What kind of editing does my fiction need?

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

Facebook Alison Gray Editorial Services


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

Working with PDFs – or ‘How I learned to stop worrying and go with the workflow’

By Eleanor Abraham

‘How do you extract text from a PDF?’

This is a question I see posed quite regularly in writers’ forums – and sometimes in editors’ forums too.

There are a couple of ways to convert a PDF into a text file, but I’m not going to tell you about them.

Am I some kind of jerk? Quite possibly, however, that is not immediately relevant to the original question. In response to the first question I would ask another question (definitely a jerk): ‘Why do you want to?’

Panic

A quite common answer is that a writer has just had their book formatted but they have spotted the breed of typo that only reveals itself after paying for typesetting. The writer panics. For whatever reason, they think that, rather than asking their typesetter to make the changes, it might be necessary/better/cheaper/less embarrassing to make the changes themselves. Maybe they will even find some magic workaround (that two dozen internet-forum publishing experts will be only too glad to tell them about).

But this is not a good option.

The simplest solution

The simplest solution – even if it’s potentially a bit awkward, given that they told the typesetter the book was the (last, final-final, very correct, no mistakes, yes I hired a proofreader, definitely) final draft – is to ask the typesetter to make the changes in InDesign and export the PDF again. (InDesign is the desktop publishing software that the majority of typesetters in the industry use to create book interiors.)

A graphic showing a Word doc being imported into an InDesign file, from which is a PDF is then exported.
The order of the workflow: A Word doc is imported into an InDesign file, then exported to a PDF (and potentially also an ePub)

PDFs from publishers

In another scenario, an editor will be given a PDF to mark up. I’ve seen some editors panic and assume the client has made a mistake. (In the editors’ forum, three dozen other editors concur, saying ‘Editing must be done in Word alone – so mote it be!’)

But a publisher client is unlikely to thank you for returning a marked-up Word file when they wanted a marked-up PDF.

It is now possible to import PDF comments into an InDesign file. It’s a great feature that means that any last-stage layout correction is quicker and easier to do.

So, changing the format of the file from a PDF to a Word document might create a lot of work for your publisher client.

Good communication and understanding the brief are key. I also think that knowledge of a project’s workflow allows you to appreciate why you’d be better doing things in a certain way.

Editing PDFs

Another common question is: ‘Can you edit a PDF?’

Yes (four dozen people in the editors’ forum will tell you) it is possible to change the text of a PDF.

But just because it’s possible doesn’t mean you should do it.

To be clear, I’m not talking about using the comment and stamp tools in Acrobat Reader, but using the text editing tools that are available in Acrobat Pro.

Imagine the scenario we mentioned above of a self-publisher who has realised their beautifully designed book interior did actually need a proofread after all. The client contacts an editor to ask them to correct their gorgeous mistake-ridden text directly in the PDF.

Do not be tempted to do that.

In this instance, we really need to contact the typesetter to get them to do the corrections in InDesign. Or, if the book’s mistakes are extensive, ask the typesetter to export the text from InDesign into Word again so that it can be proofread. They can do this in a way that retains all the paragraph and character styles, that can then (theoretically) be smoothly re-imported back into the InDesign layout.

File-version control

For reasons of file-version control, and to futureproof any later editions of a book, final text corrections need to be done in a master file, and by the end of the project that file will probably be the book’s InDesign layout. Changing the actual PDF means that if you come to update, publish in a new format, or repurpose the text, the last corrections won’t be in the very file that would have been the best source for the new edition. Doing the corrections in the PDF may create a problematic layout, with uneven lines or unjustified paragraphs. It might also mean fonts do not appear as they should. All this would have been easily avoided by using InDesign.

The secret’s out…

OK, I admit it, I proofread PDFs a lot, and I do extract text to Word. But I do it in order to run macros for consistency checks. If I find mistakes via the Word file I then mark them up in the PDF… because that is what the client wants.

TL;DR (Too long; didn’t read)

Can you extract text from a PDF in order to edit it? Yes, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eleanor Abraham has worked in book publishing for over 25 years, including (simultaneously) a stint in production journalism for about 10. She is an editor, typesetter, occasional writer, perpetual cat bore, and a CIEP Advanced Professional Member. Her specialist areas include commercial fiction, humour, computer science, Scottish interest, and – a sub-genre that is admittedly rare – the comedy cookbook.

https://eleanorabraham.com

You can follow Eleanor on Twitter

 https://twitter.com/EBAeditorial

Pic credit: Montage uses pics courtesy of evrywheremedia and OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay.

