GUEST SHOT

Advice For Authors

by Renni Browne

Why Every Writer Needs An Editor

NEW AUTHORS SOMETIMES have a tough time appreciating the value of editing. As somone with experience on both sides of the editorial balance -- I earn my living as an editor and have published a book of my own with HarperCollins -- TW3 asked me to help readers of this column understand the value of line editing. I'm going to start by defining some terms and finish with a bit of show-and-tell.

Line editing is "hands-on" editing. The editor (whether that's you, a professional editor you hire, or somebody a publishing house hires) goes through a manuscript reading every single sentence and making whatever changes are needed to make sure that sentence is as good as it can possibly be. Is the sentence clear? Is it smooth? Most important, does it accomplish exactly what the writer intended?

The editor's changes may involve putting in words, taking words out, or changing the words around. On the other hand, the editor may decide the sentence is as good as it can possibly be and leave it exactly the way it was written.

This process takes objectivity, skill, and a whole lot of time. Publishers used to line-edit a manuscript once it was under contract. These days, a manuscript that needs editing of any kind may not get a contract in the first place. According to a recent article in The New York Times, if it's by a new writer it's very unlikely to get a contract.

The one kind of editing most publishers still provide is copy editing, which many people confuse with line editing. You might think of copy editing as the editorial attention most publishers provide before sending a manuscript to the printer. It's the copy editor who makes sure the grammar and spelling are correct, the punctuation and capitalization are consistent, and the character's blue eyes in chapter one don't turn green in chapter eight without benefit of contact lenses.

Copy editors are usually free-lancers hired by the publisher rather than full-time members of a publisher's staff. Line editors are in rare instances hired by publishers but usually are independent editors hired by writers. They're sometimes referred to as book doctors -- a term I dislike because it implies that the manuscript is sick and that the editor's job is to "fix" it or turn it from a bad book into a good one. That, of course, is very different from helping make a book as good as it can possibly be.

Independent editors do another kind of editing, before the line-editing stage. It's usually called developmental editing or conceptual editing. This kind of editing usually is done with long memos from the editor to the author, and it always involves working with the author to strengthen plot, characterization, or other content issues. Line editing, on the other hand, involves strengthening the literary style, the way in which that content is delivered.

Many writers do their own conceptual editing; many others hire an independent editor to do it for them -- and this includes writers who've had many books published that were highly praised or sold a huge number of copies. Alexander Ripley, during the year when one of her novels was at the top of the bestseller list, told a convention of booksellers that any writer who doesn't hire her own editor "has rocks in her head."

Unpublished writers need good editing because they're unlikely to get published without it. Good writers, published or not, deserve good editing -- and, yes, they need it, but not to fix a book that doesn't work, not to turn a bad book into a good one. Editors don't make up for a lack of talent any more than coaches make up for a lack of athletic ability. What editors make up for more than anything else is a lack of objectivity. As any writer knows who has finished a book-length manuscript, that book is your child. How many parents do you know who are 100 percent objective about their children?

As the Times article made clear, many of today's publishers expect -- or demand -- that manuscripts be edited before the publishing-house editor ever sees them. Many literary agents tell their clients that having their manuscripts edited is the single most important thing they can do to increase their chances of publication.

But time-consuming, highly skilled work doesn't come cheap. Hiring an experienced editor might be the best investment of your career, but what if you don't have the money to make it? An overview of your manuscript's strengths and weaknesses costs $2 a page at our shop, but what do you do if it's 600 pages long and you just don't happen to have $1,200?

You may be able to do a good job of conceptual (content) editing yourself -- if you allow enough time to pass between finishing a piece of writing and trying to decide where its content needs strengthening. And if you can see your lack of objectivity for the blind spot that it is, you may be helped by the feedback of a literary-minded friend, or the members of a writer's group, or a teacher or professor. It won't do for you what an independent editor can do, but feedback from non-professionals is better than no feedback at all. Just remember, if you go this route, that it's your book -- take to heart every bit of the feedback that feels right to you, and let the rest go. That principle applies to editing you get from anyone, but it's particularly important if the person assessing your work isn't a professional.

