Any writer will tell you there are fees associated with getting one’s manuscript into the right shape. Expenses can quickly stack up, and while some can be avoided, some should not. One of these unavoidable expenses is hiring the services of a professional editor to help polish your book.
Whenever I have spoken to fellow writers about this topic, everyone agrees the part an editor plays in a book’s journey is crucial, and that it’s also one of the biggest ticket items to budget for. So, if you have to part with so much of your hard-earned cash, you’d expect to see a proportionate amount of value… right?
Going the extra mile for the extra (hundred) dollars.
A writer friend recently told me she paid four hundred dollars to an editor who only ended up correcting a handful of commas. Understandably, she was disappointed. Although fixing punctuation is part of what an editor will look at, their role expands much beyond that. If that was all it was, there’d be no justification for the price tag put on getting your book edited by a professional.
Can you circumvent that price tag? I don’t believe so. Whenever a writer tells me they’re using a relative or a friend to edit their book, and a person who isn’t a professional editor - or at the very least, a writer - it makes me shudder. The role of any editor is to give you unbiased feedback (which is hard to find if said person is trying to assure you or spare your feelings). heir job goes beyond proofreading for typos and punctuation errors or telling you whether or not they liked your book.
The price they charge is proportionate to the amount of work, effort, time and expertise they pour into making your book as good as it can be—when they do their job properly.
The editor as a jack of all trades.
We writers know what it takes to write a book, to nurture it from scratch, to fix plot holes or wonky characters, and to make a story great. It’s one hell of a lot of work, and it takes a fair amount of juggling a lot of different pieces. It requires being a good writer and a convincing storyteller. It needs you to have–at the very least–a working knowledge of the trends floating around in literature as well as a broader vision of a book’s marketing potential and target audience. It means you have to be on top of what’s going on in society, of the topics most en vogue and the books currently doing well in the world.
Most writers struggle to balance even half of these at the best of times. In my opinion, these are skills that are needed not just to write a book, but they are some of the arrows one needs in their quiver to edit one as well.
Your editor needs to know how to tell a story, how to write it well, how to conform with the more technical writing rules of the region you are in, while bearing in mind where your story stands in the market, what aspects of it might appeal to your target audience. Finally, they need to be able to articulate everything you need to know in a constructive and supportive manner.
The editor as a spokesperson for an ever-changing world.
If you’re familiar with some of my previous articles, you will have heard me say I believe the role of writers is to portray the ever-changing world they live in. They need to observe the society they evolve in and relate it through the stories they tell.
Where the role of the writer is to record those stories, putting it into the context of their own life experience and value system, the role of the editor is to shine an objective light on the work.
In my own work as an editor, I’ve found myself commenting many times on certain elements of a story or characters that were at odds with the trends in literature and society at large. Areas where the writer’s bias was too apparent and risked ruffling some readers’ feathers. Think, for instance cultural, sexual, or racial bias coming through in a scene, plot or character, in an age where the wider world views are evolving on those topics. There have been more than one occasion where my role as editor has included educating writers on the changing trends in society, how they reflect in literature and how inadvertently glossing over them could offend some of their readership.
In that regard, the editor becomes a champion against bias, a keen observer of the world around them, so that they can put a piece of work in a much broader context. They need to know the trends, the never-ending shifts in cultural and societal inclinations. They have to be on top of the ebbs and flows of what goes on in the world to keep a writer’s work on point and accurate.
A big way in which one keeps on top of all these elements is by being an avid reader and naturally curious about the world and literature as a whole, to know what the multiverse of books is up to at any point in time.
The editor as your personal writing coach.
Now, it’s not sufficient for your editor to be adept at all these different things. It’s one thing for them to know what they are talking about, but it’s hardly useful to anyone if they cannot share that knowledge in a way that helps a writer improve their work. On top of having all those skills we’ve covered so far, they need to be able to articulate that feedback clearly through comments and annotations on your manuscript, and in an extensive, separate report. They need to be the writer’s very own coach—appraising their performance with objectivity and open-mindedness and being able to effectively convey what tweaks can be made to better that performance.
I find that the tone of the report, and any of the comments in the manuscript, can vary from editor to editor. It’ll be a reflection of who they are as a person. But the method of delivery should, I think, should always be clear, constructive and supportive of the writer’s efforts, regardless of whether or not they enjoyed the read. In that regard, the editor becomes the writer’s personal cheerleader, too. When working on a manuscript, I always put aside the initial impression of whether or not I ‘like’ what I’m reading. All I want is to give the writer a potentially new perspective on their work, pointers on things that can be built upon, and the confidence they can address each and every one of these elements. Far from wanting to deter anyone from pursuing a story or their writing endeavours, I aim to help on that journey. Some manuscripts will need more work than others, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. There is only what is, how the story works as a whole and what I can see can be done to enhance it.
The editor-writer relationship: finding the perfect fit.
I’m often asked how one knows how to find the right editor, and how to know whether an investment of several hundred dollars will yield any results. That’s a tough one, because I tend to think that not all editors are made equal, and that no two editor-writer relationships are the same.
To me, the best editors are curious creatures, avid readers and—ideally—experienced writers themselves, because it’s one thing to be able to point out something that’s not working, but it’s another to see how to fix it and have the willingness to explore different ways of addressing that if the solution isn’t obvious.
The best editors are excited at the prospect of helping a writer get the most out of their story, and for the story to get the most out of their writer. They’ll want the best for both the writer and the story, and be there to help bridge the gap if that relationship isn’t quite flowing. A writer I once worked with wrote the following in his review: ‘Lucie’s report and the comments in the manuscript have rekindled my fire and I look forward to continuing to work on my book’. This made my day, because anyone with good literary skills can fix typos and highlight plot holes, but the right editor for you will also give you the fuel you need—in terms of skills, guidance and energy—to want to keep at your work until it’s ready. My own editor does the same for me. That extra touch makes a world of difference, and it makes paying a little extra for the right editor the best possible financial investment on my writing journey.
Image credits: Gabrielle Henderson
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