Author: tshottleediting_hcwymb

Open journal and pen.Originally posted to Reaper Edits

The biggest challenge for an editor comes from copy editing anthologies. With a novel, you have one or two writers’ styles from beginning to end. You adjust early on and carry it through to the end. Anthologies?

I received an assignment from a well-known short story writer and editor, himself a freelance editor. This came from our mutual publisher, which meant he had done some of the work already. I know. I’ve written for him and have had a couple of stories show up over the last two years in his books. So I’ve seen what happens before it lands on my desk on the other end. He loves editing short stories. Short fiction has been his passion for as long as I’ve known him. (About twenty years or so at this point.) Yet he said to me as I received the first of his anthologies from our publisher, “I’d rather have a spike through my head than edit an anthology.”

Still, I use his notes on editing as they’re useful.

We should spell out a couple of definitions here as anthology too often gets used interchangeably with collection. The two terms are not identical. A collection is a series of short stories or novellas by a single author or author team (like James SA Corey, who is actually the duo responsible for the Expanse series.) Think Stephen King’s recent You Like It Dark or his first collection, Night Shift. I have two coming out soon–The Compact Reader as TS Hottle and a collection of crime and suspense stories under the name Jim Winter. Whenever I publish a short story or stash a handful of scenes, I’m building a collection. There are already four stories set for a future Jim Winter collection.

An anthology is a collection of short stories and novellas by different writers, and there, the premise gets interesting. Many are the Best of… books you see about this time of year. (This is being published mid-October, 2024, and the Best ofs for this year are already poking their heads up as I write.) Some are in a shared universe, like Colin Conway’s 509 series. You write in the setting, but it’s his sandbox. Then there are the themed anthologies. Hoo boy, those are fun. Especially the music themed ones. Editor Brian Thornton did a pair of Steely Dan-themed anthologies, Die Behind the Wheel and A Beast Without a Name, that brought me back to crime fiction after about a seven-year absence. And let me tell you, as a writer, music-themed anthologies are fun, even when they go dark.

As an editor? Not so much. The average small-press anthology from crime fiction is usually 80-90 thousand words. Fair enough. That’s most crime novels. But unless the novelist is sloppy or uses me to get a final draft, I can breeze through a copy edit in about a week if the day job and real life cooperate. (It usually does.) Anthologies take longer. Because I may get a story from a well-known writer who works for a major daily, website, or magazine, and I’m usually “moving commas around.” But the next writer procrastinated and handed me the equivalent of the term paper written the night before it was due. So while I’m sailing through one story to the point where there are no track changes on two consecutive pages of prose, it takes me fifteen minutes just to get through the opening three paragraphs of the next. Slashing passive voice, same word starting every sentence (“He/she” and “I” are the most common offenders), and chopping up run-ons. But that’s every book, even the ones I barely touch anything.

The real challenge is the nature of the anthology itself, why my editor friend much prefers the therapeutic spike insertion in his skull. The style shifts, and you, as an editor, have to shift with it. For example, my first anthology was Gary Phillips’s effort based on the music of James Brown. Naturally, race enters into it. Fortunately, I know Gary well enough, so I asked him if he had a preference for how certain phrases and words were rendered. One of them was “black,” as in of African descent. Some writers capitalize it. Some don’t. And the race of the author doesn’t really give you any clues. One scifi writer I know, who is quite vocal about racial issues, doesn’t capitalize it. Yet another one, who’s just tossing something over the transom, will. Like numerals-vs.-words for numbers, every writer’s approach is a complicated calculus of experience, personal belief, and that old chestnut that trips me up as a writer, “That’s how I was always taught to do it.”

Another problem is some of the writers are lawyers. Most lawyers understand that I, the editor assembling the anthology, and the publisher are not Supreme Court Justices or even the mayor adjucating traffic tickets. In law, almost Everything is Capitalized, particularly if it’s repeated several times or is a generic term used to identify someone. However, some of them forget that’s not how anyone from Jonathan Franzen to Stephen King to Chuck Tingle writes. Franzen, King, and Tingle all have audiences with little overlap, but they all have audiences that have to read the damn thing they just wrote. (I’ll leave who does it best to you. Despite the rantings of the late Harold Bloom, it’s a purely subjective exercise. Your English teacher was wrong. So was your MFA advisor. I have spoken!) So, yes, lawyers sometimes have to be told they’re not writing a court brief. But they’re not the only ones. Scientists, IT geeks like me, writers who grew up on TikTok or even, as my son tried to teach me when he was a teen, 133t speak, have to be reminded you need commas and can’t just say, “He LOL’d that.” (And I probably just threw down the gauntlet for some GenZ genius who will prove me wrong. And right at the same time. Can’t wait to read what they write.)

So anthologies are, of course, fun to write. Collections can be a pain in the ass. Often the writer changes their mind mid-edit, which is really a good way to get dropped as a client or by a publisher if you abuse the privilege. Novels, of course, are novels. With dev edits, it’s a challenge, but that’s like making the walls straight, the concrete level, and the electricity grounded, to use a house-building metaphor. By the time a novel reaches the copy-editing stage, especially when a publisher has already touched it, it’s basically finding the punch list for the writer, if we can carry the building metaphor further.

Open journal and pen.Originally posted to Reaper Edits

You hear the terms developmental and copy edit bandied about. I talk a bit about the former here. These days, a lot of developmental editors are calling themselves “story coaches,” and that’s probably a more accurate term. Especially because, when the developmental edit is done, you will most definitely need a copy edit. All that adding, shifting, and deleting creates even more typos than you began with. I know. I went through a handful and… ouch.

Not every story requires a developmental edit. Most stories require some form of copy edit. Every story should be proofread. But what is a copy edit?

