Notes from Sheila’s Editing Talk

We’ve all heard of different types of editing. For example:

• Developmental, substantive, or content editing
• Structural editing
• Copy editing
• Line editing
• Mechanical editing

But what do they mean? And what might they mean for us?

Developmental edit looks at CONTENT

• What’s missing?
  • The things that were obvious to you, as the author, but somehow you forgot to explain them to the reader.
• What’s confusing?
  • The things you thought everyone knows but it turns out they don’t.
  • The bit you cut out, and probably shouldn’t have.
• What’s excessive?
  • The backstory you really want everyone to know but nobody really cares about.

Structural Edit looks at FLOW

• Is the timeline clear/consistent
  • Does one of your characters age faster than another?
• Is the action clear/consistent
  • Is the speaker still in the room when they speak?
• Is information given in the right order
  • Does the reader know enough to read each chapter?
  • Does the story have a direction, or does it wander vaguely?
  • Are you keeping the reader’s attention?
• Are some scenes missing, or superfluous?

Major Edits lead to Major Changes and are best undertaken BEFORE you get too attached to your final manuscript. Also, they’re time-consuming (for your and for the editor) and expensive! So how can we help? Join a critique group or ask for a group critique!

Minor Edits start when the story’s almost done. But they still lead to change, and they can still be expensive. Again, join a critique group or ask for a group critique to get (free) help from the Writers’ Mill.

Copy edit is not just spelling and punctuation

• Readability
  • Active rather than passive verbs
  • Split those tortuously long sentences
  • Split paragraphs by subject or speaker
• Facts
  • Did you spell the city’s name correctly?
  • Can you really catch a train from A to B?
• Legalities
  • Avoid quotes from songs or books
  • Cite references correctly

Line Edit – again, not just spelling and punctuation

• Word choice –
  • Can you use a different word instead of multiple repetitions?
  • Can you use a different verb instead of having five adverbs?
• Grammar –
  • Fix run-on sentences
  • Point out “Time to eat, children,” vs. “Time to eat children”
  • Make sure nouns and verbs agree
• Cliches – try to avoid them
• Voice – does a child suddenly speak in a lecturer’s voice? Is the narrator’s voice consistent?

Mechanical (Final) Edits start when you’re ready to submit

These changes will be small but important!  A critique group can really help! Or make friends and ask for help.

Mechanical edits don’t have to be done by machine, but Word offers a good mechanical editor under the review tab. Also, the online program at https://www.grammarly.com/ lets you proof one chapter a time, or one short story at a time, and gives lots of excellent suggestions.

Mechanical edits look, for example, at:

• Spelling – English, American, both?
• Grammar – dialog, narration – consistent application of rules
• Punctuation – what rules are required by the publication?
• Format – again, what rules does your publication impose?

Editing Poetry

Writing and editing poetry is different, of course. Poetry follows its own rules.

• Do you want to start each line with a capital letter?
• Do you want punctuation, or will you use line and stanza breaks instead?
• Are you following a strict rule for rhyming?
• Are you following strict rules for syllables or beats?
• If lines are too long, how do you want them to split?
• Centered, left-justified, mixed indentations…?

The editor’s job is to make sure the choices are consistent.

• Don’t use capitals in one stanza and ignore them in the next.
• Don’t use punctuation in one stanza then ignore it in the next.
• If most lines rhyme, maybe all lines are meant to… but only maybe!
• If the beats are consistent in most stanzas, maybe they should be in all… but only maybe!
• Any break in the rules may have been made for a reason, so ask the poet!

Mechanical Edits for the Writers’ Mill Anthology

See the help section on our website: https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/help-2/using-word-with-style/ to find some of the basic mechanical edits that we do for the anthology.

