a blog up and running and most of them fail within the first year. The competition, I thought, would be a good way to get the blog “out there” – and it was all about promoting good writing, which is something very close to my heart.

Writing is scary business. I have always respected any writer for having the courage to hand over their work to someone else to read**, never mind actually allowing it to be published and sent into the world at large. I get nervous enough just hitting “publish” on a simple blog post, knowing that it will slip out into the ether to be read and judged (or not read at all – is that worse?) by the denizens of the interwebs.

I was absolutely astounded when the 23 competition finalists were announced and I was notified that Bothersome Words had made it as one of the five in the Words category. I have been deeply touched by all the lovely messages of support from friends and family on- and offline. And delighted and amazed to announce that today Bothersome Words won the Words Category in the Best Australian Blogs 2011 competition.

Thank you so much to the judges, particularly the Words judge, Angela Myer, and to the Sydney Writers’ Centre. Congratulations to all the other winners:

Business and Best Blog: Styling You – Nikki Parkinson
Lifestyle/ Personal: Random Ramblings of a Stay at Home Mum – Lori Dwyer
Commentary:  News with Nipples – Kim Powell
People’s Choice: Bike Exif – Chris Hunter and, of course, all the finalists and nominees.

Here’s to celebrating writing, in every category!

 

* No, seriously, allow me to bore you some time.

** Or edit. Really, we editors DO know how terrifying our pencils/red pens/post-it notes/track changes are.

If you want to be an editor, use your imagination

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Mandy Brett wrote a fabulous article recently about editing and the invisibility thereof (Stet by Me: Thoughts on Editing Fiction) It got me thinking as to how editors view the art and act of editing and, further, how others view editing as a profession. I don’t mean in terms of its value, so much as the very bones and passion of it.

Writers often bemoan the fact that their lives and careers are looked upon in such “romantic” terms – those outside the industry tend to assume all writers are either tortured, starving and misunderstood* or impossibly rich and lurking in Hollywood mansions, dashing off film scripts. Either way, authors are usually objects of intrigue because they are creative – “professional daydreamers”.

Editors do not have this problem. Career-wise, they are generally regarded as boring and most assuredly not creative. No one wants to hear what an editor spent the day doing (although some writers might argue that no one really wants to hear what they actually spent the day doing, either – it’s the fantasy that’s appealing**). However, it’s the difference, or perhaps the similarities, between the two vocations, to which I wish to draw attention.

Non-writers always ask editors, “Don’t you want to write?” – the assumption being that surely one must be bored doing all those tedious corrections and desperate to do something less dull and more creative. Something with a purpose.

Writers, by contrast, tend to couch the question more tentatively and their phrasing will depend on their own experience and how their current manuscript is going: “Do you write at all?” they might ask, cautiously. Or more caustically, “Oh, God, you don’t write as well, do you?”****

The thing is, both editors and writers are drawn to their careers for the same reason – an absolute love and passion for words and stories; and for fiction writers/editors, the thrill of imaginary worlds. While the skills of each are quite different – writers are, of course, the creators; editors merely step in when the words (worlds?) are already on the page – I think there are fundamental similarities at the heart of both.

At least, there are for me.

I have yet to read anything written by an author or writer about the experience of writing or being a writer that doesn’t in some way mirror my own feelings about being an editor. In particular, I have just begun reading The Writer’s Tale by Russell T. Davies. While I haven’t yet finished the book, it’s a fascinating and completely raw look at what goes on inside the writer’s mind as he goes through the writing process – not just as he writes, but as he considers each new idea and mulls things over. The doubt, the exhilaration. Every aspect is laid bare. This particular quote struck me at the beginning:

“Writing’s inside your head! It’s thinking! It’s every hour of the day, every day of your life, a constant storm of pictures and voices and sometimes, if you’re very lucky, insight.”

It occured to me that people speak this way about writing (so passionate!), but never about editing.

Editing is regarded as the “clean-up” – it’s mechanical, drudge-work, and has been given an aura almost of soullessness, suggesting a lack of creativity or imagination involved in the process.

But is this a true reflection?

