Currently, I serve as first reader for an acquaintance/internet friend. She’s been published a couple of times by POD/electronic firms. I know, from having asked her, that her Very Favorite Writer (Formative Years division) has produced an entire shelf full of well-aged mulch. I wasn’t going to call it that, but my Internal Editor, who was looking over my shoulder when I tried to read the stuff, refuses to apply any other printable label.
As you might expect, my friend has picked up all of VFW’s worst habits, and added a few of her own which come from not reading much that isn’t illustrated (manga, graphic novels). I’m concerned that I know really only one way to write—Dorothy Sayers, Dick Francis, Josephine Tey, Robert B. Parker, and John D. MacDonald are the writers I think might have taught me most—and that I’m trying to teach her to write like that. I can see, though, that that isn’t what will serve her best as a writer.
So my question is this: as an editor, how can I tell when I’m editing somebody, as opposed to attempting to make their fiction over in my own writing’s image? I don’t actually believe this to be possible in my friend’s case, as our VFWs are so very far apart, but it would be useful information to have when I get enough of my novel complete to go to a critique group. But if I am doing that to her, of course I need to stop.—R.F.
Well, for one thing, R.F., if you want to model yourself on Dorothy L. Sayers, you”ll do great stuff, but your ego will have to be ENORMOUS. She thought more highly of herself than anyone else did, either before or since.
🙂 Just had to say that!
You’re a mystery reader, eh? Such a fabulous genre. I’ve reviewed books by all those you named on Goodreads earlier this year and have most of Sayers’, Tey’s, and MacDonald’s books on my vintage mystery shelves. And I just finished reading John Dickson Carr’s The Blind Barber last night. Joy beyond joy! What a fun writer.
Now, my advice to you is going to sound like a cop-out, but it’s really not: I strongly advise you, as a peer critiquer, not to Line Edit at all.
Line Editing is the most intuitive part of the editing craft, one of those things that takes eons to learn how to do properly, distinguishing between decisions as a matter of good writing and those as a matter of the writer’s voice. It took me decades of working professionally to learn to do it well. That’s decades. So I couldn’t tell you in a nutshell, “Do this and not that,” and really be any help. The possible techniques are numerous, and each one has its own strengths and weaknesses, its own aspects to be considered within the greater work as a whole.
Line Editing also has a lot to do with developing your professional ear, and if you don’t have that ear yet you might very likely make things worse.
When I Line Edit clients’ work, I have to be able to explain clearly and logically why I’ve done what I’ve done every single place I’ve done it. There are myriad reasons to alter copy, but only the right reasons actually improve the work. All the rest is playing with someone else’s dynamite. My clients listen to me (usually!) because they’ve paid me for my professional expertise. It’s simply a different kettle of fish. (And sometimes they do kick—which engages my professional expertise as a handler of writers.)
Peer critiquers are really best as companions and supporters rather than editors. You don’t have the authority to tell your acquaintance how to write, so if you try you automatically run the risk of alienating someone you get along with otherwise quite well. I mean, is she going to Line Edit your stuff to read like her own VFWs? Really—it’s such a slippery slope.
Talk your characters over together, ask penetrating questions about what they want and need, what they fear, where their story might be going. Be the one to say, “But if that’s the decision they’d hate to be faced with most in the world, that makes it your Climax, doesn’t it?” It’s so easy, as the writer, to cringe away from the obvious catastrophe, and sometimes you just need someone with less feeling for your beloved protagonist to put their finger on the hot button.
Help each other think of ways to add internal conflict and surprise. Help each other solidify the structure of your novels along classic structure, practice plotting together, get Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones and give each other writing assignments. Discuss really good books on writing to inspire yourselves with your work. Hold your heads and moan, side-by-side, when the Self-Loathing Phase of Revision gets you down.
But leave the Line Editing be. Basic Developmental Editing can be learned by anyone, as can be Copy Editing. Line Editing others’ work, though, is simply too complex to tackle unless you’re already a professional.
What is this Line Editing of which I speak? And why do I keep speaking of it?