Editing for dummies (or: I may not have known what I was getting into)

Cafe Society
1

I wasn’t planning on becoming a beta.

It’s just that I get… twitchy… about typos and other writing errors. I can be reading the best story, but if there’s homophone confusion or misplaced capitalization, it significantly diminishes my enjoyment. I notice it, like a pebble in your shoe when you’re trying to enjoy a hike. If the problem is rampant enough, I can’t even bring myself to finish the story. And since I read a lot of fanfiction, rampant writing errors spoiling otherwise good stories is a common problem for me.

Recently, I was reading Chapter 1 of an intriguing crossover on AO3. Interesting premise, one of my main fandoms, well-handled integration of canons. Also enough errant spelling and grammar to bother me. I gave in to temptation and posted a comment offering to proofread future chapters; I wasn’t sure what response to expect, but to my surprise, the writer enthusiastically accepted.

I think that I should be able to spot problems, based on my track record of spotting problems even when I don’t particularly want to spot them. But then, just because I see something doesn’t mean I see everything. Is there a trick to making sure you haven’t missed anything? I was planning on gritting my teeth and slowly rereading everything two or three times, but that was before the writer sent me the draft of Chapter 2 and it turned out to be twenty pages. I don’t think I have the attention span to reread* twenty pages* that closely.

My parents are English majors, and they were willing to be a second pair of eyes after I was done with my red-penning- just for the first few chapters, to gauge how well I was doing. That may happen for future installments, but they’re very slow readers, and, well, twenty pages.

I think I would feel a lot better about this if it weren’t for the twenty pages. I really wasn’t expecting that based on the size of Chapter 1.

Also there’s awkwardly phrased or unclear wording. I can just fix bad spelling, but for “I don’t really think you say it like this” I probably have to leave a note for each instance explaining what I think is wrong, correct? And suggest an alternative?

Does it sound like I have a clue, or should I go find someone to help?

Yours in sleep deprivation,
MIS

2

Good editing takes forever. There are many levels to consider. Correcting typos, putting back missing words, noting grammatical errors are the easy, brainless stuff. That’s really copyediting, which is a very different thing.

Real editing requires looking at each sentence to see whether it’s understandable, flows properly, and uses the right words. Then looking at each paragraph to ensure that the sentences work together to serve a purpose. Then looking at each long section to see if the action/tension/characterization builds to an end.

Editing isn’t the same as rewriting, though. It should be enough to put a brief comment against bad sentences. Trite. Confusing. Awkward. You just said that. Where did that come from? Huh?

Twenty pages are nothing much. I’ve been in many writers groups where that’s one of several short stories to be discussed. True, these were mostly writers whose every sentence didn’t need correcting but not always. If all you really want to do is copyedit, then maybe you should just say so and stop there.

3

If none but a fool writes for anything but money, it’s that times 47 for proofreading. A few thoughts…

Proofreading–fixing errors–is different from copy editing, where one tries to improve the writing where necessary. You might want to stick to catching errors.

No one catches all the errors. Especially given what you’re being paid, don’t let the perfect get in the way of the good, and cut yourself some slack.

I hope the 20 pages are double spaced with wide margins.

I was recently volunteered by Kropotkinskaya to proofread the cookbook of our local, awesome cheese vendor. I spent about 15 hours on it. I had assumed I might be rewarded with a piece of Parmesan wheeled into our car, or perhaps a nice wedge of Stichelton. I got nada, zip, zilch. I am exacting a price by delivering a bad cheese pun every time we’re there. “Did you hear about the explosion in the cheese factory? De Brie was everywhere!” “We have mice in our place. They’re church mice–they keep asking me if I’ve heard the good news about cheeses.”

Help from Dopers welcome with this. Good luck with your proofreading–bail when you can.

4

Right, are you editing? Or critiquing? Or proof-reading?

If you’ve just agreed to read through and flag SPAG (spelling and grammar), then reading through once and doing so is a totally valid place to stop.

5

I am in a similar position, proofing for a friend. As there has been no mention of payment, I’ll give it a good read through, and that’s it.

