Some Editors’ Accoutrements of War

by

Charlotte Firbank-King

 



Editors are there to guide and help writers hone their skills and write the best story they can. But is there such a thing as over-editing or bad editing? I think there might be. It’s possible to buckle under the weight of rules and lose heart. This is often how it goes:
First shot fired across the bows—show, don’t tell.

Really? How are newbies supposed to know that and then still grasp the concept? This is followed by a barrage of cannon fire that leaves the newbie’s sweat and blood, ah manuscript, littered with bullet holes—ah, comments and deletions, much like this list:

      These are misplaced modifiers.

      Hey! Put the comma in a compound sentence.

      Use emotions, actions, be creative—don’t constantly use, he said/she said.

      Slow the pace.

      Keep the pace going.

      No shopping lists.

      Watch that POV breach.

      This is a gawking narrator.

      Add more atmosphere.

      Stop with telling the reader every last detail from the sand on a pair of shoes to each painting on a wall.

      Too many adjectives and adverbs, cut ‘em out or at least down to one, maybe two.

      The scenes aren’t rich enough—Flesh them out.

      No passive sentences allowed.

      Stop with all the gerunds.

      Enough already with the clichés.

      Oi! Watch those intensifiers.

      Stop with the redundancies.

The list is long and daunting. It’s like putting running shoes on a baby after their first step, then shoving them on a track and hollering, “Now show me what ya got!” Or a kid writes their first word at school. Time to throw the thesaurus at them. “Right, now sharpen up your prose!”

And the broadside shot, most loved by some editors—toe the line if you want to be published or be a bestseller, usually couched in polite, but veiled threatening terms. It may be a terse: fine, if that’s how you want to write. I’m only here to guide you. But it really means—you will never succeed if you don’t follow the rules!
None of this is bad advice—well, except this last salvo. In fact, rules need to be pointed out (not fired like a volley of bullets) or it wouldn’t be editing.

After the battle, the newbie is a crippled, gibbering wreck, ready to wave the white flag, and their characters are collateral damage in this war to forge a newbie into a James Patterson. The newbie is ready to give up dreams of becoming a writer, never mind the next NY Times bestseller. Has the editor crushed the newbie's fresh, albeit naïve prose? Maybe. But hell, the editor is pleased to see nice crisp writing with not an error in sight and every word, every sentence perfect—or soulless? Maybe even a clone of the editor’s style.

It would behoove editors to remember when they first started writing. I know I was lousy. But like all newbies, my eyes sparkled with enthusiasm and my fingers itched to write one of the million stories churning about in my creative head. The only thing I had was a love of words, but I went forth to conquer with blind gusto.

Then I crashed and burned. Maybe I was delusional and couldn’t write at all. My manuscript was littered with red and comments and deletions crawled over themselves like worms in a can.

Copious tears and rants later—the dog, cat, and parrot have all fled to safety—I pick myself up, dust myself off, wipe my bloodied nose, and forge ahead with grit and determination—I will learn—I will succeed! Despite the editor beating up on me.

First rejection letter. Second and on to the twentieth and then some more rejection letters.

Crash and burn again. This writing gig really hurts.

I think editors often edit their own work into a blubber heap of perfect writing without a pulse.

My own personal rule: write as it comes—usually badly, then cut out the glaring tumors and breathe life into it. I know many editors approach their work like this. They should look at newbies in the same way, and avoid killing the newbie's naïve approach to their story. I mean, it will need major surgery and a full face lift or ten for sure, but take care the story doesn’t morph into the cat-lady with excessive surgery—ah, editing.

On the flipside, I understand the frustrations and obsessive desire to whip a newbie into shape, but stop!

The art of writing well doesn’t happen in a day or even a year—it takes thousand and tens of thousands of words and years, and editors know this.

Maybe it’s time to cut ourselves and the newbies some slack.

Does this mean one shouldn't hire an editor? No! It means a writer should hire a good editor who is sensitive to the writer's voice and doesn't trample on it, and who doesn't overwhelm a new writer with a barrage of rules without giving examples. A good editor will build a relationship with writers, new and seasoned, and they’ll encourage when one is too despondent to continue.

Think Mount Everest and the Sherpas that guide one to the summit. That is what you need in an editor—a Sherpa. Inspiration for Writers will help you find your Sherpa to get you to the top of your Mount Everest. Just give us a call.

Believe It or Not, Editors Aren't Born Writers

by

Charlotte Firbank-King

A month ago—in South Africa, just to ground the reader—I had to pack up my house and studio in Port Elizabeth and relocate to Durban. In the process, I came across stuff I’d written when I was about eighteen. All the writing from my early teenage days must have been binned at some point, since, at eighteen, I was clearly past rubbish writing. I do recall being convinced that my romance novel, grandly titled, Inner Flame, was going to be a best seller—no question about that. One look at this title and you realize it doesn’t get much more purple than that. God help the poor soul who dares venture between those pages, but I can laugh at myself and did indeed go there. Let’s say it wasn’t really a venture, but rather a stumble over purple prose, a million adjectives and adverbs, and fat grammatical and spelling errors (no spellcheck back then). The head-hopping alone made my head spin.

Then I got married and nothing much happened because I was too busy breeding. I found more manuscripts, written when I was about thirty. I was clearly done with procreation, and I had a divorce under my belt. This second stab at writing was an improvement, but still no cigar for good writing.

The point of this trip into the past? Editors aren’t born writing with skill.

To be honest, if Inner Flame came across my desk now, I would probably send the writer every tutorial IFW has, including a thousand writing links on Google, and then tell them to go hide in a cave and learn to string at least one coherent sentence together before wasting their money on an editor.

Here are a few pearls from Inner Flame. I left the spelling errors in, even though MS Word kindly changed them for me. I must have been fixated on the size of the room, since I sure didn’t need full stops. This was all handwritten before I finally scored a wondrous typewriter.

Felicity walk down the wide stairs to the room below, it was a vast ball room hung extravigantly with chandeliers, the floor was glossy marble, Victorian furniture was arranged in it a large grand piano of oak stood at the far end of the room like a majestic queen of furniture, heavy curtains of deep red velvet adorned massive windows and french doors.

The chandeliers must have smiled from above to see this pink whisp of a girl almost float accross the huge room, she might have been a thistledown in a field for all she compared in size to the room.

Here is another gem:

Felicity was a long time in falling asleep, she lay between the soft linen sheets staring out of huge windows at the moon, clouds drifted like silver ships across her face, as round as a disc.

I could go on, but I would hate to hear a reader had died from laughing. The head-hopping examples of my eighteen year-old brilliance will take too much space, so I won’t bore you with those pearls of delight. You will just have to trust me that they’re there with oak-leaf clusters.

I now challenge our other editors to expose their badly-written-gems’ bellies to the public.

Surely, if we once wrote this poorly, there’s hope for you. If you need help bringing your writing up to the next level, email us at IFWeditors@gmail.com. Besides simply editing your work, we explain why we’ve made the suggestions we make so you learn as you go. Need even more help? We offer coaching, which is a personalized tutoring service that teaches you the things we’ve learned over the years. One client told us she learned more from one of our edits than an entire MFA program in creative writing. We’re here to help. All you have to do is ask.