The Editor’s Corner

CrutchesA while back, I wrote about crutch words and the approach I took to weeding them out. A working editor is a work in progress, and I am no exception. I developed a four-word approach to “Words That Must Be Scrutinized!!!” (Cue really loud gong.) The offending words are “suddenly,” “just,” “very,” and “that.” Yes, “that” can be a crutch word. The story analysis project I’m finishing up as I write this also abused “and.” Mind you, the author is an admitted first-time writer who does not speak US English trying to write in US English. English as a first language is weird enough. I get headaches rendering an alien language into Elizabethan English to convey excessive formality, so I get it.

I’ve modified since then. I don’t do a “that” check anymore. That is used more often legitimately than as a crutch, so you could easily get a thousand instances of it in a long manuscript. ProWritingAid is pretty good at flagging it when it’s used to join a long sentence together. Never say “The fact that…” Just say “The fact…”

But I got so zealous about purging and replacing “that” with “who,” “how,” and “which,” that I got pushback from both author and publisher. (The author turned around and wrote a blurb for my editing work, so it’s a case of making good better.) So now, I look to see if “that” is unnecessary in context. 

I still go after “very” and “suddenly.” In fact, I get mad if I can’t delete “suddenly.” “Just” remains a sticking point. It’s the most abused of the three. One writer, who’s been around for decades, had seven instances on one page! It is a monumental pain in the ass to weed those out, and in a couple of instances, I had to leave two on the page. But it’s a crutch word.

Once upona, I used to go after “should” because Bestelling Author™, who had a writing course®, said it’s a bad word. Probably is. Too many “shoulds” on a page will annoy the reader without them realizing why. I quit doing that because it ended up giving me stilted prose in my own work and annoyed an editing client early on. This is also I don’t do writing books. I publish independently or small press, so until they start showing up on bestseller lists or I have a waiting list for my services, I’m not going to be a shill and pretend to know more than I do. Here, I’m sharing what I see on the job. 

So it’s “very,” “suddenly,” and “just.” I’ve added one more because I caught it in print in one of my own books: form. Why is “form” bad? It’s not as long as you are filling out a form, you’re admiring that other person’s cute form, or your mother-in-law, in her rage, assumes her demon form.* But every so often, in the heat of writing, we type “form” instead of “from.” It’s something that even an editor can miss. We’re not perfect, and two errors can hide a third in plain site. So I check all the instances of “form.” 99% of the time, they’re all correct. That remaining one percent usually sees a character bopping out to Sinatra singing “The Girl Form Ipamena.” So, yeah, the writer probably wants to know about that typo.

As I said before, different editors have different approaches. Some will zap anything with an “-ly” in it. Some have long lists of words they never want to see in a manuscript again. Others just read it in context and decide if it sticks out like a sore cliche.  

* Actually, my mother-in-law is a sweet 80-year-old lady. My ex-mother-in-law is a nice Mormon lady with a decidedly un-Mormon sense of humor who definitely gave it to her daughter. Who happens to be my favorite ex. I’ve married often. And well. Not many people can say that. 

Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in concert.
Led Zeppelin

Following on last week’s column (or was it this week? I was late getting it out.), the word “was” and its close relatives bring to mind the core reason I wrote about it last week. It robs the prose of immediacy. Let’s face it. If you’re a writer in today’s world, especially a fiction writer, you can’t afford to lose immediacy. People have short attention spans. If someone has been sitting down to read your work, you’d better keep their attention before Netflix drops the final season of Stranger Things or the Kardashians do something they think is noteworthy.

First, let’s look at the three main verb tenses in English. And thanks to eslgrammar.org for the assist. They have a handy page to look this up.

Writers in rough drafts, including those two hacks TS Hottle and Jim Winter, tend to use what’s termed past continuous when writing action. Most prose is written in past tense. They often write past continuous to convey action. Only, to the reader, it just looks like passive voice. 

“He was walking into Clarksdale.”