The term is a blanket one for three different types of edits that address the prose itself. It may drift into developmental territory if a structural problem is minor enough. For the most part, though, it’s there to get rid of repetition, maintain consistency, and, as I like to point out, trim the fat. But it encompasses three terms that blur into each other.

  • Scene Edit – This is a term I’ve not heard very much and sounds more like developmental territory. Scene editing is taking each scene and editing for consistency, clarity, and, most importantly, place in story. One thing I always do that falls under the scene editing umbrella is POV checking. Head hopping is a no-no in modern prose. There are four authors I’ve read who can get away with shifting the POV character within a scene, but they’re so smooth at it, you don’t notice. So, unless you’re SA Cosby, Stephen King, George Pelecanos, or Frank Herbert, stop that! (And Herbert should have stopped before he wrote God Emperor of Dune.) But also, I look for “drive-ups,” a term I got from a screenwriter who did away with a certain star’s demands for establishing scenes of him getting out of the car, locking the car, walking up to the house, and knocking on the door.
  • Copy Edit – This is more in-line with consistency. Are they Steve on Page 3 and suddenly Gwendolyn on page 98? Either there’s a gender identity issue you left out or Gwen’s messing with Steve’s stuff, and Steve (not to mention the reader) needs to know why. Also, this is where we look for repeated or overused words and that bane of all readers, the run-on sentence. Copy edits are a deeper dive than a simple proofread, but a lot of the basics of proofreading are covered in this process, as they are with…
  • Line Edit – This is more focused on the text itself. What’s the difference between line and copy editing? Line editing is more basic. You’re less likely to cut whole paragraphs at this point. It’s still more in-depth than a proofread as you’re still attacking repetition and overuse, but the editor will know if you’ve already done a lot of the more in-depth work.

So why the blanket term copy edit for all these? Well, when you get into a manuscript, you don’t know what’s going to be needed. Sometimes I “move commas around,” as I did for one author who works for a major national daily. Sometimes, I have to add a lot of comments, as with my first author for Down & Out, who’s been writing longer than I’ve been alive. It was obvious he expected a lot of notes back and thrives on working on deadlines. Those are extreme cases. (And I’ve done two more for that writer, so I must have done something right.)

Another thing to consider is where the manuscript is coming from. Down & Out sends me most of my manuscripts. So already a certain amount of work has been done, and having been edited as a writer by them, I know some of what they expect. But I also get a handful of manuscripts on referral or direct inquiry. I’m a little more strict on those as the author is frequently shopping for an agent or a publisher. So The Chicago Manual of Style must rule. That said, if a writer can send me a style sheet, it helps keeping things consistent.

The copy edit is the most common type of edit. Usually, the author knows their story, so it’s a matter of streamlining prose.

 

Open journal and pen.

Originally posted to Reaper Edits

Early on in this space, I talked about the different types of editing. Most people think of copy editing, cleaning up the prose and trimming the fat. Sometimes, people think of a proofread, which is a once-over of a manuscript looking for typos. But what is a developmental edit?

This is where you let someone take your story apart and put it back together in a smoother order. This is where you kill your darlings. That scene you thought was pretty clever but doesn’t add to the story? Here’s where you cut it. Is there an event with no explanation how it happened? Your dev editor will point that out. It’s a long drawn-out process, and it can crush a writer’s ego. That’s not intentional. It’s just having someone tell you there’s more work to do.

Now not every story needs a developmental edit, but if you ask me for one, here’s what you’re paying for:

First off, I read your manuscript. My TBR stack gets put aside, or I spend less time on it to focus on your work. I will go through the manuscript once, make a few notes. Then I reread it, making an outline. Here’s where the structure comes into view. This is what needs done before you and I have our first phone call or online chat. I’m going to suggest changes you might not think necessary, but remember, I’m a disinterested party. So will your reader, even if they are a fan. (Yes, I take the series as a whole into account if the story belongs to one.)

Once I’ve done a couple of read-throughs, I will make notes on issues I see and ways to strengthen the storyline. This is where it gets daunting for the writer. Stacy Robinson, who helped pull my The Children of Amargosa into shape, called me out on some of my sillier whims. It can be disappointing, but it makes a story better. You may find it funny. The reader likely will skip it. Too many skipped sections, and hey, Amazon’s full of other books. And the indie bookstore beckons.

We discuss this in a phone call or online, no more than an hour. A writer will want to talk longer about their story because, hey, it’s their story. I get it. I’ve been there. My wife no longer cares what I write because I will go on and on about the new scifi series I’m working on or how the latest chaos in the city of Monticello will make the Holland Bay series the second coming of Bosch. But resist that urge. You’re here to work, and you’re paying an editor. I, like most editors, will add to a bill if it gets excessive.

At the same time, do not allow an editor to monopolize your time or your story. A friend of mine, who’s become a fair editor in his own right, sent me the notes he got back from one rookie editor. I pretty much exploded when I saw the notes. The comments in the Word doc were longer than the paragraph where she highlighted one sentence, and their first phone call was six hours long. Plus, the suggestions amounted to basically rewriting the story the way the editor would write it. That should be a red flag. So while I, the editor, don’t want to spend more than an hour on the phone/messaging app/video chat, chances are you don’t, either. This stage of a dev edit is hard on the writer. Don’t make it harder on yourself or let the editor hijack your story. Besides, you’re going to be doing the hard work of revision. Even in a copy edit, if a paragraph needs a lot of work, I highlight it and comment on what the problem is because it’s not my place to completely rewrite a passage.

