Colette Duggan, Author at Glasgow Editors' Network

Any fiction writer thinking of getting some editing done will be faced with an array of confusing terms, so here is a quick guide to fiction editing. What was once called ‘getting your work proofread’ has become a several-headed monster of complication and diversity, leaving the perplexed writer throwing up their hands and screaming, ‘Just tell me how bad it is.’ (Or good if they have a healthy level confidence and optimism.)

But those heads did not grow because editors like faces. They grew organically out of the increasing needs and the diversifying skills of the profession that is editing fiction. So, to desperately extend a metaphor, what do those heads look like and which one do you need to hunker down and get face to face with?

I like to see fiction editing needs in terms of distance and sandcastles.

Let’s imagine you have some good sand with a good supply of sea nearby. How do you create the premium sandcastle? Here are the four rough stages of the build.

Drawing out the blueprints (also known as mentoring or coaching)
A distant view of the hills (also known as developmental fiction editing, structural editing, or story editing)
Getting up close and personal (also known as copy-editing or line-editing)
The fine-tooth comb (also known as proofreading)

Drawing out the blueprints (also known as mentoring or coaching)

Drawing the Blueprint for fiction editing — Figure 1 Drawing the Blueprint

This is for the chaos at the beginning of the writing process. Writers approach each story with a different ‘lead’. It might be a character whose voice amuses and torments you, a place you need to show, or a story that keeps adding to itself. At this stage, you might be filled with excitement, or daunted by the thought of the work ahead. Maybe you have a few good chapters and some great ideas for endings, but you have precious little clue as to what will happen in the middle and are really not sure whether Aunt Margaret should die or even be in it. This is when mentoring might help.

Mentoring – what it is

Mentoring is new in editorial help – a more recently grown head. What does it involve?

All editing tends to be bespoke, but mentoring is the most bespoke. When looking for a mentor, you will want someone who has a feeling for your work and who you feel comfortable working with. When you find a promising candidate, the first thing to do is meet.

In these days of technology and plague, this might be physical, digital, or even analogue. The prospective fiction mentor will usually offer this for free because neither of you know if you will be able to work together yet. In this initial meeting, you share what your project is, where you are with it, and what you feel you need from a mentor, while your prospective mentor considers whether they are a good fit. If the sparks start to fly (or the roses start to bloom – depending on genre) then you will look at booking some meetings. Here mentoring differs from all other editing: you pay for it per meeting.

Mentoring – how it works

What happens in these meetings will depend on you, the mentor, and the project. (Remember that whole bespoke thing.) But it will involve discussion. Your mentor may ask you to tell the story and this may allow questions to bubble up from either of you. It might become clear that certain story threads have plot holes or that certain characters are unnecessary.

At some stage, maybe when the plot feels sound, your mentor may ask you to get something written down, a few chapters or all of Part One. Or maybe in-depth discussion is the way forward for you. At its most basic, mentoring is a kind of handholding that stretches through the whole ‘shitty first draft’[1] stage. You may require gentle coaching to remind you of why you are doing this, or long black metaphorical whips and stern, ‘You said you would have Part One finished!’ interventions. It may span three, ten, or more meetings and take anything from a few weeks to a few years. But it will involve someone taking a close and involved look at your writing, being on your side, and diluting that painful feeling of you being out there on your own with your words.

A distant view of the hills (also known as developmental fiction editing, structural editing, or story editing)

A distant view of the hills - an overview of fiction editing — Figure 2 A distant view of the hills

When you have that completed draft you will want to know if it is any good and, related to that, what to do to get it to the high standard it needs to reach to be accepted by agents or publishers or, if you are self-publishing, to be sent to the printer. Writers are often too close to their writing to know what is working – and what isn’t. So, our sandcastle is built; it is looking good, though that west tower may need some shoring up and you are not sure if the moat is deep enough. At this point you might ask family and friends to have a look, or you might use beta readers: people who will read through your work – for free or as a professional service – and give you feedback. Most writers have an idea, however vague, of what is problematic in their work: the plot is not strong enough, the pace is too slow, there is too much ‘telling’. Or they know that they struggle with point of view and getting dialogue right. These are exactly the areas that developmental fiction editing will try to identify.

Different types of developmental edit

What the developmental edit does is clear: it steps back and identifies the bigger problems that a manuscript has and also where it is successful. What is less clear is the level of detail into which the editor will go when they give their feedback. There are, very roughly, two types:

a short report with minimal or no actual comment in the manuscript;
a long report, often with a detailed breakdown of each section of the work, and an extensive commentary written onto the manuscript.