Robert Plant gets a free pass on that line because he needed to keep time with Jimmy Page’s chords in that song. You, gentle reader, who hope to have gentle readers of your own, don’t get a pass. Unless our intrepid Clarksdale-bound hiker is interrupted as he’s coming into town, the line should be “He walked into Clarksdale.” Simple. Short. Declarative. Hemingway would be proud. And he would know. Even Hemingway’s passive voice reads like action. (That’s another post.)

So what are the tenses?

There are three main ones: Past, present, future. If you’re writing time travel, you’re on your own. Even Douglas Adams and the writers of Doctor Who make fun of those who try to invent tenses. 

Then we have the continuous tenses, indicating ongoing action by the subject. I was walking into Clarksdale. I am walking into Clarksdale. I will be walking into Clarksdale. In everyday speech, this is fine as long as you can be understood. In prose, I read it aloud and look at the sentences around the offending phrase. As I said in my last post, it’s fine if our intrepid walker does one thing and is either interrupted or does something else as well. If not, well then, he walked into Clarksdale. This assumes, of course, the main action will be happening in Clarksdale (and without that clunky future continuous phrase, which has damned few use cases.)

Then we have the perfect tenses. The first two almost always indicate past events. Past perfect (“I had walked into Clarksdale.”) and present perfect (“I have walked into Clarksdale.”), indicating the speaker or point-of-view character has walked into Clarksdale at least once. Future perfect means the speaker or POV character will walk into Clarksdale at least once before a future point in time in question.

But wait! There’s more!

Past/present/future perfect continuous!  “I had been walking into Clarksdale,” meaning this was at some point in the past a frequent occurrence. “I have been walking into Clarksdale,” meaning this is something ongoing. “I will have been walking into Clarksdale,” meaning this is something likely to occur regularly or repeatedly in the future.

Again, you need a good reason to go with this. A lot of writers use the continuous tenses (both basic and perfect) thinking it conveys action. Unfortunately, there’s that word “was” (or “is” or “are” or “will be.”) Any time the reader sees that, the brain fires up “Passive voice!” and passive voice is to be avoided. (Not always, but a future post will be written about that.) The best use case for continuous is when the phrase is followed by “when.” “I was walking into Clarksdale when…” Then the action is disrupted. Which basic past/present tense doesn’t convey very well.

The only other time you should really use it is when you need to line up your rhythm with Jimmy Page’s playing. Then you’re going to send your old pal Tom tickets as I’ve only seen two Yardbird guitarists live. One has passed on, and the other has turned out to be an idiot. Unfortunately, Pagey is largely retired, so a pass to see him live would be greatly appreciated. 

Originally posted to Reaper Edits

Was (Not Was)
Source: last.fm

No, not the well-regarded 80s band led by producer Don Was. Was (along with is, are, were) is a double-edged sword for writers. Why? Used in action verbs, it blunts to impact of a sentence. And used as the verb itself, it’s passive voice. If you listen to hundreds of writing experts and “experts,” passive voice is to be avoided like cliches. Or like the plague, which is also a cliche.

Not all passive voice is bad. But a writer should use it sparingly. A lot of times, I’ll end up flipping a sentence around to get rid of it. It’s best left to description. Action? That’s a little different. You have to read each and every instance of was/is/are/were followed by an -ing. Nine times out of ten, you can shorten it to the actual verb.

“He was walking toward the park…” Now, if he’s going to be interrupted in the act of walking to the park, this makes sense. Or if another character intercepts him while he’s walking to the park (like I just wrote here), the “was” and an “-ing” makes sense. If he’s getting from point A to point B and ends up in the park before anything happens, then “He walked toward the park…” is better.

Was takes the immediacy away. Do that, and you also take the reader interest away. A lot of editors brag about cutting. (And sometimes, a less-skilled editor cuts just to cut. That’s when it becomes about the editor. If you’re a freelance editor, stop that!) But a good rule of thumb is to look for any fat you can trim. “Was/Is” makes a great shorthand to get rid of a lot of fat and punch up the prose. And while passive voice will show up in everything we write, less is always more.

Next week, I will talk about a rule about prepositions up with which I will not put!