Writing a ‘letter’

Lucy Metzger has the last word in making communication count.

H E L P spelled out on typewriter keys

Letter writing 101

Letter-writing came up in a recent discussion with my colleagues in the Glasgow Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) group. What really matters if you are writing to someone? I suppose it comes down to one thing: what outcome do you most want?

Woman writes at office desk
What to say and how to say it – writing a simple letter isn’t always simple

Sample email 1

<Start of email> Hi,

How much would it be to edit my 120,000-word book?

Regards

<End of email>

<No signature>

Proofreader assessment: If this correspondent really wants my help, they will have to give me a lot more information before I can judge whether my skillset and fees will match their expectations. In addition, how much time do I want to spend asking the questions and waiting for the responses?

Sample email 2

<Start of email with no subject> Proofreader’s assessment: I’m put off by the lack of attention to detail.

<email salutation> Hi there,

Proofreader assessment: My name is not ‘there’. My name is visible in all my contact links. Is a future proofreader not able to work out my name from the links? Why not perhaps say ‘Hi Lucy’ or ‘Hi Ms Metzger’? Or, if they really can’t work out my name, show a little respect? ‘Hi O Wondrous One’?

<email continues> I have a degree in English and want to be a proofreader. Would this be a good idea? How could I get training?

<End of email>


Proofreader assessment: And might they acknowledge that they are asking me to help them? How could they do that?

Anyway, I hope you will all continue to explore correspondence in its many forms, and put your full name on professional things, and figure out the names of people you are writing to. And say ‘Please’ … ‘Thank you’. Also don’t use the word ‘haha’ in professional correspondence. And might they perhaps sign their own full name at the end of the email? I am SO middle-aged! But … you want to be a proofreader? Accountability!

With kind regards from middle age,
Lucy
Lucy Metzger
Editorial Services

Flapper for 1920s looks at letters and papers on the floor.
Where is the shredder?

Lenzie, 17 September 20
Dear blog-readers,
What comes through the post-flap? Bills, circulars, renewals, – but earlier this year there was a real letter addressed to me by hand. It was from a friend who was taking part in International Correspondence Writing Month by sending a hand-written letter to a different person every day for a month.


I was absolutely delighted, and I have put the letter up where I can see it all the time. Moreover, I have written a postcard in reply.


Evenmoreover, I have found a stamp and have actually posted it. I’ve resolved to take part in InCoWriMo next time – it happens every February.

Bluebird origami letter
delightful real letter

Everyone needs an editor

Post by Chris Bryce

‘If only I hadn’t said that’ … a phrase familiar to the broken-hearted following a heated row, or the regretful employee the morning after the office party. What would the miserable lover or tipsy partygoer have given for a filter on their spoken words? The answer would probably be … anything!

Given half a chance, they would have spotted their errors, stopped the conversation, cut out the offending sections of dialogue, reformatted the chat and started again.

Luckily, it’s different for the written word, because the writer can choose to get a fresh pair of eyes to act as that filter. And if those eyes are inside the head of a professional editor, who understands exactly where and why mistakes are made, then the writer will never have the unpleasant task of trying to claw back the words they’ve put on paper.

What do editors do?

Copy-editors know how to make words work well and deal with a wide variety of text – from T-shirt slogans, website wording and marketing materials, to academic papers, technical manuals and published books.

Whatever they’re working on, the copy-editor’s aim is always to improve the wording and format. Often referred to as the seven Cs of editing, an editor’s focus is to make the text: clear, correct, coherent, complete, concise, consistent and credible.

The human brain is hard-wired to fill in the blanks as we read. This gives us the ability to speed-read or scan our eyes over text. It’s a useful skill when we want to take in lots of information quickly, but it can also lead to us skipping over some outrageous errors without seeing them.

Here’s an example of what can go wrong. A healthcare provider had thousands of flyers printed to invite the local community to a ‘Pubic Health Day’. Of course, the flyers were meant to read ‘Public’. A funny mistake? The Chief Executive wasn’t laughing. Money was wasted on printing those useless flyers.

This example also perfectly demonstrates the unreliable nature of spellcheckers. ‘Pubic’ wouldn’t have been picked up by a computer program because it is a word; just not the right word here. Involving an editor or proofreader in the process would have saved a lot of time, money and embarrassment.

Who edits the editors?

It’s amazing how often good writers develop blind spots and fail to notice clanging typos and clichéd or overused words or terms.

