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The Right Editor for the Right Job

Think of an editor as a medical professional. If you have an infected foot, a brain surgeon may not be helpful. Your manuscript must have vitality, to be submittable or published independently; it must be fit, throbbing with life, well-formed, well-groomed, and dressed in its Sunday best. The editor needed for the job depends on where you are on your path to print.

Post Second Draft Check up – Manuscript Critique

You’ve survived your first round of revisions, cleaned up obvious errors, filled story holes, polished tone and pace, and digested feedback from beta readers. Now what?  Time to put on your big writer pants and seek a professional. Genre is key to finding the right (write) editor. If the editor is neither experienced nor aware of your market, save your money. Find an editor well versed in your genre. If you write memoir, you want a seasoned creative non-fiction editor, not a  fantasy/sci-fi editor.

What can you expect from a manuscript critique? The editor is an attentive reader who provides feedback regarding content. Think of it as a physical. Expect a 5-10 page report that highlights the health of your work — both the good and possible trouble points. Anticipate criticism and comment about the opening, structure, POV, style, pace, dialogue, and ending. Specific pages, passages, and plot points will be highlighted. Is the work compelling, does it work as a whole, and if not, what steps need to be taken? Prepare to be relieved, with moments of associated delight and terror.

Terrified about what a manuscript critique might cost? Editing, like a good diet, is an iterative process. The more you improve your practice, the better you can manage the ultimate cost.

Identify your writer’s habits. with the help of an editor/writer’s coach. Your habits: qualifying phrases, word overuse,  complicated dialogue attributions, a preference for stutter verbs, voice shifts, adequate pace, and characterization can be identified in as little as three chapters. The editor will mark up the work with highlights and suggestions. It is up to you scan your full document for other examples and make corrections to achieve the third draft. The cleaner the draft, the more focus on content by a developmental editor.

Developmental Editing – Penultimate Draft

If a manuscript critique is equivalent to a physical at a GP, a developmental edit is on par with a full work up at the Mayo Clinic. You look for a developmental editor when you have taken the manuscript as far as you can toward a goal of submission or independent publishing. Expect in-depth feedback on all issues: word use, historical accuracy, questions regarding writer’s choices, under or overdeveloped characters, pace, a tone in keeping with the genre, marketability, and praise for strengths. Don’t waste your money on developmental editing if your work is not ready. Patients do not go to the Mayo Clinic for hangnails or two or three bouts of indigestion.

Copyediting – Final, Final

You can be a brilliant writer but be a horrible technician. I’ve coached many writers who insist on creating their own document structure rather than follow standard submission guidelines. A unique document structure may feel creative at the beginning of a draft, but it is hell to clean up at the end. Ignoring structure and punctuation rules is like living on Tostitos and soda until 5:00 and happy hour appetizers and alcohol until bedtime for ten years. A seven-day detox will not correct the underlying and long-term issues. Writing is a practice. Copyeditors are perfectionists. They want every comma, paragraph indent, en dash, and period in its proper place. Many a prospective agent has dismissed a manuscript for sloppiness, not content.

Many a Mayo Clinic visit is built on a foundation of bad choices. Ensure that your work is the best you can make it for a clean bill of health. A strong, healthy, and clean manuscript increases publication chances and happy readers.

 

I Can’t Afford an Editor

“I Can’t Afford an Editor.”   

I hear this claim in every class I teach or writer’s group I attend. The complaint hides two fears: bloody red ink on your manuscript and the idea that a supposed, expert stranger will tell you what to write. The cost is a factor but it is not the factor. 

 

To allay your fears and minimize the cost know that editing is an iterative, not a one and done process. What do I mean?