The first is often called a manuscript critique, the second a developmental edit or a full developmental edit. (Good editors are clear about what they offer. Read their websites carefully to see what you are ordering.)

What type of developmental fiction editing do I need?

So how, when you realise that you need a developmental edit, do you decide which of these edits you need? The first question to ask is how much help you feel you need. Do you want a hint, a bit of a nudge in the right direction? Maybe, you just need to be told that you have a great idea here, but that there is a lack of tension throughout and please see the resources attached. Or that the story is sound, but is Mr Black’s plot line necessary? If this is enough for you and you are confident that you know enough about the craft of writing to go about fixing your problems on your own, then a manuscript critique may be what you need. But, if you are less confident about your knowledge of writing craft, you may need an edit that goes in-depth on all aspects of the manuscript. This type of edit will pick out the weaknesses and offer a detailed analysis of them. If you want possible solutions that may be applied, then you may prefer to go with a full edit.

A rough idea of cost

The second, and maybe more relevant, question is: how much money can I afford to spend on this? A critique is cheaper than a full developmental edit because it takes a lot less time and expertise. When you ask an editor to do a developmental edit, you are asking them to live with your book, puzzle it out, struggle with it, and perhaps offer suggestions as to how to fix it. And there is a cost to that.

But what developmental fiction editing does, whether detailed or general, is give the author an idea of where to take their manuscript next. How ready is the book? Are there big issues which require a complete rewrite of some or all sections? Is the basic idea on a precarious peg and could it do with a serious rethink or possibly even abandonment? Or does the book need a shuffling of chapters, a rewrite of chapter six? Maybe it needs a real questioning as to why Aunt Margaret needs to die and Aunt Penny gets to live? This edit helps to move you to the next stage: having a story that holds. At that point, you are confident that all the big work has been done – structure, plot, sub-plots, time scale, characterisation. Now you can get on with the fine work, home in on the words you are using, their beauty, effectiveness, cleverness. A good developmental edit gives you leave to do this.

Manuscript critique and developmental edits are usually offered as a set price. Most editors will offer a price for an average manuscript (under 85,000 words for adult fiction) with the price increasing for larger manuscripts.

Getting up close and personal (also known as copy-editing and line-editing for fiction editing)

Seeing the detail - copy and line editing within fiction editing — Figure 3 Seeing the detail

You have had the development edit, or the perusals from the brilliant beta readers. All lumps are smooth. That castle is the best-shaped castle with moat, bridge, and every tower in the correct place . And, you have written it well, pouring all your word skills into making it the best it can be. You just need someone to have a wee look-see. You need a copy- or a line-editor.

Many editors use the terms copy-editor and line-editor almost interchangeably. I do. It is editing the work line by line, attending to every detail. This is where the editor’s skill as a word worker comes in. Here the editor will look at the language: the repetitions, the accuracy of the words used, pace and flow, as well as punctuation and spelling. They will keep an eye out for consistency (blue eyes should stay blue, pregnancies should last nine months – unless you’re a dog, then it is three months) and for facts. (Actually, dogs are pregnant for about two months – an editor would have caught that.) In terms of the castle, this is where pebbles are into moats, fashion our best shells along our bridges and adorn our ramparts with stone-people, feathers, and the odd bone.

There are different ways to charge for this. Some editors will offer a price for the whole project (as in developmental editing above). Others may charge per thousand words or by the hour. Editors may also offer this service for short stories – to help you get them ready for competitions or journals – or for the first part of your novel, sometimes even offering a submission package to help you to approach agents, publishers, or novel-writing competitions.

A fine-tooth comb for your work (the proofread)

A fine toothcomb - proofreading stage of fiction editing — Figure 4 A fine toothcomb

The work is done. Both story and words are smooth as glass. But if you’re an independent author readying yourself to send your manuscript to the printer, you know that the manuscript needs to be as close to perfect as possible. The proofreader will take the pretty much perfect manuscript and pick out all those teeny errors that have been missed. It might be a typo, a homonym, or a confusing comma. This is the bit where that top-tower flag gets straightened, and that cockle shell is made to face in exactly the right direction.

Publication

Leading us to publication. Oh, happy day! And that is when we … Well, that is a whole other head-rich monster to analyse. Let’s keep that for another day.

Alison Gray is an Intermediate member of CIEP.

www.alisongrayeditorialservices.com

Twitter @algrayeditor

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[1] Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, New York: Anchor Books, 1995, p 21.