The goal of the first real-time conversation is to decide what you’re going to keep and what you’re cutting. (Not to mention adding. It’s really easy to assume the reader knows something you neglected to explain.) Maybe come up with a new outline. And maybe you’ll decide this isn’t for you. I won’t put dollar amounts here because rates change from what’s on the site as of this writing. So to begin, I’ll charge about 40% the total estimate up front. The beginning is where I will do most of the work for you, and you may decide this isn’t working. No harm, no foul. We just don’t continue. For the next phase, where we go over your revisions, we’ll have some more realtime conversations or quick emails. Once you’ve gotten the story to where you want it to be, I’ll review the new manuscript. We’ll have another conversation, and we decide where to go from there. Unless there’s still a huge amount of work to do, this phase will be 35% of the estimate.

The final 25% goes for a copy edit. And you will need a copy edit. We just took your original draft and did the equivalent of a home renovation. With all the deletions, additions, and shifting of scenes/chapters, dialog will get out of sync, scenes may need proper context, and who the hell is Gwendolyn the Evil Sorceress, who wasn’t in the original version? This part I’m willing to waive if you want a different copy editor. And while I’ll happily take your money, fresh eyes are never a bad idea. In fact, some of my copy-editing business comes from referrals from another developmental editor for that very reason. But that 25% amounts to what you’ll pay with some of the more affordable copy editors, so unless you’re on a deadline, we take a short break, and I start treating it like the next stop is your agent/acquisitions editor/Kindle Create.

So there you have it. Is it money well spent? It never hurts to have your story taken apart and reassembled. After all, you want it to be the best it can be. However, you might not need that type of work. A copy edit might be in order. Pretty much every manuscript needs a copy edit whether by the writer themselves or someone else. On the other hand, if you’re shopping for an agent or trying to land a publishing deal, a full dev edit, including copy, might be in order. It won’t be the end. Agents love to rearrange things. Acquisitions editors will want to nudge things. And with even a small press, you will be copy edited. Again. I copy edited a novel I didn’t realize was a bestseller over a decade ago and had been slated for rerelease. The author thanked me for my insight. Was his last editor sloppy? No. But unless the Hemingway estate dumps For Whom the Bell Tolls in their laps, a good publisher will go through a manuscript again. There’s always room for improvement, and as long as the editor knows what kind of edit to use and allows the writer to make the revisions, it will stay true to the original.

Wadded paper

Originally posted to Reaper Edits

So what is it I do for a writer?

Nothing. I do it for the reader. That is the writer’s ultimate client. Sure, they have to consider bookstores, distributors, agents, and acquiring editors, but whether the author is writing independently or going traditional, my job is to get them closer to the reader. A publisher’s copy editor might have a whole new round of red ink after I’ve worked on it. That’s to be expected. I recently edited a book for Down & Books I did not know was a rerelease. (I also did not realize the author was from the UK making a slight adaptation for a US audience. That’s another topic.) So I treated it as a new book, a little caught off guard by references to recent events. As it turns out, the book was not only a best seller fourteen years ago, but it won awards. So, did I disrespect the previous editor?

The average book is about 80,000-90,000 words. That’s a lot of words. A short novella can go as low as 20,000, as my most recent project did. There, a writer with some skill in self-editing can get most of the glitches that pop up in every manuscript.

But what does a writer need?

I do three kinds of edits, though one is not technically editing and not something I offer as part of Reaper Edits. I do developmental, copy editing (a blanket term that can mean line editing, actual copy editing, and scene editing), and beta reading.

Developmental Editing

If you’ve ever been through one of these, and I have, you know they can be absolutely brutal. They take a long time and should either include a copy edit or a referral to someone who copy edits. I get referrals quite often from a developmental editor. Many of them call themselves “story coaches,” and that’s pretty accurate.

The old saw says to “Kill your darlings,” and every major writer from Hemingway to King says that. Douglas Adams would have you destroy the space-time continuum killing them, but I’ll save that for my author blog. Developmental editing is where that happens. That scene you thought was hilarious? Or an emotional tour-de-force? Yeah, the reader’s probably going to lay down your book or delete from Kindle and move on to something else. It’s not that these scenes aren’t important. It’s that they may have served their purpose, which is to allow the author to get into the characters’ heads. They now know something they didn’t know.

But it’s more than that. Scene shuffling to improve flow. Keeping character names consistent, as well as their voices. Grandma Burns might be a foul-mouthed old lady, but unless the story requires it, she’s not going to suddenly sound like Ian McKellan reading the Magna Carta to a roomful of kindergartners. Steve had better not become Gwendolyn, not without an operation or some gender identity issues the reader’s going to want to know about. Otherwise, the reader will ask, “Who is this? And why is she messing with Steve’s stuff?”

Many editors brag they cut and cut and cut. Too many, if you ask me. Yes, you need to trim the fat on your story, but bragging about cuts basically says, “It’s about the editor, not the writer, not the reader.” And a dev edit may also add material. How about a chapter to explain something? How about expanding that scene to show instead of tell? Maybe a recap (without hitting us over the head with it) of earlier events or even previous entries in a series? These are things a developmental editor looks for.

Do you need a developmental edit? I have an editor friend who swears every story needs a dev edit. It’s the old saw of “Well, I have a hammer, so it must be a nail.” At the same time, his writers are pleased with him and his colleagues. So, who needs a dev edit?

Is it a new type of story for you? Are you an inexperienced writer, especially one who wants to traditionally publish? Also, it’s 2024. You may want to do a sensitivity check. As an author, I’ve generally had good beta readers point out where things went over a line. Remember, it’s your story, but you have to eventually find an audience. Also, an editor versed in the genre can steer you toward audience expectations, even if you plan to subvert them. You need to know what expectations you are subverting and why, as well as what they won’t tolerate.

