At StoryBuilder, we firmly believe that working with seasoned editors can help writers vastly improve their manuscript as well as their general craft. This week, we spoke with freelance editor Derek Prior to get his thoughts on the benefits of working with a professional editor. In our next blog post, we share Derek’s guide for how to prepare to work with an editor.
Self-publishers often publish their manuscripts without investing in editorial services because they worry that they won’t see a return on their investment. In your experience, why is this a misstep that can affect the success of their book?
Too many self-published authors have a tendency to rush to publication as if their lives depend on it. Writers set arbitrary deadlines and then feel they don’t have time to sufficiently revise their manuscripts. A lot of writers don’t even redraft. I guess it all comes down to experience, and some people need to learn the hard way.
The problem is that a heap of unedited books, rife with errors, goes on the market and not only damages the individual author (if your first book is a litany of mistakes, who’s going to buy the next one?), but it contributes to giving independent publishers a bad name.
Quality is completely under the indie publisher’s control. There is no reason why every aspect of publication can’t be as good as, or better than, the books produced by mainstream publishers. There are plenty of quality affordable services for indies, including editing. If writers want this to be a serious and successful business, they have to invest—not only in editors, but in cover designers, formatters, proof readers etc.
If the book is any good, and if the quality is the best you can make it, there will be a return on the investment, even if it takes a while. Once you have a decent product, you have to learn to market it, but it strikes me that a lot of writers are good at marketing, but not so good at producing top quality books.
What are the most important benefits of working with an editor (either for the manuscript or the writer’s overall craft)?
Most people have at least one good story in them, but not everyone is aware of the mechanics of effectively communicating that story in writing to another person. My background was in the theatre as an actor, writer, and director. Conventions are fairly entrenched in stage productions, but so is the practice of deconstructing conventions and laying bare the mechanics of theatrical artifice. It is an enormous aid to communicating with an audience if the performers understand what it is they are doing, and how it will typically be received. Writing fiction is no different in that respect, and in both art forms, the key is to show rather than tell, to engage the reader/audience through their emotions, tantalize them with their expectations, and lead them into the suspension of disbelief. A good editor will have the experience and knowledge to identify where a writer is failing to do this, and will be able to suggest ways to markedly improve a manuscript with a particular eye on how the writing will be received by a reader who is not privy to the private thoughts and intentions of the author.
No matter how good a writer is, they still need an objective assessment of their work. Generally, writers are too close to the text to be able to identify some problems. It may be that elements of content just don’t add up, or don’t come across clearly. Sometimes writers believe they have conveyed something clearly, but the idea is still in their head and hasn’t made its way onto the page. Then there are the idiosyncrasies of style that may cause problems with readability, and the typos that are effectively invisible after too much time staring at the screen.
A good editor will be aware of the issues of communicating story, character, themes etc clearly to a reader. They will be able to deconstruct a piece of writing and identify where there are problems with the mechanics, and what to do about them.
With a good editor/writer relationship there is often a degree of mentoring. The editor will bring to bear knowledge of grammar, etymology, voice, symbolism, genre, issues with point of view, flow, repetition—things that some new writers have never thought about. Many people are unaware of the importance of how a passage sounds when read aloud. Simple word repetition can destroy this, as can accidental alliteration, rhyme, poor word selection, and too many clauses in sentences. Then you have stacked adjectives, injudicious use of adverbs, archaisms, dangling participles, tautologies and pleonasms.
Most of the writers I work with pick these things up quickly. I often notice a marked improvement in subsequent works submitted to me, which makes the editing process much easier.
A little bit about Derek:
Derek Prior is a freelance editor and author. He was born and educated in the South of England. Derek qualified as a Registered Mental Health Nurse in 1992 and then went on to read Drama, Classics and Medieval History at the University of Wales, achieving an honours degree. Derek read Theological Studies (MA) and undertook Doctoral research on Antonin Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty at UWA. Derek is the founder of the discussion community, Mysticism Unbound, and founder of Indie Fantasy Review. You can find Derek at his website: http://homunculuseditingservices.blogspot.com/