For the past week, I’ve been working on the revisions my editor sent me (in two parts), and it occurred to me that the process might be interesting to you.\u00a0 I can’t share exactly what my editor said, because since she and I both know what’s in the book, our communications are just about solid Spoiler.\u00a0\u00a0 But with a little judicious tweaking, I think I can give you a taste of the experience of being edited by an excellent editor, though it will reveal some of my weaknesses as a writer.<\/p>\n
Editorial comments\u00a0 fall into three basic categories: the surface-level error…the structural glitch….the foundational\/design disaster.\u00a0 Within quote marks is the original text; the comments outside quote marks are my editors, suitably trimmed to avoid spoilerish revelations.\u00a0 Square brackets are where I inserted a substitute, non-spoiler, filler.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Luckily for me, my editor hasn’t found any of the foundational\/design disaster problems in the first 400 pages of manuscript.\u00a0 Large WHEW!\u00a0\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because if the deep structure–the foundational design–is flawed, then everything built on that flaw has to be redone–it’s not sound.<\/p>\n
Let’s skip to the easy one, the surface-level error.\u00a0\u00a0 That’s where haste or carelessness or exhaustion said the right thing the wrong way, a way that will confuse readers.\u00a0\u00a0 The wrong word, the misspelled word, the pronoun without its antecedent anywhere in sight, the word whose meaning is too general, the clumsy construction (often, with me, where my mind started to write the sentence one way and changed to a different way in the middle.)<\/p>\n
—————–<\/p>\n
Ex:\u00a0\u00a0 “The [title of person]\u00a0 made it clear that it wasn’t.”\u00a0 What does the second it<\/em> refer to?<\/p>\n Ex:\u00a0\u00a0 “This place is a warren”\u00a0\u00a0 Does he mean the city, or the palace?<\/p>\n Ex:\u00a0 [individual] says “I never liked them.”\u00a0 Specify who them<\/em> is.<\/p>\n Ex:\u00a0 “They should have killed that scum and broken it up.”\u00a0 Specify what it<\/em> is.<\/p>\n —————-<\/p>\n These kinds of comments make the writer want to smack herself upside the head (should have seen it, should have fixed it, before ever the editor got hold of it) but they’re easy to fix (especially on a computer: delete, insert right word, go on.)\u00a0 They’re especially likely to sneak in when the POV character is thinking, holding an internal dialogue–because the POV knows what “it” is or who “he” is, the writer feels comfortable with the unattributed pronoun.<\/p>\n It’s in the middle ground of structural glitches, though,\u00a0 that time begins to disappear. What kinds of mistakes can be made here?\u00a0\u00a0 Well, in this instance, one big problem was how much backstory “bleed-over’ to have from the previous books, for those who hadn’t read them (or hadn’t read them lately) and how much would bore those who had read them lately.\u00a0\u00a0 My editor said “too much reference to events outside this story will be offputting…” Basically, we don’t want people not buying this book because they think they must<\/em> read the others first.<\/p>\n This meant cutting out things I’d put in, quite a lot in the first hundred pages or so.\u00a0 Cutting is…tricky.\u00a0\u00a0 For instance,\u00a0 a direction early on to “delete mention of the prince and coronation” means that what had been a reasonable response to the character’s comments now isn’t.\u00a0\u00a0 If I had just cut all the places listed for cutting, the “flow” wouldn’t be there–it would be choppy and (in places) nonsense.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Editors know this.\u00a0 Mine, after telling me to yank out a couple of paragraphs, said “you’ll need a segue…”\u00a0 She said that more than once, actually.<\/p>\n Also in the structural glitches category:\u00a0 things that got out of order (usually by only two or three sentences, but enough to be stumblers) and inconsistencies (that creep in between drafts.)\u00a0\u00a0 I mentioned in an earlier draft finding one myself–well,\u00a0 the eagle-eyed editor sees all and notices that A & B were killed on one page;\u00a0 several pages later, A is still dead but B (and now C) are in prison.\u00a0 Oops.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At this point in the story, B could be either dead or alive, but he can’t be dead on p. 163 and alive on p. 174.