And a dev editor can help you find your own voice. It’s a lot of work. It can be ego bruising. I had one potential client send me three abusive emails when I declined to rework his manuscript. Editors are not there to pat you on the head for your genius. (Except mine. I’m a friggin’ god! Aaaaand my wife is rolling her eyes at me.) They’re there to make you better, and they don’t have a stake in the story. But it’s worth the effort if that masterpiece you finished three months ago suddenly looks like an episode of Hoarders.

Copy Editing

Copy edits involving trimming and streamlining the prose, getting rid of repeated words, and minimizing passive voice. This is what I do. So what do I do?

First, I use a tool to look for inconsistencies in spelling, abbreviations, capitalization. Those are quick hits. Then I do what’s called a crutch word check. Every editor is different. One editor, whom I consider the queen of copy editors, has a lengthy list of words she does not want to see in a manuscript. And the list grows. Some look for adverbs, but most writers these days are so adverb-averse that I hardly see them. I start with three words: Very, suddenly, and just. Very and just are two of the most overused words in manuscript. They just annoy me very, very much. Since I utilize track changes in Word, I can go through and put back instances I struck out when I read them in context. Suddenly is a word which must be driven out of a manuscript like snakes out of Ireland. (Yes, I know. That’s a myth. St. Pat had good marketing. And probably introduced stout as a replacement for mead. Okay, that’s enough faux Terry Pratchett.) I actually am bummed out when I end up leaving more than one “suddenly” in a manuscript, even in an anthology. It’s usually a useless word, though I find the odd case.

Occasionally, I get an anthology where the senior editor is Michael Bracken, a short story writer and editor I’ve known for many years now. As an editor, Michael’s pet peeve is “got.” So, the last antho he put together, I decided he’s the client. (Actually, his publisher was the client, but I ask Michael questions as I work.) I thought I’d do him a solid and go after got. One story had it every other line in dialog, and the writer of that particular short made it work. I gave up. So, Michael, if you’re reading this, I tried. (It happens.)

After that, with another tool, a go through the manuscript line-by-line looking for passive voice, repeated words, misuse of “that” (when separating clauses. You usually don’t need it.), sensitivity checks (not as common as social media would have you believe), and my personal pet peeve, the run-on sentence. Boy, do we all write a lot of run-on sentences. I’ve occasionally gotten (Sorry, Michael) a “Yikes!” back from an author. But as a writer, I can sympathetically respond, “I know, right?” (Works best if you read that in the voice of Bruce from Family Guy.)

If a sentence can’t be reworked without rewriting it, I flag it in the comments with an explanation. If it needs rewritten, the writer is the best judge of that. Also, I don’t flag every instance of passive voice. Sometimes, active just sounds stupid, especially in description. She may have pouty lips, but the reader’s likely to throw the book across the room if her lips pout.

Is/was is not the writer’s buddy. Neither is “started/began to…” when the action is not interrupted or doesn’t intensify. Water may start to boil, but he should walk toward the door, not begin to walk toward the door. Unless she stops him.

Drive-ups: I’m probably the only editor who calls it that, but it’s an old concept. If you spend a lot of time describing your character’s habit of grabbing wallet, keys, and phone, getting in the car, starting the car, and pulling the car out of the driveway/parking spot, I am so going to flag that. They reader does not care. I also get the impulse to do that. I came up with the term after hearing Lee Goldberg, an author and television writer since the 1980s, describe a producer’s need for “drive ups.” The producer was also the star of the show and demanded each scene start with his character getting out of the car, walking up to the door, and knocking on it. This actor came from pro football and didn’t like having to memorize a lot of lines. So he would inevitably ask, “Where are the drive-ups? The walk-ups?” (I also noticed that show improved when Lee got promoted on the staff.)

Beta Reading

Beta reads. The poor man’s edits. Usually done for trade between writers. A finished story should have at least one beta read. I want four, but I have regulars who will do it for me. There are no rules for beta reading. One will tell you, “It’s good” or “It sucks.” If that’s the end of it, it’s a waste of time. Hopefully that beta reader tells you at least why. Most will make notes. Some will copy edit and find typos earlier edits missed. (Remember that reissue I did? And that originally came out through a major publisher.)

While there are some beta reading services, and one I know of fills out a standard questionnaire, usually, they’re free. Which means it’s a volunteer effort. The reader might infuriate the writer, but remember, you asked. Occasionally, you get a dud. For me, one did not, apparently, ever see The Martian or watch an episode of the many Star Treks with their captain’s/personal logs. Also, I think they were trying to backdoor sell me a dev edit. (Editors, don’t do that. It’s hard enough to market what we do without someone being an overbearing ass about it.) We parted ways, though I did get a suggestion that became a core part of one of my series characters. I have a cadre of three readers who are good about asking me if I’m out of my mind? Or flagging where I assumed the reader knew about this minor event mentioned in chapter 5 from a much earlier book in the series. Or just because one character is a bigoted scumbag does not mean I have to use his loveless language. Beta readers can help with or without an editor. We’re all human. And every edit can cause or reveal more glitches to be fixed. We all want to be perfect, but I even found a glaring problem in a Lawrence Block novel. And I learned to write from his books on writing.

 

Is buttcheeks one word, or should I spread them apart?Originally posted to Reaper Edits
Editors use a lot of tools to cleanup a manuscript. I’ve heard many say you just need a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style and a good grasp of grammar. No one who says that is an editor. There are many tools, and I’ve talked about them on the old site. But The two I use most are PerfectIt and Pro Writing Aid. And they sometimes can be a challenge.

First, understand these are not AI tools. There are AI versions available, but I’ve never seen the use for them. But for those concerned about AI, understand this is not like ChatGPT or its clones. Those are a crutch. These tools are a flashlight. They are also not plagiarism apps in disguise (Looking at you, Sam Altman!) But you have to understand how to use them. It helps to have a good grasp of grammar and a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style. Because sometimes, the tools get a bit confused.