You can learn some of the principles of conceptual editing from a few books for writers, including the one I wrote with Dave King called Self- Editing for Fiction Writers. But most of what's covered in that book is intended to teach writers the principles of line editing. If you use the book rather than just reading it -- do the exercises, take the tests -- you'll learn how to line edit your work so that it looks professional to a literary agent or publisher.

The dialogue passage you're about to read takes place between the psychiatrist police called in when a woman confessed to a murder she couldn't have committed and the woman's very angry husband. It's reproduced here first as the author wrote it, then with my comments and suggested changes, and finally with those changes incorporated but not showing, so as to create a clean copy. The book was published, had good reviews, and sold well. Its author kindly agreed to let us show rather than tell what line editing looks like:

"Laura's illness is very complex," I said. "If you'd just..."

"My wife obviously has a screw loose somewhere," he said. "I was under the impression that the family is informed when a person goes crazy."

I sighed. "Sometimes that's true," I admitted.

He said, " But you don't think my wife is crazy, or what?"

My frustration was mounting. "I wish you'd stop throwing that word around so casually," I snapped.

"I don't give a goddamn what you wish," he said. "It's obvious to me that my wife should be in an asylum."

What an odd choice of word, I thought. "There are no asylums any more, Mr. Wade," I pointed out.

He got up, walked over to the window and looked out, then turned back to me. "Whatever," he said. "A hospital, then."

I took off my glasses, rubbed my eyes.

"Why do you think she should be in a hospital?" I asked him.

"Delusions. You've heard of them?"

"Once or twice," I said sarcastically, beginning to lose it. "Why don't you tell me about Laura's?"

It's good dialogue -- very good. In fact, it's too good to need all the explanations the author originally included. When working on screen, an editor would normally make comments in the form of footnotes at the bottom of each page; when working on hard copy, comments go in the margin of each page. In this case, I'll skip to a clean copy of the edited passage with all the changes incorporated and follow up with some bullet points:

"Laura's illness is very complex," I said. "If you'd just--"

"My wife obviously has a screw loose somewhere," he said. "I was under the impression that the family is informed when a person goes crazy."

I sighed. "Sometimes that's true. But--"

"But you don't think my wife is crazy, or what?"

"I wish you'd stop throwing that word around so casually."

"I don't give a goddamn what you wish," he said. "It's obvious to me that my wife should be in an asylum."

Asylum?

"There are no asylums any more, Mr. Wade."

"Whatever," he said.

"A hospital, then."

I took off my glasses, rubbed my eyes. "Why do you think she should be in a hospital?"

"Delusions. You've heard of them?"

"Once or twice," I said. "Why don't you tell me what you think Laura's are, Mr. Wade."

What can you learn from this exercise in editing? Here are the main points on which the foregoing changes were based:

• Having angry characters interrupt each other is a good way to show how angry they are.
• When a scene is very tense, whether it's an action scene or "just" dialogue, paragraph frequently. It cranks up the tension another notch.
• Don't interrupt the flow of a tense dialogue scene often for "beats" -- little bits of action in a dialogue scene that aren't dialogue. And make sure the beats you do use really add.
• Don't explain your dialogue. When you read back over a scene, if the dialogue conveys what you've explained, cut the explanation. If it doesn't, rewrite the dialogue -- a far better solution than propping it up with an explanation.

[ Copyright © 1999 Renni Browne. All rights reserved. ]

Renni Browne is the co-author of Self-Editing For Fiction Writers: How To Edit Yourself Into Print (HarperCollins), the first in a projected series of books for writers. She is also partner (with Ross Browne) in the book-editing company she founded in 1980, The Editorial Department, and a commentator on writers and writing for a small southern public-radio station. She lives on a Blue Ridge mountain at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line.

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