Editing is not just about correcting errors. I know many are quick to point out that an editor’s role is to read and amend a manuscript objectively and calculatingly. Indeed, they say, the editor’s greatest skill is their ability to survey the work with a scrutiny and distance the author could never be expected to achieve. And yet the vocation itself is not cold and calculating and I find that I shy away from being associated with such distant terms. I don’t know any editors that don’t live and breathe words as surely as the writers they work with so closely.

Do we use them and filter them in different ways? Perhaps.
I can’t, however, think of a time during which my mind is ever switched “off” from its natural storytelling state. There is always part of my mind experiencing anything, everything, in the world as that “storm” of words and stories. There is always a disembodied narrator putting things down for me on mental paper – rewording, rephrasing: editing, if you like. As Davies says – it’s every hour of every day; it’s constant… and sometimes it brings insight to a piece I am editing, or to a piece I will edit.

And, it seems to me, it is very similar to the way in which so many writers say they experience the world.

Many writers note the way they get lost in fictional worlds; the way characters – born entirely of their own imaginations – become as real to them as anyone with whom they actually share a house. They may write blog posts confessing that interactions with friends and family, or even strangers, are likely to end up as thinly veiled passages in future books.

While an editor might not be prey to the Muse in the same way as a writer, the above is not unfamiliar. An editor becomes so involved with the books they work on that they too begin to know the characters nearly as well as the original author. They have to, for how else might they deduce any errors in characters’ behaviour or inconsistencies in plot?

Once trained to analyse texts and manuscripts and re-imagine characters and structures fitting together in different ways, it’s not so far-fetched to think that editors, like writers, might also mentally rework their next meal as a scene in a book – even if they don’t then sit down to type it up.
Where a writer might use such a scene as inspiration for their own new creations, an editor might similarly mentally catalogue the scene and use the same kind of creative process to help the authors they work with to develop their existing stories and improve their writing. It becomes a real-world example for the editor to draw on: “this is how dialogue should flow”, “this is how a family scene might be”.

Editors need to develop their powers of observation and a certain amount of creativity and writing prowess in the same way that writers do. Editing is not, in fact, all drudgery and red pen, and checking dictionaries and “just being pedantic”.

My own “about” page here says: “I spent most of my childhood buried inside my imagination and now spend most of my time mucking about inside other people’s as a freelance editor…” and for me this is key to my ability to edit. Because if I don’t allow my own imagination free rein, then how can I guide anyone else? How can I presume to offer suggestions and amendments beyond the prescriptive offerings of the grammar rulebooks and dictionaries if I haven’t explored my own imagination and spent a good deal of time learning the art of daydreaming?

I am not suggesting for a moment that what an editor does is by any means the same thing as what a writer does. Of course writers are the ones who create the works that we merely step into. Nor am I suggesting that editors ought to be treated as tortured artists.
But I do think it’s important to remember that editing has a creative side – and it’s okay to admit to that.

What do you think? Is editing a creative process for you? (Or do I just have voices in my head?)

 

* Possibly this IS true.

** Undoubtedly, writers can make “spent 8 hours staring at the computer screen and procrastinating” sound a lot more exciting than it genuinely is. Nevertheless…***

*** Hypothesis re: procrastination based on twitter comments and blog posts from eleventy billion authors worldwide. Full-time, part-time, published and unpublished.

**** There are just so many ways to take this question. And yes, I have heard every one of these iterations. More than once. In more than one tone.

Are you ready for an editor?

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The other day someone asked what I was working on and then expressed surprise when I said it was the same manuscript they had asked about previously. They felt I had been working on it for a “long time” – in fact this particular tome was on a very tight deadline and needed to be completed far more quickly than usual. This, however, is not an unusual reaction from someone outside the profession – as far as they can tell, we editors just read for a living and how long, really, does it take to read a couple of pages?

When you come to an editor for a professional edit, they are not just reading your words. They are considering each word, each punctuation mark, and the context and flow of each; separately, in combination, and in the manuscript as a whole. They will go through your manuscript more than once.

If you are a new author, many editors will also endeavour to provide you the tools with which to learn so the process becomes easier and less complex for you as time goes on. Most first drafts, particularly of first-ever novels, require a lot of work and a lot of time, but new writers, seeking to get published, don’t always know what they’re getting into when they finished their first manuscript and start looking for help to “clean it up, ready for a publisher”.