Specifically, they don’t like swear words. Except when they do. This evening, while working on a manuscript, Pro Writing Aid hilariously flagged a writer’s spelling of Samuel L. Jackson’s favorite curse. In case you’re wondering, it’s one word. Or as the meme asks, “Is ‘butt cheeks’ two words, or do I need to squeeze them together?”

But PerfectIt absolutely hates the word “shit.”  PerfectIt scans your manuscript ahead of time and flags inconsistencies and tries to keep your English version consistent. (It lets you choose between more than just US and UK English, though I’ve heard Canadians are not impressed with its Canadian dialect.) And on every single manuscript, it believes the writer meant to use “shift,” not “shit.” So a male bovine driving a car with stick is a bullshift?

Perhaps most annoying is Pro Writing Aid’s tendency to correct the names of fictional characters, often suggesting a name no one’s ever heard of. I’ve complained to PWA about this several times, I’ve reported it incorrect. Adding to dictionary takes a week or two for it to catch up. But if your character’s name is “Mike Nelson,” and some other user has already embedded “Mike Wilson” in the app’s online database, you can either send back sarcastic reports or grin and bear it. Unfortunately, there is no “Disable Rule” option for this.

In reality, the editor needs to take the suggestions one by one. The tools are better than the original spellcheck in Word or it’s still-deficient grammar check, but they have their limits. They scan manuscripts in small sections and still struggle with tense. As I said, it’s a flashlight, not a substitute. And as often as I reject a suggestion, I find edits one of them missed. But it forces an editor to read what they’re editing. And as always, the human brain is the best arbiter of what a writer wants.

Wadded paperI’ve now been editing for the better part of a year. To say that I learned a lot is an understatement. Some of the work Down & Out has sent me could be intimidating. My first project came from a well-known author in crime fiction circles, one I read quite a bit of in the oughties. I might have been more rigid on that one simply wanting to do a good job when, as a writer, I actually turned to this guy for advice. But I’ve learned a lot since then. Like, the writer expects you to edit. So if there’s a glaring issue, it probably means he or she forgot it or wants suggestions. 

More recently, the publisher handed me a local author, which worked out well. His would be a difficult book simply for the story he told and the choices he made. Being local, I was able to meet up with him (in an indie bookstore, no less.) Which was cool. We’d met and interacted before, so it was old-home week. Plus, his book had some AC/DC references. I’d just read Brian Johnson’s The Lives of Brian, so invoking Mr. Johnson’s bff from beyond the grave added some fun to this project. It wasn’t easy, but it was a joy to work with.

Since I use ProWritingAid to edit, some things become obvious. Writers, including the two I happen to be, don’t always follow the rules. PWA hates passive voice, but most writers, including the two I happen to be, use it sparingly or in contexts where active would just sound silly. But I’ve often wondered how I was doing? I mentioned in an online forum how much fun I had doing a recent music-themed anthology (which are always fun to edit, write, or read.) The editor, who had his own story in the book, sent back a note and said, “Yeah, I fixed a couple things with mine because of your notes.”  Yeah. I like feedback like that. If they didn’t like it, I usually don’t hear about it.

Unfortunately, I’ve had a couple of bad experiences as a writer. One with an editor trying to backdoor their mad developmental editing skills and coming off as though they didn’t even read. I won’t recount the “I didn’t know this wasn’t Mars” story, but suffice it to say, a red dwarf sun and the line, “Unlike Mars, we have a magnetic field” line should have been huge hints. (As TS Hottle, I write scifi. I have expectations of the audience. I have higher ones of the betas or an editor.)

The other, also a beta, thought everything was an Easter egg because I’m an American. And Americans put Easter eggs into everything. Some of this paid off, and I had to thank him even though I didn’t take a particular suggestion. It wasn’t his objection to “tea bags.” It was sending me down a rabbit hole and asking a handful of UK friends and an exchange student from Japan how they drank their tea. As such, Suicide’s silent rant about the Interstellar Era’s equivalent of the Keurig expanded. But downside, he was finding Easter eggs where their were none. “Falcon? Do you think everyone knows all the names of Apollo lunar modules?” Space buff that I am, I had to go look that one up. And I had seen the command modules from 11 and 15 that same year. This one wasn’t so bad because it did help having a reader who wanted to know if I killed off that murderous  human pestilence, Jez Salamacis, yet. Spoiler alert: No. And not even in the upcoming Suicide Gambit.

Yet I always wondered how I was doing as an editor. Was I stepping on my writers’ toes? Was I being too loose and handing back my publisher a less-than-stellar product?

Then I ran into a couple of instances with other writers where the editors clearly did not know what they were doing. One came from, of all places, the introduction to a memoir of a woman my wife and I met up in Ohio’s Amish Country. The intro, written by the editor, had said editor telling on herself. She said she ripped out all the passive voice, all the adverbs, and all the offending “thats.” The author said that wasn’t what she’d written. Oops. What I actually bought had a much cleaner edit. Yes, there were adverbs and a stray passive voice phrase here and there, but not that many. And she still showed “that” no mercy.  That was the editor telling on herself. She was also a writer, this her first attempt editing a manuscript.

A friend of mine fared worse. He made friends with a couple of editors, one of whom would be a bit expensive. The other wanted to become what’s called a “story coach” (a glorified developmental editor.) Like the lady from Ohio, she, too, had never edited. 

