Becoming a freelance independent editor (part 3)

Dear Victoria, I came across your lovely website while googling the difference between copy-editing and line-editing. I was a news sub-editor for a year and worked for six years as a quality assurance proofreader of technical documents. I’ve also worked in Asia, bringing ESL texts up to English native speaker standard. Recently I’ve been helping some self-publishing writers with a bit of basic copy editing and proofreading using New Hart’s Rules. I have also signed up for the SFEP’s Introduction to Fiction Editing course. I recognise that news editing, technical proofreading and ESL editing are all very different and unrelated to fiction editing! I would like to move into line editing as a freelancer. I understand that without experience this will be very difficult. Do you have any advice? Claire George

Yes, I do! I can sum it up in two words: endless study.

  • I also began my career as a journalist, with many years as the editor-in-chief of the smallest periodicals in the Pacific Northwest. Journalism is terrific training for conciseness:

    Use only the words you absolutely need and no more.

  • I worked for a very long time in technical documentation in Silicon Valley, as well. Tech docs is terrific training for clarity:

    The reader must understand what you’re saying effortlessly and intuitively, or they’ll walk away.

  • And I’ve studied English communication through translating Asian tech docs and my background in Spanish. ESL is terrific training for comprehension:

    Take full advantage of the reader’s preconceptions and natural understanding of their native language wherever you possibly can.

  • Finally, yeah, I’m a published poet. Poetry is terrific training in subtext:

    What you don’t say is more powerful than what you do.

Now, Hart’s Rules apply only to British English, and the SfEP Introduction to Fiction Editing is a copy-editing course only, which does not teach line-editing. Proofreading is a non-issue—that can be done by anybody, and most of the professional Editors I know are terrible at it (including me, although I worked for many years as a typesetter, in which it could be argued that my one responsibility was proofreading).

So what you’re studying right now is copy-editing, specifically copy-editing as it applies to British English.

You will probably not learn line-editing anywhere except from an experienced long-time professional Line Editor. (Not short-time! Most short-time Editors have never been taught proper line-editing.) College and university English Departments can teach you how to dissect a phrase or sentence or paragraph to understand the power of language. And poetry classes can teach you the importance of word choice, rhythm, and subtext. But I don’t know anyone reputable teaching courses in prose line-editing. And I definitely wouldn’t trust anyone I didn’t know—it’s far too easy these days for someone who doesn’t even realize that language techniques exist to set themself up online as an ‘expert’ and start taking money under false pretenses.

I taught myself line-editing over the course of several decades through an exhaustive study of hundreds of novels and stories and poems, a massive project involving meticulous word-by-word analyses of thousands of samples. I discovered for myself what the best techniques are and where and when and how and why they work. (Notice the basic tenets of journalism!) Today I know a ton of ways to make prose powerful, elegant, and transparent.

I’ve discussed the fundamentals and terminology of line-editing in Art & Craft of Writing Fiction: 1st Writer’s Manual.

Line-editing is a fabulous craft that deals directly with the reader’s subconscious. It allows fiction to by-pass the consciousness to create visceral responses to brilliant language. And it is one of my greatest joys.

But it is also a dying craft.

So if you truly love language deeply enough to make it your life’s work, then definitely: embark upon your endless study of it! Help us save this craft and, with it, a full half of all the magic of fiction!

In the meantime, I would finish the SfEP Introduction to Fiction Editing course and then begin building your professional reputation as the best Copy Editor in the world.

Make this your life’s work.

BECOMING A FREELANCE INDEPENDENT EDITOR: Part 1, Part 2, Part 4