 

Originally posted to Reaper Edits

Broken pencil while writing
1311784 by smengelsrud/pixabay.c
Copyright: CC0 Creative Commons

Ah, the lowly dash. And it’s many forms. We so love using them, especially Gen X and Millennial writers. We especially love our em dashes (— ). Nothing wrong with that, though I wish Cormac McCarthy had made peace with quotation marks before he died. Blood Meridian was brilliant but hard to read.

And yet, as I go through my latest editing project and look back on my previous one, I keep seeing a dash error that drives me to distraction. The previous project came from the pen of a guy who started doing this before I was born. (My first election was Reagan’s reelection bid, for perspective, when David Lee Roth sang for Van Halen on Ye Olde Victrola whilst we drove the ol’ La Salle to the Woolworth’s for a grape Nehi.*) Yet, I also received back the latest Jim Winter offering back from Dawn Barclay, my talented colleague at Down & Out Books. As I am Jim, I received a rude awakening. I do the same damn thing! What is this horrific atrocity in writing?

Grandpa Simpson yells at cloud.
Fox

Everyone, and I mean everyone, including your humble narrator, hyphenates adverbs. STOP THAT! (Pauses to go yell at both TS Hottle and Jim Winter and hopes wife doesn’t call the men with the butterfly nets and strait-jacket.)

What bugs me about Dawn’s horrific revelations is the next Winter book is a collection. Which means two-thirds of these stories were edited by someone else before I cleaned them up. Eek! That’s two editorial passes that missed that error. Strangely, I never get called out on em dashes. Once, when Second Wave was beta read, I did get a note on the difference between the em dash and the en dash and a hyphen.

  • Hyphens: Hyphens are used to join two words into the single idea. Most often, you see it in some last names, like Alec Walker-Jones. It also can join two adjectives, such as “music-obsessed.” Occasionally, it’s used with nouns, but not often. Technically, hyphens are not dashes. They are not to be used to join any word ending in –ly to another word. So, the phrase “criminally-wrong” is just “criminally wrong.”
  • En dashes: Sometimes used to join words the way hyphens sometimes do. Calling a hyphen an en dash in a number, time, or date range (200-300, 1939-1945, 3:00-3:45) is technically correct, which is often the best kind of correct. But never best-kind, because “best” is an adjective, which is like all those “-ly” words Stephen King tells you not to use yet frequently abuses.
  • Em dashes: Em dashes are the favorite punctuation mark of any writer born between 1964 and 1997. We love them! We use them in lieu of parentheses—though inside a sentence, they must be used in pairs—and to indicate someone’s speech has been interrup— Why the disdain for parentheses? Why not use ellipses(…)? Ellipses indicate trailing off. As for parentheses, believe me, when I first started writing, I was a serial parentheses abuser. Someone pointed out I wrote too many asides in my essays—which, by the way, can get annoying. (See what I did there?) As Microsoft Word improved, along with its alternatives and tools like Scrivener, grammar tools helpfully autocorrected the double hyphen (“–”) into an em dash. Em dashes may or may not be technically correct—still the best kind of correct, but not best-kind of correct, but they really do enhance readability. My tenth-grade English teacher may disagree, but my tenth-grade English teacher thought Led Zeppelin would give me a heart attack and Heinlein would rot my mind. (Jury’s out on the latter.) So, suck it, Clara.

So there you have it. Hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes.

*Do they still make Nehi?

Originally posted to Reaper Edits

Once upon a time, I read Tom Clancy’s novels. They were brilliant adventure pieces, though Jack Ryan ultimately became a bit of a Mary Sue character. I was young and my imagination locked into The Hunt for Red October and Cardinal of the Kremlin (the Cold War still a thing back then.) But as I read more and read widely, I discovered something Clancy did that I absolutely cannot stand.

g4f01e49f6df40fa45f0c5abb227684dbfb67e64f386eb8a6345bcbd6440074b054b693ecbe30fce3a9de1212c8f89041_1280-108545.jpgTom Clancy head hops like nobody’s business.