My friend showed me a 1500-word scene he’d given her. Upset, he said there was no way he could do everything she asked. It was turning less and less into what he’d written. I gave him the same treatment I give Down & Out’s authors, that two of their copy editors gave me. It wasn’t bad. I trimmed the fat, took out two of three passive voice lines, and tightened up a few lines. It was a fight scene. I wrote more comments than usual so he could understand what I was doing, with an eye for him looking for these things himself. Then I looked at the offending edit.

Tempted as I am to say who it was, I won’t. I will say opening an edit with a flagged paragraph and a page-long rant is not professional, never mind helpful. I was angry when I saw that. He’s a new writer, and the rant was one of the most insulting (and in a lot of places, just flat-out WRONG) comments I’ve ever read. I told him to part ways with the editor. This after she locked him into a six-hour story consult. For reference, the two dev editors I know – Stacy Robinson and Kalene Williams – limit such Zoom meetings to about an hour. Will this person ever become a decent editor?

Hey, I did. My first attempt at editing left the writer in tears. I didn’t try it again for several years afterward. But, there’s a balance between sticking to the rules like politicians to bribes and keeping the writer’s voice. Yes, you have to take out the excessive crutch words, repetitions, adverbs, and passive voice. But all of them?

If you really do have to do a rewrite, the best person to do that is the writer. Rewriting is not your job.

Wadded paperEditing is a details game. But when the shortest thing you’ve edited so far clocks in at 53,000 words, there are a lot of details to cover. If it weren’t for the tools out there, it’d take up entire evenings getting through just half a chapter of prose. Fortunately, there are tools that speed this process along. But you can’t just blindly follow them. Many writers consider Word’s spell and grammar checks sufficient.

Not even. And while it’s improved, it misses a lot. And its grammar checking still needs work.

So, what’s out there to help an editor (and a writer) clean up the prose on that last draft? Here are a few tools. Some I use. Some I don’t. 

Grammarly

Grammarly is the best known editing tool out there. Run your manuscript through that, and it flags all sorts of mistakes, such as inconsistent quotation marks and apostrophes, passive voice, and sentence fragments. The best way to use Grammarly (and ProWritingAid, my preferred tool) is to take each suggesting on a case-by-case basis. Blanket deletions or revisions of adverbs, passive voice, etc. can actually make things worse. Grammarly makes suggestions, but you still have to decide if they work or not. An entire block of legalese will have reams of wordy prose and less active voice than usual.

Downside: Last time I used it, I was locked into UK English.

Hemingway

I wanted to like Hemingway. I really did. Instead of Word or Scrivener, word processors with spell and grammar checking built in, Hemingway is an editor with a word processor built in. It tracks how many adverbs, passive voice instances, and long sentences occur as they’re written. Or you can import a file and let it work its magic. Alas, Hemingway is too rigid. Its namesake’s most famous passage, “He went to the river; the river was there,” would not pass muster. Seems Ernest committed the crime of using passive voice in the back half of a compound sentence (which Hemingway doesn’t like.) Recommend this for short business memos but not for long work of any kind. I even soured on it for blog posts.

ProWritingAid

Like Grammarly, you can pump a manuscript through it. I have a paid subscription, so I also have the Word plugin. That is a major help, especially this month, when I have three manuscripts. However, there are some caveats. The plugin chokes late in long manuscripts. I’ve managed to mitigate this by converting a given manuscript to .docx format (You’d be surprise how often I receive .doc and .rtf.), then switching back to the original with track changes in place. Track changes is what bogs things down, so the conversion to the current format helps. A couple of downsides: it flags entity names, which in fiction is useless, and it has some questionable ideas about US vs. UK English. Unfortunately, there’s no Disable Rule option for either of these. Still, it’s my go-to tool. Like Grammarly, I can ignore what I don’t like. With track changes in Word, I can make comments rather than wholesale changes when the writer should really handle a suggestion.

PerfectIt

I don’t own this one. Yet. The money went the other way on my 2022 taxes, or the IRS would have funded this and Atticus nicely with a lot left over for other things. (Like going to jazz shows. I digress.) PerfectIt is your writing buddy. It asks you if you want track changes turned on, what dialect of English you want (Sorry, Dana King and Kate Pavelle, but no Yinzer filter yet.), and how you want abbreviations and spellings kept consistent. Used in tandem with ProWritingAid or Grammarly, it can really cut down your editing time and give you a clearer picture of what your manuscript needs. That frees an author or editor to find things like word choices and name inconsistencies.

My personal choice is to run it through PerfectIt first, then ProWritingAid. Much of what I do is eyeballing it. The tools don’t really find run-ons, though ProWritingAid hates sentence fragments. Put that with a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style and keep Google up to check those brand names (not as easy as you may think, and some of my favorite editors miss things like Jack Daniel’s.), and editing, while not easy, becomes doable, even enjoyable. On my last manuscript for Down & Out, I actually was disappointed to stop to make a comment when I wanted to see what happened next. Because editors, yanno, read.

Wadded paperWhen I was a kid, every teacher, from Mrs. Dunham in the fourth grade to English literature teacher Mrs. Snell in high school, pounded into us not to write phonetically. Especially in narrative. Nope, kiddies. Queen’s English was the rule. Joke’s on them. Now it’s the King’s English! 

Seriously, though, we also had to read Huckleberry Finn. I kind of get the point as Twain laced his first-person narrative with enough apostrophes and malaprops to warrant a magic decoder ring in places. Well, if Twain did it…

So did Chandler, now pointed at as a paragon of style, the master of simile. When you write like him, it’s as cliché as a Twitter bot hijacking a webcam girl’s images so you’ll follow it. (Spoiler alert: I usually block those.) But Chandler, despite not having much use for Hemingway, took Hemingway’s lean approach a step further. He rendered fiction in a way the average reader could grasp it. And he wrote his dialog to sound like the characters, not what Mrs. Peterson or Sister Mary Bruno wanted. 

