Tag: (business) Editing

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words 6/2/2009

Erin Penn

Photo by Justin Luebke on Unsplash

Big Changes Required

Editing is a mix of making sure the story is the best it can be without imposing your personal voice on the author’s voice. Like a sculpture where you take stuff away until the art of the marble is there. And sometimes that means telling the author a HUGE chunk of their story needs to be rewritten.

This happened with prolific author C.E. Murphy, and she shared her feelings on Magical Words 6/2/2009 in “A Conversation with my Editor”:

I think most telling about the process is in her comment (6/3/2009 at 1:06 am) to Faith, David where she wrote:

y’know, I really didn’t feel like she was asking for something huge. Maybe because I wasn’t comfortable with how the beginning of the book fit with the rest of it,

She knew something was wrong with the book; it had been eating at her on some level. I’m betting the editor coming back with the reason and a solution was something of a relief (after getting over the shock of needing to rewrite 20% of her manuscript to fix the issue). I don’t normally ask for big changes from my authors when I edit, but the few times I have, they have been really happy when they responded after a couple days – usually with “I knew something was wrong but couldn’t figure it out”. Once it was a nearly immediate “THAT’S IT!!! Thanks.” – and I didn’t hear back from the author for two months.

First hint: Take a couple days after getting the editing letter back to mull on the issues.

Second hint: Ask questions.

If you notice Ms. Murphy asked questions and discovered a deeper problem. The editor didn’t gel with the main character. The romantic element being front-loaded into the novel kept the main point-of-view character’s relationship with the reader from fully forming. The problem wasn’t so much about the romantic elements existing, but the room they took away from other elements.

Again the Magical Words link is:

Editing Rant: No Squiggles

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It’s okay to ask submission editors why they rejected your work, especially if you reached the full manuscript stage.

You might not like the answer, but you can ask.

I had one person whose unsolicited submission made it past the three chapters. I asked for a full manuscript. After reading and finding multiple problems, I gave general instructions on how to fix them and asked for a Revise and Resubmit (R&R). This is a huge stage to get to. Say out of 100 submissions, three make it past the full manuscript stage. Sure the R&R isn’t exactly happy, and there is no guarantee of sale even with an R&R (so don’t do it unless you agree with the changes recommended – more on that another day), but that is a long, long way into the process. You have something that someone enjoyed reading enough to give it a second chance.

When I rejected it, they very politely asked “if something is standing in the way of my manuscript being accepted.”

Yep. Those blue and red squiggles in Microsoft word. Sure a fantasy or sci-fi will have some for the weird words and names, but basics? Fix them. No squiggles.

The submission had gotten so far, and the author didn’t bother cleaning it up before hitting send.

***

My Full Response: Your voice in the manuscript was fine. I asked for an R&R because I enjoyed the story and thought it had merit for a second consideration. I’m nice, but not re-read a manuscript just to be nice type of nice.

The copula issue is common – I mark it on over half of all authors I work with. And one of my favorite authors, I am constantly reminding him that Word has this thing called spell-check and he really needs to turn it on and use it before sending stuff to me.

The spell-check errors killed the submission. If a writer doesn’t care enough to make sure Word isn’t marking errors, I have a problem caring about editing. Can I trust them to listen to editing advice when they don’t even look for it when it is right in front of them?

Does that make sense? Again, one of my favorite authors sets off this pet peeve of mine – so the peeve gets fed pretty regularly. I try to slim it down when I can (it gets so heavy if I am not careful, and I hate to carry it around), so I stopped reading when those squiggles got to be too much.

Good luck.

Erin Penn
Editor

***

So this poor soul shot themself in the foot. I had given them a second chance with the R&R; they didn’t get a third. The favorite author is under contract and can get away with being a computer Luddite. New folks, not so much.

About one in five unsolicited submissions fail this test. If the squiggles aren’t cleaned up, the writing has to be so amazing I don’t notice the squiggles. And that hasn’t happened yet. Remember your manuscript is passing two tests (1) is it a good readable story that the publisher can market and sell, (2) does the author show they have what it takes to be edited? Those squiggles tell a different tale than you want the publisher to read.

F is for Falstaff

Erin Penn

 

F is for Falstaff. Hey all, I’m an editor at Falstaff books and we are having a 99 cent book sale on our first in series. Below are four of the 33 on sale (if you want to know more – just let me know … others include space western, fantasy, and sci-fi.). I kept it to four of my faves.

The Darkest Storm Book 1: Storm Forged

First up is the first book I developmentally edited for Falstaff (I’m over 20 books now) – Storm Forged (not the proofreader!). A superhero in a not-so-happy world. Selling tag line “The X-Men meets The Hunger Games in this thrilling debut superhero novel!” (Clicking on the title or the book above will take you to Amazon) That is it for books I have touched. Full length novel.

Now books I have read

  1. Of Lips and Tongue by A.G. Carpenter – the first in an amazing series of Southern Gothic novellas (all of which are out). You can by the taster below or get the omnibus – Touch: A Trilogy

 

2. The Mussorgsky Riddle – A psychic mixed with music in Urban Fantasy. So good. Full length novel.

3. Perishables – Y’all know I love Michael G. Williams and his writing. This is the book that started my love. A vampire has to decide between revealing himself or letting his Homeowner’s Associate get eaten by zombies. The first in the series is really two or three novellas combined and isn’t the best of the series … but it is a great and fun beginning.