Mismatched images and captions are another common area for mistakes, along with wonky formatting, punctuation and grammar. A text can have too few or too many headings, a variety of fonts and a host of other issues. Even copy-editors benefit from help with their own text and regularly seek the assistance of proofreaders to pick up on the unintentional typos and grammatical slips that can plague even the most elegant writing. Proof-editing (a combination of copy-editing and proofreading) is a comprehensive way to capture all of the problems with a piece of text, and turn good writing into excellent writing.

Don’t live to regret your words

It’s an editor’s job to help you make the most of your writing. But, perhaps more importantly, an editor will also help you to keep your reputation intact, making sure any written mistakes are never made public. (Or should that be pubic?)

As far as a verbal filter is concerned … well, drop me a line if you find the answer to that one!

 

For local, qualified copy-editors and proofreaders, take a look at our Directory now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris is an editor, proofreader and copywriter, with over ten years of experience across business, organisational and creative writing areas.

 

Editors – not just a bunch of pedants?

Post by Ron Smith

When I started proofreading and copy-editing for a living in January 2011, I was searching for order in language. So, if Hart’s Rules said it should be done in a certain way, that’s what I conveyed to, and in my very early days, perhaps even imposed on, some of my customers.

Hart’s is undoubtedly a first-class guide, but it is not the God of language and, indeed, there is no body in overall control of language – a concept argued in a recent BBC Radio 4 programme, ‘The Pedant’ (an episode in the Word of Mouth series).

Instead, general usage is what the language is.

Standards are slipping!

I used to be firmly in the camp of ‘Standards are slipping’ and, according to the above programme, I was in good company since Defoe and Swift, I learned, also held that view.

Much of my work is on documents produced by students, many of whom are postgraduates. I still have difficulty understanding how anyone can complete a university education and still not know the difference between ‘there’ and ‘their’ or ‘were’ and ‘where’, yet I come across this frequently.

So although the message from this programme is that standards of literacy have never been higher in this country, this is not a premise that I can wholeheartedly agree with. Having said that, my attitude towards, and treatment of, variations in language usage have altered over the years.

Old habits

In the past, I would:

  • always change ‘data is’ to ‘data are’
  • insist on the presence of ‘on the one hand’ before allowing ‘on the other hand’
  • make any leading capitalisation lower case if there was no grammatical justification for it
  • insert ‘that’, as a subordinating conjunction, at every opportunity
  • bar stranded prepositions (‘with’, near the end of the previous paragraph, is an example).

Current practice

Regarding the above:

  • It is perfectly acceptable to use ‘data is’, providing it is used consistently.
  • ‘On the other hand’ can be used without preceding it with ‘on the one hand’.
  • Leading capitalisation is a matter of style and, where necessary, I remark on it but do not change it.
  • Providing sense is maintained without the word ‘that’, I accept its omission.
  • There is no grammatical rule against the use of a preposition at the end of a sentence.

Pedantic rules

Before listening to this programme, I was not aware that many of the pedantic rules of language had resulted from people like Thomas Sheridan, in the 1780s, telling anyone who would listen that they were not talking elegantly or politely enough (loaded words in the 18th century). This was during the Industrial Revolution, when huge numbers of people were moving from the countryside into towns, trying to make sense and order out of the seismic changes in their lifestyle. Consequently, I can well understand how adopting such new rules was seen as part of people’s path to bettering themselves.

Language is constantly changing

Every year, the OED adds words to its dictionary and in 2014 alone that number passed 1000. Proofreaders and copy-editors are well aware that the language is constantly changing and seek to allow writers freedom of expression, while ensuring that the end product makes sense and is suited to its intended audience.

Sense, consistency and audience

Providing sense and consistency are maintained, and the writing suits the audience (another point made in the programme), I am now much more likely to accept variations in usage. Where any variation does not meet these three criteria, I will either correct any mistakes or make suitable suggestions on style, but now I will leave well alone, if at all possible.

How we can help

So all writers should rest assured that we proofreaders and copy-editors are not there to pounce gleefully on your possible stylistic infelicities but to make your document, on which you have probably spent considerable time and effort, fit to put before the specific audience you are aiming at.

To ensure your writing is fit for purpose, head to our Directory now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ron is a proofreader and copy-editor with a love of words, radio, travelling and sport, especially football (both kinds) and baseball – all of which keep him busy, as does his joint (with his wife) part-time job of looking after their new grandson.