Hmm…

Then we come to one of Chandler’s literary descendants, Walter Mosley, he of Easy Rawlins fame. Mosley did write a science fiction novel based in the days of slavery called 47. I’ve read it. Fortunately, he doesn’t write the title character’s dialog like Huck, though like Twain, he’s unflinching in his portrait of the Antebellum south. However, there’s that Easy Rawlins series, which unapologetically has swallowed letters and words and Texas idioms force-fit into Los Angeles from the late 1940s onward. I met Mosley once while he toured for 47. He said there was no way he would not write that accent Easy grew up with. Both he and Easy came of age in that part of the world, and he wanted it celebrated. A few months later, I read another novel by the late great Bill Crider, another Texas native, and found a lot of the same speech in his work. Crider, however, smoothed it out some for us ignorant Midwesterners, New Yorkers, and sundry West Coast folk. But then speech was there.

So, how does one edit for this?

Very carefully.

As I’ve written here before, I use ProWritingAid as my main tool, though PerfectIt is becoming a major part of my process. PerfectIt is better suited for writers who write with an accent while ProWritingAid has a fit if it thinks an American is using “leapt” instead of “leaped.” In the past two years, I’ve seen one non-UK writer use “leaped.” She’s from Canada. I write “leapt.” Blame Mrs. Snell.) My first challenge with accent and ProWritingAid came from a recent project by an Australian author. The publisher said they wanted to keep the Australian grammar and dialog. Since I can’t change the Word plugin to Australian English, esp. while revising my own American English work, I grabbed a PerfectIt trial. (BTW, I’m sold on the tool.) It does change dialect on the fly. I actually suggested putting back in the “-our” endings of words as opposed to America’s insistence on “-or.” (Flavour instead of flavor.) That was easy enough once I got into the flow.

However…

UK, America, Canada all have regional dialects. In North America, some places mix in French or Spanish without translation. Then there’s the rural Texas dialect used by Crider and Mosley, which both refuse to imply rather than spell out. That can get dicey. I know. I’m editing a Yinzer right now. What’s a Yinzer?

Yinzer is the dialect spoken by people living in Western Pennsylvania. To us Rust Belters, it’s as distinctive as the drawl of Kentucky or the twang of West Virginia. It draws from German and Italian, and thanks to an influx of West Virginians during the Depression, it’s taken on a but of a southern flavor. So why’s it so hard to edit?

Yinzers love sentence fragments. Not surprising. I grew up in Cleveland, which had those same West Virginians coming to the steel mills and auto plants there, but with more Slavic overtones mixed in. And it took me well into my twenties to ease up on the sentence fragments. But not only are the characters in this book Yinzers, so is the author, a Pittsburgh native. So his narrative has a lot of sentence fragments. Another author, or someone editing me, would find a manuscript awash in red tracked changes with lots of comment balloons. This particular author?

I find myself hitting ignore a lot. My job is to clear up the writing, not rewrite the novel. (And I strongly disagree an editor sometimes has to do that. Not unless they are doing a developmental edit, in which case, you’re going to call me after that part’s done. Dev edits leave a lot of copy editing to be done it their wakes.) Writers tend to write the way they talk. Or want to talk. And sometimes, they write like their characters. Military characters tend to speak in short, declarative sentences. Gossipy people prattle on incessantly. Introverts are prone to one-word responses. Those, of course, are stereotypes. I have met some rather verbose introverts and really quiet extroverts. That’s another topic for another blog. 

The point is to make it readable, but preserve the author’s voice. You can’t do that if you listen to Mrs. Snell nagging you in the back of your mind to zap every single one of those sentence fragments and make Easy Rawlins use the King’s English.  

In fact, I consider rewriting Mosley’s work along those lines blasphemy.Wadded paper

Wadded paperMy brother-in-law, who’s started writing in the past year, mentioned some notes he got back from an editor. “I didn’t know ‘suddenly’ was a crutch word.”

I hadn’t thought about that in a while. Suddenly, I realized I don’t use the word that much anymore.  Yet a lot of professional editors I know hate it more than adverbs. Oh, they might talk a good game about words ending in “-ly” (then liberally use them in their own prose), but nary a word about “suddenly.” But they’ll cut it without explanation. You might say it disappeared…

Suddenly.

Suddenly, and its companion word, surprisingly are really crutch words. They’re also adverbs of the worst kind. Editing for a crime imprint, I don’t get much adverb abuse. The prose tends to be straightforward, gets to the point. The biggest issues I have (especially with a science fiction author named TS Hottle and his virtual crime fiction twin, Jim Winter) is with “that,” “very,” overuse of “so,” and “Well…” But “suddenly” comes up. A lot.

These are words you don’t think of much, but too many of them slow the prose down unnecessarily. (See? I used an adverb. Sparingly.) As with “very,” the writer is trying to manage stage direction. They don’t believe the reader will get the swiftness with which an event occurs or a person or thing appears. To the writer, this is a reasonable assumption.

To the reader, it comes off as, “It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, bad writing appeared! Someone screamed!”

(In some cases, someone screamed very loud. In a few cases, very, very loud. Which should be written “loudly.”)

Some of you will recognize that hideous passage as a send up of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who is responsible for the old cliché, “It was a dark and stormy night…” Aside from starting in passive voice, it begins with a weather report. I can think only of one lengthy work that needed to start with a description of the weather, and Stephen King opted to write Storm of the Century as a screenplay. It also has two exclamation points in one line. So, not only does it offend David Morrell, the prophet of lean prose, it summons the angry ghost of Elmore Leonard, who famously said one exclamation point per hundred thousand words. And Elmore wrote short, so whole novels would pass without one. But “Suddenly” is the most offensive part of that line. OK, the second, but passive voice is not being spoken of here.

