Paksworld

For the past week, I’ve been working on the revisions my editor sent me (in two parts), and it occurred to me that the process might be interesting to you.  I can’t share exactly what my editor said, because since she and I both know what’s in the book, our communications are just about solid Spoiler.   But with a little judicious tweaking, I think I can give you a taste of the experience of being edited by an excellent editor, though it will reveal some of my weaknesses as a writer.

Editorial comments  fall into three basic categories: the surface-level error…the structural glitch….the foundational/design disaster.  Within quote marks is the original text; the comments outside quote marks are my editors, suitably trimmed to avoid spoilerish revelations.  Square brackets are where I inserted a substitute, non-spoiler, filler.

Luckily for me, my editor hasn’t found any of the foundational/design disaster problems in the first 400 pages of manuscript.  Large WHEW!   Why?  Because if the deep structure–the foundational design–is flawed, then everything built on that flaw has to be redone–it’s not sound.

Let’s skip to the easy one, the surface-level error.   That’s where haste or carelessness or exhaustion said the right thing the wrong way, a way that will confuse readers.   The wrong word, the misspelled word, the pronoun without its antecedent anywhere in sight, the word whose meaning is too general, the clumsy construction (often, with me, where my mind started to write the sentence one way and changed to a different way in the middle.)

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Ex:   “The [title of person]  made it clear that it wasn’t.”  What does the second it refer to?

Ex:   “This place is a warren”   Does he mean the city, or the palace?

Ex:  [individual] says “I never liked them.”  Specify who them is.

Ex:  “They should have killed that scum and broken it up.”  Specify what it is.

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These kinds of comments make the writer want to smack herself upside the head (should have seen it, should have fixed it, before ever the editor got hold of it) but they’re easy to fix (especially on a computer: delete, insert right word, go on.)  They’re especially likely to sneak in when the POV character is thinking, holding an internal dialogue–because the POV knows what “it” is or who “he” is, the writer feels comfortable with the unattributed pronoun.

It’s in the middle ground of structural glitches, though,  that time begins to disappear. What kinds of mistakes can be made here?   Well, in this instance, one big problem was how much backstory “bleed-over’ to have from the previous books, for those who hadn’t read them (or hadn’t read them lately) and how much would bore those who had read them lately.   My editor said “too much reference to events outside this story will be offputting…” Basically, we don’t want people not buying this book because they think they must read the others first.

This meant cutting out things I’d put in, quite a lot in the first hundred pages or so.  Cutting is…tricky.   For instance,  a direction early on to “delete mention of the prince and coronation” means that what had been a reasonable response to the character’s comments now isn’t.   If I had just cut all the places listed for cutting, the “flow” wouldn’t be there–it would be choppy and (in places) nonsense.    Editors know this.  Mine, after telling me to yank out a couple of paragraphs, said “you’ll need a segue…”  She said that more than once, actually.

Also in the structural glitches category:  things that got out of order (usually by only two or three sentences, but enough to be stumblers) and inconsistencies (that creep in between drafts.)   I mentioned in an earlier draft finding one myself–well,  the eagle-eyed editor sees all and notices that A & B were killed on one page;  several pages later, A is still dead but B (and now C) are in prison.  Oops.    At this point in the story, B could be either dead or alive, but he can’t be dead on p. 163 and alive on p. 174.  If you take out the second iteration, but leave in C being in prison (but is it necessary right there?) you then have to plaster over the gap and smooth it, so it looks as if it had always been that way.

Contorted sentences, such as “We send by separate courier orders for their captain when they return…”  need reworking.

Yet another structural glitch arises from leaving out something the writer knows (but the reader can’t.)   It’s like leaving out the staircase between floors.   When an editor says “I was very confused by this opening scene,” the writer knows the scene must be re-written and expanded to un-confuse the editor (and editors aren’t confused as easily as ordinary readers.)  Phrases like “rather disconnected” and “without enough reason” are major red flags, and are going to engender considerable work.

In this book, assuming knowledge from the earlier series would magically transport to this produced a character gap.  My editor was confused, couldn’t figure out where he’d come from, why he was familiar with Kieri.  Recent readers of Oath of Gold will know who Garris is…but others need an introductory phrase or more.   (I know him very well…that’s not enough.)

A good editor–and mine is excellent; I’ve been lucky to fall into the hands of excellent editors–wants to make the book better at what it is.    It’s their special gift to spot the problems that will unglue readers from the story–that will confuse, bore, annoy, or otherwise bother them.   The more the writer has spotted the problems and fixed them, the more likely it is the editor will find all that remain: it’s easy to pick up one candy wrapper in the middle of a clean floor in a few seconds, but if you’re faced with a hideous mess, and have only five minutes, chances are some bit of trash will be missed.

The trick, of course, is to subdue the writer ego long enough to realize that yes, the editor  does know what he or she is talking about.  My personal rule (it’s just mine; there’s no real power to it) is that if three alpha readers comment on the same thing or one editor comments on it, there’s a problem.   My fix may not be the suggested fix (because I will want to do the re-plaster/re-smooth thing starting farther back then the commenter realized I want to go) but I will fix it.  It can take multiple redrafts to get it right–summer before last, I spent some time at a friend’s house between conventions struggling with the revisions for Victory Conditions with the aid of two writer-friends.  One scene was heck-in-a-bucket for seven drafts.   But then it sang.

Anyway:  it always causes at least a ripple in the Force when the comments come in.   But reason must prevail.   Though there are bad editors, they’re few  (copy-editors, on the other hand…)  and good editors–the majority–want the book to be better.  They are not hacking off the limbs of your firstborn to make it a ruined cripple…they’re hacking off the ugly lumps of stuff that disfigured your beautiful Idea.   Even good editors–even excellent editors–can make mistakes, but it’s far more likely that they’re not.    So I read the comment s and let them alone for 24 hours.  If necessary  I go out and kick rocks or poke my fencing friends with swords or hack down brush until I can face the letter with equanimity.

I have only one item left to go on the current set (covers the first 400 pages) so I’d better get back to it.