  • Only you can write your 1st draft. Introducing an editor at this phase is a form of creative suicide;
  • Create a full draft, celebrate, and self-edit after you take the following steps:
    • Celebrate your accomplishment
    • Allow the text to marinate in a safe inaccessible place for 2-6 weeks
    • Read the full manuscript as a reader, not a writer
      • Understand that you can never be a fully objective reader
    • Return to the text to read as a self-editor
      • Is the point of view consistent?
      • Are there adequate transitions?
      • Have you used enough dialogue to move the action forward?
      • Is the pace and tone in keeping with the genre?
      • Did you use the five senses as tools to show not tell your story?
  • Use your self-edits to write a second draft.
    • Be amazed by how you have improved the text
  • Do a copyedit of the second draft, use online tools to help you
    • Spell & grammar checks
    • Grammarly.com
    • Search and replace tools
  • Ask other writers to act as beta readers:
    • Specify what you want from readers
    • Specify the desired turn around time
      • Be sure the anticipated return is reasonable for the length of the manuscript
      • Don’t resent a no response, timing is everything
      • Be willing to reciprocate
  • Read through the provided edits with care
    • Consider every comment and use those that resonate to complete your third draft

Presuming that you’ve made edits to the manuscript based on reader feedback, re-read the text with the above-bulleted self-edit questions in mind, performed a second tools scan, and made all changes you can identify you will have a completed third draft and you haven’t spent a cent. Congratulations!

Time to hire an editor.

How do you find the right editor?

See you next post. Happy writing.

 

 

 

                         

 

 

What is True for Your Story?

 

Truth is a tricky word. It is especially tricky for writers. Some of you may think truth is only relevant to non-fiction. Some of you may argue truth is fact. Truth in writing is a kaleidoscope or crazy quilt. There as many truths in a book as there are characters. Our job is to write characters or memories (another tricky word) true for each personality, in keeping with the story told. Is it factual? Did a hurricane happen on June 12, 1956, at noon or at 6:00 p.m.? You can look up facts online but the said search will never relate how you felt during that storm or how your character reacted to immediate danger in an intense situation. The fact cannot convey the terror, the cruelty, and wonder of the act. It does not define a family’s reactions as their home is destroyed by a fickle wind while their neighbor’s house escapes damage. It cannot convey the grateful sense of survival when life is measured as greater than tangible goods.

 

Truth plays another role in writing. As we write we may decide to include topics that make us uncomfortable. We may worry about what others will think when they read the material or we fret that we are going too or not far enough. The concerns can be evidenced by our physical reactions: a headache, tightness in the chest or a queasy stomach as we write. Often we avoid topics that cause us to feel vulnerable.

Vulnerability is where truth in writing resides. When you have a physical reaction to your work, meditate on the reaction. What is at the root of the fear, the tension, the sense of dis-ease? When you write a section that challenges your intellectual ideas of truth, it doesn’t mean that the words are emotionally invalid. Truth in writing is more complex than facts. Truth in writing may not be equivalent to truth in your daily life, but it can be true for your character, the plot and the outcome of your writing.

Remember your draft is about creation. A draft is a free fall. The time to let go. The time to trust you, the writer. Ignore the voice that urges you to cut and refine as you go. Simultaneous edits have a vampiric effect. The corpse appears alive but it has no lifeblood.

Surprise yourself by reviewing a full draft. Allow yourself to be vulnerable and create your strongest work. This is your free pass to get all of the truths, feelings, and reactions of your story on the page without internal or external critics.

 

Write to Finish – A Road Map to Publication

Write to Finish is crafted for novelists and memoirists who struggle to overcome hurdles and blocks on the road to completion. We will work to enhance detail, character, and place for a solid draft and create a project plan to get to the finish line. The class includes but is not limited to the review process, editing, readers, and submission. Get the tools to bring your book to fruition.  The class is limited to 8

Write to Finish – A Road Map to Publication

Write to Finish is crafted for novelists and memoirists who struggle to overcome hurdles and blocks on the road to completion. We will work to enhance detail, character, and place for a solid draft and create a project plan to get to the finish line. The class includes but is not limited to the review process, editing, readers, and submission. Get the tools to bring your book to fruition.  The class is limited to 10.

What is NANOWRIMO?