6

I was just going to do SPaG, but syntax is sort of a type of grammar, at least to my way of thinking.

Well, I’ll see how it goes.

7

If you’re doing SPaG, I find the trick is to read as if you were grading the paper, analytically, if that makes sense as a reference. You’re not reading a story. You are critiquing a performance. Get your read pen out, and scan the sentences, marking as you go.

The word “beta” gives me pause, however. Did the author specifically ask you for SPaG? Usually a beta reader is reading for high level story flow, and plot. I just wanted to check that I understood that correctly.

8

Actually, I do have a specific question. How do you describe a sentence where the subjects of the clauses go back and forth in an awkward manner? Like, “The trip would have taken even longer, or maybe even have never gotten started, Bob, who had traveled with Alice before, thought with exasperation.” Because I’m going to need to use that one a lot.

9

All right, a specific example. For that sentence: It should be completely recast. It’s too long.
If I was getting paid to do an edit the way I usually do, I would put a note to the author and say, “Fix this, too many clauses.” For one thing, there is no conclusion. “This trip would have taken longer, or maybe never even gotten started,” if…WHAT? There is a missing conclusion here. What is the significance of Bob having traveled with Alice before? Did that make it harder, or less hard? What’s going on? If it’s otherwise explained, that sentence doesn’t need to explain it. Readers aren’t going to put up with lack of clarity for long.

If I was getting paid to fix it without querying the author on it, I would break it into at least two sentences, but I still would want to know that conclusion. It might be apparent from the context. If not, need to know author’s intent here.

A proofreading trick, if you’re getting too caught up in the story to see the typos, read it backwards. Either page by page, or line by line starting from the bottom of the page. This way you see the errors and don’t get involved in the plot.

10

I normally describe something like that as “confusing.”:confused:

When I edit I generally read everything at least three times. The first is for general narrative, content and flow. I normally don’t make any notes or changes unless something is just glaringly wrong. I simply want to get a general idea of the writing and tone. The second read-through is for SPAG. The final read is for comments, questions and rewrites. Obviously, that takes the longest.

The sentence above, however, would have been redlined on my first readthrough.

11

I’d underline with a “??” or a note - confusing - but only if that’s the type of editing the author is looking for.

(If that is the shape the book is in, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.)

12

SISTER! hugs you, crying tears of joy

One thing I try to avoid when I edit other people’s works is doing their rewriting, both because d’oh it’s their work not mine and because I think part of my job as editor is to teach them what did they do wrong and why, so they can do better next time. So I ask a ton of questions and they’re neither rethoric nor sarcastic. If I say “I’m not sure I understood this part here, mind explaining to me in different words?” it means exactly that: I’m not sure I understood it, and I’d like a different explanation both to see if I understood it and to see if the writer did. Too often I’ve seen people misuse words, expressions of even copy-pasted jokes they didn’t understand, hence the “mis”.

And, don’t worry about spotting everything (I know, easier said…). Not only because you too are allowed to be tired, but because it is perfectly possible for a sentence to be perfectly clear to people from a certain background but not to others; you just can’t spot, nor is it your job to do so, anything that may be difficult, offensive or whatever for someone from the other end of the world. I know several dozen people who learned about a certain alternate meaning for the word “beaver” when some innocent oversized, dam-building rodents got turned into still-dam-building otters by a well-meaning idjit who didn’t think of Talking To The Writer. Or that there’s places where otters have… a bad reputation…

13

Download an app to your phone that will read documents aloud and listen to the thing you’re editing being read. It helps so much to catch poor constructions, overuse of words, and many other problems.

14

Sister back atcha!

If you don’t mind, how did you learn to explain things? One thing this experience has made clear to me is that I judge writing almost entirely by feel; I can see that a sentence (fragment) like “Re-meeting strangers who knew each other better than their own selves” needs to be taken out back and shot, but I’m at loss to say why it’s so bad, beyond “awkward phrasing” or “This would sound better as…” I did end up rewriting a lot of the person’s sentences because I couldn’t communicate what exactly s/he should have done differently.