This was an early problem for me as a writer. Part of it came from inhaling movies in the 90s, back when an original idea still had cache. But then there were my authorial influences, the biggest of which was Stephen King. While I loathe head hopping, if done right, you either don’t notice it or realize it moves a scene along perfectly. As an editor, I will smack an author’s hand every time they do it. Why? It’s distracting.

To date, only four authors I’ve read pull off the in-scene head hop smoothly: Stephen King, George Pelecanos, SA Cosby, and Frank Herbert. And Herbert should have stopped doing it after The Children of Dune. (Some say he should have stopped writing Dune novels after Children, but I’ll save that discussion for another forum.) Everyone else, cut it out. Now.

Head hopping, if you haven’t picked up on it, is when you write what’s often called “close third person,” sometimes called “partially omniscient,” though I haven’t heard that term since Reagan’s first term. The character in focus is not the narrator, but the author gets into their head. Now, you can have multiple point-of-view characters in a novel, but only one character per scene. Meaning, if Sally is the point-of-view character in a scene, you may get into her head, have interior monologue, have reactions the other characters cannot see, and feel her emotions. But you can’t slip over to Jack’s head during the scene.

“Well, why not?”

Simple. It makes it harder for the reader to keep track. And especially now, in a time when attention spans are miniscule, you risk throwing the reader out of the story when they’re not sure who’s doing or saying what.

I’ve seen on some forums where fledgling authors puzzled why some famous authors have more than one POV per chapter? I scratched my head when I read this and realized they were listening to the flood of podcasts on writing put out by writers who make more money writing about writing and marketing than they do selling their own fiction. (Why I don’t do a writing book of my own.*) Of course, some of it, too, is the trend toward shorter chapters. Most writers I know do multiple scenes per chapter, so the head hopping between scenes is pretty much mandatory.

First person, of course, eliminates this. Second person should be avoided, though Mick Wall, in his Led Zeppelin bio, uses it to great effect. Probably because, while the book was unauthorized, received a lot of input from the various members of Zeppelin and Jason Bonham. Also, that was nonfiction about people Wall knows very well or had extensive contact with their various circles of friends, enemies, and associates.

“But what about omniscient point of view? Isn’t that in everyone’s head?”

You could argue that, but think about the great literature over the last three centuries. Prior to 1749, English had two great novels: Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels, both written as travelogues and diaries. Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, proceeds to break multiple rules on writing we now take for granted (Authorial intrusion, lengthy asides that would make Stephen King blush, telling critics to get stuffed before the end of Chapter 1 and repeating it throughout the book), keeps the one-head-per-scene rule for the most part. In a couple of fight scenes, he head hops, usually when one character lands a blow on another, then we get to feel everything the combatant feels and hear every inappropriate thought. After that?

Well, there’s Dickens, but there’s also Washington Irving and Mark Twain, both of whom are very much “Get to the friggin’ point!” authors. Much of Twain’s fiction is first person, but most of his third person keeps to one head per scene, particularly later on, like his last novel published in his lifetime, A Horse’s Tale. Before Fielding and his two diarist colleagues? Shakespeare and Milton. One wrote plays (by nature, dramatic until you hit a soliloquy), the other epic poems. (Imagine if Milton teamed up with Pratchett. Hoo boy!) But while other writers (Looking at you, Dickens and Hawthorne!) head hopped in their novels, one head per scene, if not the entire book, had already become the rule before Jefferson crammed on the Declaration of Independence the night before it was read.

“But, gee, TS, I want to show what the other character’s thinking, too.”

Ah, easy enough. Have the character react. Show, don’t tell. (My least favorite writing rule, but it’s hammered into writers for a reason.) If an innocent remark by Mark makes Cindy angry, you don’t need to get into Mark’s head. Have him act hurt when she voices anger and let Cindy interpret it. Or…

Scene break and jump into Mark’s head. Elmore Leonard sometimes wrote entire chapters of very short scenes ping-ponging between POV characters.

Remember, it’s all about the reader. And if you catch yourself doing it in the first draft, remember, that’s what revisions and rewrites are for. And your editor. I’m here to help.

*I edit. Therefore, I blog about it.

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.