\u00a0 If you take out the second iteration, but leave in C being in prison (but is it necessary right there?) you then have to plaster over the gap and smooth it, so it looks as if it had always been that way.<\/p>\n Contorted sentences, such as “We send by separate courier orders for their captain when they return…”\u00a0 need reworking.<\/p>\n Yet another structural glitch arises from leaving out something the writer knows (but the reader can’t.)\u00a0\u00a0 It’s like leaving out the staircase between floors.\u00a0\u00a0 When an editor says “I was very confused by this opening scene,” the writer knows the scene must be re-written and expanded to un-confuse the editor (and editors aren’t confused as easily as ordinary readers.)\u00a0 Phrases like “rather disconnected” and “without enough reason” are major red flags, and are going to engender considerable work.<\/p>\n In this book, assuming knowledge from the earlier series would magically transport to this produced a character gap.\u00a0 My editor was confused, couldn’t figure out where he’d come from, why he was familiar with Kieri.\u00a0 Recent readers of Oath of Gold<\/em> will know who Garris is…but others need an introductory phrase or more.\u00a0\u00a0 (I know him very well…that’s not enough.)<\/p>\n A good editor–and mine is excellent; I’ve been lucky to fall into the hands of excellent editors–wants to make the book better at what it is.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s their special gift to spot the problems that will unglue readers from the story–that will confuse, bore, annoy, or otherwise bother them.\u00a0\u00a0 The more the writer has spotted the problems and fixed them, the more likely it is the editor will find all that remain: it’s easy to pick up one candy wrapper in the middle of a clean floor in a few seconds, but if you’re faced with a hideous mess, and have only five minutes, chances are some bit of trash will be missed.<\/p>\n The trick, of course, is to subdue the writer ego long enough to realize that yes, the editor\u00a0 does know what he or she is talking about.\u00a0 My personal rule (it’s just mine; there’s no real power to it) is that if three alpha readers comment on the same thing or one editor comments on it, there’s a problem.\u00a0\u00a0 My fix may not be the suggested fix (because I will want to do the re-plaster\/re-smooth thing starting farther back then the commenter realized I want to go) but I will fix it.\u00a0 It can take multiple redrafts to get it right–summer before last, I spent some time at a friend’s house between conventions struggling with the revisions for Victory Conditions<\/em> with the aid of two writer-friends.\u00a0 One scene was heck-in-a-bucket for seven drafts.\u00a0\u00a0 But then it sang.<\/p>\n Anyway:\u00a0 it always causes at least a ripple in the Force when the comments come in.\u00a0\u00a0 But reason must prevail.\u00a0\u00a0 Though there are bad editors, they’re few\u00a0 (copy-editors, on the other hand…)\u00a0 and good editors–the majority–want the book to be better.\u00a0 They are not hacking off the limbs of your firstborn to make it a ruined cripple…they’re hacking off the ugly lumps of stuff that disfigured your beautiful Idea.\u00a0\u00a0 Even good editors–even excellent editors–can make mistakes, but it’s far more likely that they’re not.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So I read the comment s and let them alone for 24 hours.\u00a0 If necessary\u00a0 I go out and kick rocks or poke my fencing friends with swords or hack down brush until I can face the letter with equanimity.<\/p>\n I have only one item left to go on the current set (covers the first 400 pages) so I’d better get back to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the past week, I’ve been working on the revisions my editor sent me (in two parts), and it occurred to me that the process might be interesting to you.\u00a0 I can’t share exactly what my editor said, because since she and I both know what’s in the book, our communications are just about solid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,45,5],"tags":[51,107],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editing","category-revisions","category-the-writing-life","tag-revision","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions\/231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}