November is the month you challenge yourself. This is not a competition with others. This is a personal challenge to write 50,000 words in a month. Why?  November is National Novel Writing Month (NANOWRIMO). Login to https://nanowrimo.org

Write 1667 words a day for thirty days. At the end of November, you will be well on your way to a first draft. Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? As you read these words your internal editor is screeching, “Are you crazy?” Perhaps.

Let’s say you commit to the challenge but only complete 10,000 words. This is still a win. At the end of November you will have more words than you did at the end of October and if you truly ignored your internal editor, you might have a fertile seed for a new book.  Trust your creative self. Give it a try.

Writing Styles: Plotter, Visualizer, Pantser

There is no right way to approach writing a book. We all have our individual comfort zones. Consider how you work best. Do you require an outline to begin? Outline away. An outline can be an excellent blueprint for what you want to achieve. And speaking of blueprints, ask any architect if the final build of a plan is one hundred percent in line with the concept drawings. You might be surprised to learn that architects, like writers, find unexpected challenges along the way. You must be willing to abandon or adapt your outline to the story as it unfolds. Creativity lies in the surprises.

Perhaps you are a visual writer. What does that mean? The office wall of a visual writer is scattered with drawings or images of characters, locales, and proposed story arcs. It is not unusual to see a display of multicolored Post-it notes coded for characters, chapters, and/or plot points. The patchwork serves as a reference point as the writing develops. It is easily rearranged to accommodate story order and to insert new plot developments as they occur during the draft process.

 

The third most common variety of writer is a pantser. A pantser sits at a desk with his or her writing tools of choice and begins without an outline, without a storyboard, to create the story as the words come. Although this implies that the pantster starts with nothing, that is untrue. A pantser has an idea, a central theme, or a character in mind, but they want to see how the story unfolds as they write. The pantser approach reminds me of an old movie where a spunky character says, “Let’s build a barn and put on a show.” What will the barn look like? Not sure. What is the show? Don’t know yet. How many roles are there? Is it a comedy, a drama, or a fantasy? This is my preferred methodology. I wait to see what the story wants to be, and I trust that it will unfold.

Is one method better than another? NO! In fact, as your writing practice evolves, you learn that there are benefits to each method and you develop your own hybrid style. You may have to submit three chapters and an outline to a potential publisher; you may learn to rely on the Post-it scheme to reorder chapters for an enhanced story arc, and you may realize as you revise that you have to trust yourself to flesh out the story.

The trick is not to allow the way you attack or prepare for the work to become a limitation or a roadblock to the actual writing. If your goal is a one-hundred-percent detailed outline, that is what you will achieve—an outline. If you want a story with heart, imagery, and color, you must trust your words to write. Perfection in preparation is like perfection in creativity: resistance. Regardless of your style, you must trust your ability to tell your story.

 

 

The Other Bogeyman in the Closet – Self-Rejection

Writing is hard. Go to any social media site and you’ll see posts from writers who declare that they want to write but don’t.  Others wait for divine inspiration and express frustration at their lack of ideas. Still more, state for public consumption that what they write is drek.

If as you sit at your writing place and start from the position of,”I have nothing to say” you have self-rejected.  If as you take your morning walk or drive and your internal editor knocks down ideas that pop at random. You have self-rejected.

All writers live under the delusion that every word they write must be both brilliant and perfect. Many forget that writing is a process, a practice. Self-rejection interrupts both. If every sentence, paragraph or page is rejected you may end up with a few finely honed, technically precise pages but in the process, you will remove the heart, the truth, the vulnerability of a readable story.

First, we must write. Think of first draft words as lumps of coal. Miners know that one found lump of coal indicates that there must be others. So many that perhaps a little digging will bring up enough coal for warmth and power.  They also know that coal can hide diamonds or other veins of ore. Diamonds are accessed by rubbing away the coal to get to the sparkle.

Fill your first draft with words that are misshapen, string them together until you have pages. Allow the pages to see daylight. In the sun look for the hints of sparkle. Allow the pages to age before you read a completed manuscript. Surprise your self. You will find that you have mined more than coal.

Edit and polish until you find the true vein of your work.

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© 2024 Lee Heffner – Author