15

Nava is right. It’s not your job to re-write it for her unless you’re getting credit as a co-author. Words like “unclear”, “choppy”, “awkward”, “What?”, “did you mean that…”, “fragment”, “who said that”, “where are they”, “verb tense”, verb agreement" are all very helpful for you to add as notes, but the author needs to do the work. You can also circle the good bits, “well written”, “beautiful”, “character shines through”, and so on, to recognize things that work well.

Stop the re-writing though. The author won’t learn anything, and you’ll get frustrated, and do a lot of uncredited work. If something is broken, note that it is, and move on.

16

I’ve been meaning to come back and thank Nava for the advice. It’s been working pretty well so far- I say, “you need to change this”, and s/he usually comes up with something that works. Makes things easier for me, and more instructive for him/her.

Honestly, now that I’m not panicking anymore and I’ve got a system in place, this editing thing is, in certain way, enjoyable.

17

I found myself helping to create papers and major efforts when a former colleague asked me if I could check her grammar for her. She had been a Basic English teacher at the school in Japan where I got stationed to teach Advanced English Conversation. She later moved to the USA and put herself through college as a Japanese teacher, then somehow found me when she got into grad school. She asked me to help because she knew me as an English teacher and friend; I just happened to have been working for a publishing company at the time she reconnected with me.#

I started out like you did, just pointing out grammatical issues and odd usage (spell-checkers are wonderful, but back then they basically checked words individually and didn’t often catch the misuse of homophones – sea what I mean?). But I started noticing a few strange phrases and some hazy statistics and started asking questions and providing pointers and…

The trick, I learned, was to step back and remember…

  1. I’m not getting graded/credited/paid for the end result. That doesn’t mean I don’t care (if I didn’t, I wouldn’t help at all) but that I have to separate my emotional/intellectual investment from the author’s effort. The author must always be free to heed or reject (or a little of both) my suggestions and advice.
  2. The content needs to come out of the original writer’s mind, not mine, because she needs to know and remember it. When a thesis review panel asks for clarification I’m not going to be there to provide the explanation and “well…uhh…” isn’t going to turn out well.

…and, for fiction, another layer comes into play…

  1. Some ‘mistakes’ are intentional, particularly words that are spoken by characters in a work of fiction [but also, some mistakes in action are plot elements and some inconsistencies in behavior are part of a character’s personality*]. Those accents and dialectical word choices and turns-of-phrase have to come from the characters personalities rather than my distantly clinical reviewer mentality.
    –G!

This, by the way, was different from my job (at that time) as an editor, in which I could tell an author “Please explain this better” or make other content suggestions that carried more weight. But the authors were getting paid to provide content that fit my projects’ needs and I was getting paid to evaluate their submissions and provide suggestions. Thus, in the arrangement of doing our jobs, I had a stronger hand in the guiding role. With my friend/former colleague, my lack of investment in the result gave me less incentive or authority to insist on any particular changes. But she also respected me more than a paid author (subject matter expert) did, so mere suggestions were more readily heeded.

*I am reminded of a Writers Digest article advising writers to avoid soliciting too many suggestions from friends/relatives/colleagues, with the author’s anecdotes of discovering his character at the end of the book was a completely different person from the one he started with at the beginning of the book.

18

My editor’s note on something like that would be “Awkward.” Then maybe give them a note in general, about making sentence structure clear and straightforward. It sounds like they may have a problem with ambiguous antecedents, too.

19

Yeah, that’s how I’ve been handling it. “This sounds awkward”, “Run on sentence; should be broken up into two sentences”, and “The wording makes it sound like you’re referring to X rather then Y” are working well enough. (And the writer is learning; the difference between the first chapter and the second chapter alone are incredible).

20

Yay! I’ve considered doing beta work myself, but I was worried about the same stuff you’ve expressed here - as in, I can see that this is wrong, but I can’t quite see how it should be fixed…

What fandom are you working in? Would you PM me a link to the fic?