Most people who decide they want to become authors pick up on one piece of advice pretty quickly. They know that if they want to achieve their dream of becoming published, they need to write.

However, further down the track when that first novel draft is completed, things are not always so clear. Not everyone is surrounded by fellow writers, or knows what next step they need to take. Many people know only that once they have written their manuscript they need to get it to a publisher and, having looked about a little (online, or perhaps browsing the “how to get published” section of a bookshop or library), they realise they probably need to have that manuscript edited first.

This blog post is about how there is much more to it than that.

Because so often freelance editors get emails from people asking for quotes to edit the first draft of the first manuscript they’ve ever written – sometimes the first thing they’ve written since high school.

This blog post is about why you might want to put a little more work into that manuscript first, about why you might want to spend a little more time working on your own writing and editing skills before you hire someone else.

There are plenty of authors who can tell you why you’d do this from a writing perspective. There are plenty of publishing sitesthat will tell you why to do this, too.

This post talks about it from the editing perspective.

There are a number of different ways to work with a manuscript, depending on what stage the work is up to. An editor may do a structural edit, (which will go over the “big picture” stuff, checking plot, characters, consistency and – well – overall structure, as well as identifying any major repeated errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation etc.)  a copy edit (this goes through the manuscript in detail, checking facts, consistency of plot and characters, as well as language, spelling, grammar, punctuation etc.), or just a straight proofread (this is less detailed and and usually ensures that all the spelling, grammar, punctuation and formatting is in order ready for print, but may also catch out any jarring facts or wording).
Depending on the author’s skill level and the state of the manuscript, the editor may decide to do a combination of these.
Alternatively, an editor can complete a manuscript assessment. Depending on the author’s wishes, this can be done at the start of the editing process – so the writer gets an idea of how much work is required on the novel, or at the end, so they can see if it’s actually ready for publication or submission to publishers.

An editor, as explained in previous posts, is there to help the author get the story in their head out on the page. Obviously the more experience an author has, the cleaner the manuscript is that the editor is working with, the easier this task is.

If an author shows up with a manuscript they have never even looked over, that is a much bigger task. It is not realistic to spend the time (or money) on all the things that likely require attention.

No matter how good the basic story is, if it is written entirely in a passive voice, or the dialogue is clunky, or there are constant shifts in tense or points of view; this draws attention away from plot errors, or grammar problems, or spelling mistakes. It’s highly unlikely that a writer would want to pay for the hundreds of hours it would take a professional editor to amend, correct and explain the problems in such a manuscript. So the editor has to make a choice as to what to focus on and that means other elements miss out.

It is not always clear what the author may actually want – do they just want what’s on the page cleaned up, or do they want the story to be the best it can be? Often it can seem that what the writer really wants is a mentor and this is really a separate task to editing.

 

If you’re a new writer serious about developing your skills and creating the best story you can, there are other stages you should consider before you think about engaging a freelance editor:

  • After completing that very first draft: let it sit for a while. Let your brain refresh before you go back over it yourself and check the story for issues as well as looking out for grammar and punctuation.
  • Do you have friends or family who you can trust to read over your work critically? Pass it to them and ask for feedback.
  • If mentoring is what you’re after, consider joining a writers’ group – there’s bound to be one in your city or even online. These don’t work for everyone and you have to find the right mix of people, but such groups can be invaluable. Writers’ centres often also run workshops and mentorships.

All these things can help you workshop your manuscript in ways that could be quite expensive with a professional editor. Plus, you will learn more if you work through these stages yourself, rather than paying someone else to clean up the early draft/s and supply you with a report or some notes.

And if this list looks daunting, if all this looks like too much effort, too time-consuming? You may need to reconsider why you wish to become an author. Because while it’s perfectly true that occasionally a first-draft manuscript arrives that is very clean – an amazing story, wonderfully told, that needs little help in the way of plot tightening or grammar correction, this is exceedingly rare.
Even published authors with ongoing publishing contracts and piles of bestsellers behind them work through a lot of these methods* – many of them have their own personal beta readers, take time out between drafts of their next bestseller, and they certainly go through several rounds of editing with their publisher. Why should it be any different when you’re starting out?

 

 

* Where do you think we learned about them?

 

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