A really good editor would suggest depicting a flash of lightning revealing Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s writing. You can keep one exclamation point. I’m more of a one-per-page kind of guy. 

The real problem with “suddenly” is it shows instead of tells.  Now, “Show, don’t tell” can be a trite, overused bit of advice, like “Write what you know.” (Honestly, I don’t need bored single women writing about watching Hallmark or men farting while they play Call of Duty. Do some research. That’s the fun part.) I’m of the mindset that, since showing takes more words than telling, make sure you tell the write things. If Johnny is sick because he’s confronted with a stressful moment, simply say he’s sick, and get to why he’s stressed. By now, you’ve guessed he’s stressed out suddenly. As vaguely as I wrote this, you didn’t need that word.

Once in a while, I’ll use it in my writing. And if a manuscript I’m working on contains it, I may stop and do a crutch word check. Five times out of 85,000 words is not worth the extra effort for me or the writer. The reader is not going to care. If it’s every other page, expect a lot of red ink.

During the writing of this post, I started my latest editing project. Before diving in with ye olde editing tool, I checked for crutch words. “That” did not surprise me. We all abuse the word. “Very” almost didn’t show up at all. I did “suddenly.” Not a single instance. Not. One. So, often, a writer already knows it’s a word to avoid. Makes my job easier. It’ll make your readers’ jobs easier, too. 

Wadded paperI started editing for Down & Out Books in November, right after Thanksgiving. Prior to that, I edited for a friend who gets a deep friends and family discount. A couple of bucks for me, and she returns the favor with other services. Yes, writers do that.  I’m up to my fifth project now, and no two have been the same.

I’ve had a project that came from an author who’s been writing longer than I’ve been alive. And I’m old enough to remember (before kindergarten, mind you)  when Abbey Road was new and on the radio. That one was long, even for him, though I’m pleased he’s still working. I did an anthology. I did one set in New England at the same time as reading Gwendy’s Final Task. At least part of Gwendy took place on a space station. The last was a straightforward thriller. The current one is Australian, and Down & Out asked me to keep as much Australian English as possible.

So how’s it going?

Just based on my list of projects, plus my friend’s book, it’s really solidified my game as an editor. How?

  • Technique – Before I edited Jenn Nixon’s The Fixer, I revised one of my own scifi books in the can ahead of time. I’ve been using ProWritingAid, but without track changes. Up until next year’s Breaking Liberty, I’d simply accepted or rejected changes. Who would I be tracking changes for? Me? But when it came time to clean up Breaking Liberty ahead of sending it to First Reader, I needed a guinea pig to test how I’d do this for a paying client. Normally, I would read, then do PWA. But PWA has enough trouble with track changes and long manuscripts. So Jenn got both at the same time. She was pleased with the results. I applied this to my first Down & Out project, the aforementioned writer who started before I was born. PWA did get a bit wonky, and I’ll probably have to hit up some colleagues on how to better utilize it. Howevever, Down & Out sends me partially formatted files, so breaking it up into nice 50-page segments is not really an option.
  • Other writers make the same mistakes I do – Every so often, I’ll work on one of my own manuscripts and go, “Argh!” (Best heard in a Charlie Brown voice.) Then I noticed other writers do the same things in varying degrees. One story or book can be relatively clean while another becomes awash in red ink. Some writers love the word “that,” which is harder to purge than you think. Very is another crutch word that refuses to die. You plow through and leave comments or notes, so the writer doesn’t think you’re just some mean-spirited hermit stabbing people with a red pen.
  • Anthologies – I’ve often said, “Edit for the writer’s style, not yours.” This becomes more challenging with an anthology. For instance, are African-Americans Black or black? I recently had two writers, both black (I had a black editor flag me for using capitalization once.) who each did it differently. I skimmed the story with the word capitalized, flagged instances where it wasn’t but was used to indicate race, and moved on. The trick is consistency. If Joe is blue-eyed on page one, he’d better not be hazel-eyed on page 203, not without explanation. Plus, the red ink flowed in different amounts between stories. A journalist who writes for a major daily turned in an incredibly clean draft while another, very experienced writer had all sorts of “that” and “very.” They’re pros. You’re a pro. Do your job. If it looks wrong, they’ll ask. And one gent did. Most manuscripts I send back usually have a comment on something that says “Stet as needed.” Down & Out is a small press that gives its writers a decent amount of control. Lower down the food chain, you may want to have a couple more passes to catch missing words and quotation mark errors.
  • Non-US English: The first thing that jumps out at you is the reversal of quotes.  But also “-our” vs. “-or,” “metre,” not “meter.” And who knew there was a difference between UK and Australian English. PWA wasn’t going to cut it. Fortunately, the oft-mentioned goddess of cutting, Ellen Campbell, turned me onto PerfectIt, which looks for these very differences. You just tell it what version of English you’re working in. I’m still doing a PWA pass, but now I’ve done PerfectIt, then a crutch word check. (By the way, I really hate the word “that” now. Everyone, including the idiot writing this blog post, abuses it.) But now I know what to ignore and will let it find the usual issues. Plus, that’s when I go looking for repeated words. Can’t get rid of all of them, but I can get most of them.
  • Editing tools – Sooner or later, I’m going to have to get PWA to play nice with track changes. Which means taking Down & Out’s nice, partially formatted manuscripts and carving them up into 50-page splices. The ProWritingAid passes will probably go faster. Once again, I’ll probably experiment on something of my own.

It’s been a great experience, and my wife likes having me around more now that I don’t Uber anymore. So, now I need to expand this to freelance clients.