• Remove double spaces at ends of sentences
• Remove tabs and spaces at beginnings of paragraphs, and blank lines at the ends
• Apply Word styles to create more flexible and consistent spacing and indentation, for prose and poetry

Then look at: https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/help-2/writers-mill-anthology-style-guide/

• Rules for ellipses – do they have spaces before/after?
• Rules for em and endashes – which ones to use and how?
• Rules for apostrophes – Tom’s dog or Tom’s dog? Etc.
• Rules for time – 10am or 10 a. m.
• Rules for quotations… etc.

What if you want to hire an editor?

Most editors will edit some number of pages free, to give you an idea of how they would work with you. If you like their work, then you’ll talk money. If you don’t like their work (or the price), then you should hire another editor. Whatever words the editors use, decide what type of editing you want, and work out if that’s what they’re offering.

• Serious edit – This is what authors pay Sheila for:
  • Developmental and Structural, but works on the assumption that the author won’t want to make major changes at this point.
  • Emphasis on Copy and Line editing
  • Plus Mechanical edits.
• Quick edit – This is what we do for the anthology:
  • Fix overly-obvious developmental or structural issues
  • Emphasis on Line and Copy edits, but keep changes very minimal
  • Mechanical edit to make all entries match the same “house” style

Note, all these are things we can do, in part, for ourselves. And all are things that will need an extra pair of eyes before you can do them successfully. As authors, working in our own secret worlds, we can get too close to what we’ve written, and we need an editor to show us how what we’ve written will affect other readers. That said, don’t forget asking the group to critique a part of your work will also let you know how other readers are affected by what you’ve written.

DIY examples

The talk ended with some sample paragraphs for members to edit on their own. I’m including them here for you to try your hands at. Ask a friend if you want to find out how you’ve done. And remember, there’s a difference between repainting Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in orange and sticking to the artist’s (and author’s) vision. For example, you might not like the sentence “Tom’s dog is big and brown and beautiful.” “Big, brown, and beautiful” is a perfectly sensible change. BUT, if the author is deliberately using a “childish” voice, the repeated “and”s may be just what the author wants. The editor should be invisible in the final product, and only the author’s voice should shine.

Tom’s Dog

Tom’s dog is big and brown and beautiful. It’s ears are long and it’s nose is short. And it’s mouth — well, it’s mouth is bright and smiley and filled with tiny white teeth. Tom’s dog never bites, he’s always so friendly, he’s never even barked at anyone other than the postman.

(Did you remember to check if the dog was male, female, or neuter? Plus many more errors, of course—and don’t forget to check for straight (vertical) or curly quotation marks—curly in some fonts, slanted in others.)

Tom and Terry at the Lake (beginning a story about Tom, Terry, Trevor, and Taz)

     Tom and Terry weren’t friends with Alex and Raymond anymore. Alex had moved to another school last year, and Raymond had started hanging out with some of the older kids, and didn’t seem to care about them any more. But Tom and Terry made friends with Trevor and Taz and started playing down in the meadow after school. Trevor had a remote-controlled boat and they loved to chase the ducks on the lake with it.

        One day Tom and Terry was heading down to the meadow and the lake. They could hear the sound of Trevor’s boat, and Taz’s voice squealing with delight (cont.)

(Did you remember to choose between anymore and any more? And what about those character names? Paragraph indentation? Plus many more errors, of course)

The Necklace (beginning a story about Alice and Joe)

“Hi Joe,” said Alice, as she walked into the room. Joe turned around to look at her.
“Hi Alice. You look gorgeous today,” he said. Alice smiled.

“I put this necklace on, just for you,” she said.

“Why?” said Joe. Alice came closer and fingered the colored beads on her necklace.

“Can’t you see?” she said. “These are the beads we won at that contest, the day we first met.” Joe stared at the beads. Then he stared a little lower. Then (cont.)

(Look at the paragraph spacing, and check for all the other errors too.)

Friends

Jessica stared at her friend. How could Mary say that? Does she really hate me so much? But what was the good of thinking about it now. The words had been said and everyone had heard, so she stormed out the room.

“Stupid girl,” said Mary. “She’s always overreacting.”