By Colette Duggan

I have always loved a hat, in fact for many years, I was rarely seen without one. While styles have changed and my head gear is now only worn on cold days or at weddings, I still find myself wearing many metaphorical hats.

I assume, you are not here to read about all of my hats, but two might be of interest – writer and editor. But first a wee explanation of how I got here. A love of reading and writing led me first to an English degree, then a post-grad in Librarianship and a career in education.

Colette Duggan as a child on a swing — I started my hat wearing early

Three children and a plethora of care responsibilities later, I was working in a supermarket, wondering how I had veered so dramatically off track. I was writing though, and as Colette Coen, I racked up a few short story prizes and publications, and self-published a novel. While one of my writing buddies wrote a best seller, I was still at the £10 and a free copy of the magazine (if I was lucky) end of the market. So, something had to change. I looked at how I could marry my love of language with a new career. Specifically, I needed a job that I could do at home.

As my care responsibilities increased, keeping even a part-time job became untenable, but not working was not an option – bills to pay etc. I completed Proofreading 1 with the Society for Editors and Proofreaders when I was still working at the supermarket. Then, when I left, I took the longer Essential Proofreading with the Publishing Training Centre. I chose to study both online and with the support of my local Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (ciep) group (many of whom also belong to the Glasgow Editors Network) I upgraded to intermediate membership of ciep.

Colette Duggan in her Artful Dodger hat — With a feather in my cap (as the Artful Dodger)

So, back to the hats. Editing and proofreading give me an income, while writing is part of who I am. I love working with words and while it took a long time, I’ve finally figured out what hats I want to wear. It is very useful that the skills needed to be a writer and an editor, dovetail, and the knowledge required for both are complementary. Writing magazines helps me creatively, while I can also keep up-to-date with the latest from the publishing world. Similarly, my experience as an editor, not only helps my clients, but allows for greater understanding of my own writing style and foibles.

I am adept at keeping to specific word counts (which most competitions require) and find that when an author wants excess words cut, I am good at trimming the fat. I derive a strange pleasure when I am editing a dissertation, rearranging sentences or tidying grammar, to find that I have reached the exact word count required. Something is obviously going on in the background of my brain, and the odd glance at the bottom of the screen helps keep me on track.

I also take huge pleasure in thumbing through my dictionaries, thesaurus and Fowler’s Modern English Usage (not to mention countless other word books). While I may be looking to solve a specific issue in a client’s work, I can also add to my creative cache.

The fact that I have self-published my own short story collections and novel means that I can help independent authors get their work online and in print. As an Amazon author, I can share my experiences and help them manage their publications. I can also provide guidance on creative skills and information on outlets for work.

Picture shows Colette Duggan — Editor at large

Some people might worry that their ideas could be pinched by an editor who is also a writer, but they can be confident that this is very unlikely to happen. All editors in this network abide by a professional code of conduct and our ethical standards are held to account by the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading. In my many years of writing and taking part in workshops and writers’ groups, I have been amazed how the same prompt can result in a huge variety of work. That means, that even if an idea were to worm its way into another writer’s brain, it would come out as an entirely different piece of work.

At the moment, most of the editing I undertake is academic, so there is no possibility of crossover with my fiction. But even when I am working on someone else’s fiction, I am aware that I am dealing with their words and stories. The thought process that led them to put their words on the page is theirs alone and it is up to the editor to guide and assist, not re-write.

One thing which freelancers struggle with is how to divide their time. It can be difficult to have a clear demarcation between work and life (more hats). This is particularly true when one of your jobs can also be classed as a hobby. I have a simple priority system where the paid work comes first, followed by trying to get more paid work, followed by writing. What I have found really useful, is that the paid work gets me to my computer and once it’s finished, my hands are nicely warmed up to continue typing. Helping others make their work the best it can be, is also a great motivator to do the same for my own work.

Editing and proofreading have also pushed my technical skills further. I regularly dig about in the dark recesses of Word to make my clients work look more professional. My formatting knowledge and IT skills also help when I am presenting my own work, whether in print or on the Internet.

Working freelance can sometimes make it difficult to plan, but I love a spreadsheet and manage to keep things running smoothly. Obviously, there are limits on my time and client deadlines always take priority, but there can be fallow periods. These are the times when I catch up on marketing my business – Beech Editorial Services – and continue my professional development. (I hope to upgrade to become a professional member of ciep in the next year). I also take the opportunity to work on my second novel, ready to swap hats when the next editing job comes around the corner.

Did I tell you my granny was a milliner? Now, that’s another story…

Find out more about my skills and services at Colette Duggan

Author: Colette Duggan

What kind of editing does my fiction need?