“I know, “said Alice. “It’s not like you said anything so bad.”

“She just….. Oh, I don’t know…”

Jessica couldn’t listen anymore. “I’m not overreacting”, she cried. “ I ‘m not.” And she flounced to the door.

(Did you spot the switch from third person to first. Maybe use italics for internal dialog, or else rephrase. Also, how many times did Jessica leave the room? And what about those ellipses? Quotation marks? Spaces?)

Peter’s Bike

The open road beckoned, and Peter had finally finished his jobs in the house. Sure ,Becky would want him to sit on the sofa and watch boring TV with her for a while ,but the sunshine … the open road… He climbed onto his Harley Davison, quick, before she could tell him not to, and gunned the engine.

(What sort of bike is it? And what sort of spacing do you want around ellipses—consistency is the rule.)

Escape!

Jack ran, hearing the crash of his pursuers through the undergrowth behind him. He dodged the delicately pale blue hydrangea and ducked under hanging branches of lemony japonica. A camelia blocked his path and he slipped to the side, his feet sliding on fallen pink blossoms that lay on slick, gray, over-watered soil. Spikes of astilbe feathered his legs with pale-colored, dust-like pollen. But the still enemy approached, and still he struggled to get ahead and find a hiding place.

Perhaps among the clematis, the thought, in the gap left behind the neatly-woven trellis and the house. He scudded his feet to hide the trail his footsteps were leaving in the soft, moist, loamy soil, then he leapt from the path, untangled himself from the rose he’d failed to notice, and slipped into the gap.

Now he pulled the pistol from his pocket and waited to shoot

(A very horticultural gunman perhaps, but the plant names might distract from the immediacy of his predicament. Also, is he running because he heard the crash, or did something happen earlier—action should always go before reaction. Plus other errors, of course.)

Jane in her Room

Jane loves flowers.  She used to sped hours in the garden, pulling weeds, planting new flowers, trimming the flowers on the bushes. Her favorites have always been flowers with gentle scents.  Not the overpowering scents of her mother’s beloved Lily’s, and not the skunky scents of crown imperium. But the delicate waft of  a  new-budded rose, the perfume of lilac or lavendar.  Now she sits by her widow, staring out to the red-hatted gardener as he pulls his rake. And she wishes she could help him. She wishes she could climb out of this chair and step, and bend, and pull. And stop and smell the roses.

(Watch out for typos and multiple repetitions of the same word. And can you see the double-spaces at the ends of some sentences? Don’t use double spaces—Word will space out the ends of the your sentences for you.)

Another World

Auchterperyandrix turned to their colleague, Thryamaeriapolyan, and uttered through the the rubbing of their various antennas, the sequences of ratchety sounds, that meant “Let’s go this way.”

Thryamaeriapolyan nodded their webs to agree, and the two areanopticaeds leave the open path to float along a tunnel between the branches of the thinaveran trees.

They turned to their friend. “Thryamaerapolyan, don’t you think these thingaverans are getting rather weedy. D”you suppose there’s something wrong with them”?

“No,” said Auchteperyandrix, waving their upper antennae gently into the branches. “No, they’re fine. It’s we who are growing too fat.”

“And why would that be?”

(If you must have really weird names, best to make them readable/pronouncable. And definitely make sure they’re spelled the same way every time you use them! This matters with real words too—antennas or antennae?)

Birthday Party

At the end of the party the children gathered in a circle to join in the familiar song.

“Happy birth day to you! Happy birth day to you!”

Mary beamed contentedly from her highchair, even though she couldn’t possibly understand the words.

“Happy birth day, dear Ma-a-a-ary. Happy birth day to you!”

Everyone cheared, and Mary threw her toy donkey at Alan.

Everyone except Alan cheared even more.

(Let’s all cheer perhaps, on learning that you CAN quote the happy birthday song, as it has finally come back into the public domain! Thank you Zita for looking that up!)