{"id":6605,"date":"2022-02-27T05:02:07","date_gmt":"2022-02-27T10:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=6605"},"modified":"2022-02-27T15:50:50","modified_gmt":"2022-02-27T20:50:50","slug":"writers-need-editors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/writers-need-editors\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Writer Needs an Editor (Guest Blog by Meredith Phillips)"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Guest blog by Meredith Phillips

Everyone needs an editor–even editors. Why? Primarily because an editor brings objectivity to your writing. When you proofread your own writing, you sometimes see what you expect to see, what you meant to write, on the page or screen before you. The editor brings an outsider\u2019s view and is much more likely to pick up typos or mistakes. And truth be told, auto-correct or spell-check will not pick up homonyms.

Furthermore, because of editors’ training and wide reading background, they can spot an infelicity, misstatement, or erroneous fact\u2014not to mention a plot hole. The editor\u2019s job is to make the writer look good by preventing the reader\u2019s confusion, making things as clear as possible. If you’re not “traditionally published,\u201d which would presumably include professional editing, you should hire an editor at your own expense. You\u2019ll find it is well worth the money.

When it comes to traditional or legacy publishing, after acquisition or commissioning a book, ideally several levels of editing take place. Those can range from development and\/or substance editing to line and\/or copy editing to proofreading. My own experience is mainly in fiction editing, the majority being crime fiction, but I\u2019ve worked on all kinds of nonfiction as well, from cookbooks to handbooks to how-to guides. Over forty years I’ve edited hundreds of books and I still love it. I\u2019d rather spend my time with red pen in hand, or these days with Word Review on the screen, than doing most other things. This has served me well during the pandemic.<\/p>\r\n

***
How does anyone become an editor? I doubt that any children say they want to be editors when they grow up. And I suspect that most editors originally began as writers, as did I. After first writing magazine pieces, a guidebook, and then a mystery, I decided that I\u2019d rather tell other people how to write than do it myself. And I\u2019ve done so ever since (although a certain amount of writing of catalog copy, blurbs, press releases, etc. is inevitable in the job). As well as learning by doing, I read books and articles on editing and joined professional organizations.<\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/a>

I spent the first ten years alone at Perseverance Press, editing and publishing new mystery writers who usually had other kinds of writing backgrounds. After ten of these books, some award-nominated, I went “on hiatus” and concentrated on freelance editing for mystery writers with NYC publishers. I was lucky enough to again be working with professional writers and didn\u2019t have to deal with newbie writing problems.<\/p>\r\n

But freelance editors are definitely at the bottom of the publishers’ totem poles, and liable to be blamed for all snafus. Then came the opportunity to partner with an old friend who wanted a mystery line in his small independent publishing company. And from 1999 to 2021, John Daniel & Co. \/ Perseverance Press published more than eighty traditional mysteries by established writers. This idyllic arrangement came to an end with John\u2019s death, so I\u2019m a freelancer again. And I was lucky enough to be available when Crippen & Landru needed an editor last year for their respected collections of Golden Age short fiction.<\/p>\r\n

***
Does editing mysteries differ from mainstream fiction editing? Not a lot. The plot structure is usually tighter in mystery\/suspense, and attention must be paid to suspects\u2019 activities and alibis. In the end, order should be restored and readers should feel that they had a chance of figuring out the puzzle. The background environment, geographical setting, and\/or the historical period in a mystery are often rendered in detail, as they may contain clues. The conscientious editor should do some research (via Google and Wikipedia these days instead of a trip to the library) to be conversant with the milieu depicted by the author. I\u2019ve bought a lot of books on editing but have found only a few of real use: Strunk & White\u2019s Elements of Style<\/em> and William Zinsser\u2019s On Writing Well,<\/em> which I\u2019d recommend to all writers.

Do mistakes still happen? Of course! In my early days I let an author get away with putting the protagonist in \u201ca room with no doors or windows.\u201d And much more recently, a main character kissed a man who wasn\u2019t her fianc\u00e9, whom she didn\u2019t like, and who wasn\u2019t even in the same place as her. This goof sneaked by the author, me as the editor and two proofreaders. But of course it was pointed out in an Amazon review!

That takes me back to the first line, above\u2026.<\/p>\r\n

[Free Images from Pixabay]<\/strong><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest blog by Meredith Phillips Everyone needs an editor–even editors. Why? Primarily because an editor brings objectivity to your writing. When you proofread your own writing, you sometimes see what you expect to see, what you meant to write, on the page or screen before you. The editor brings an outsider\u2019s view and is much … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,635,2],"tags":[298,497,948,5,1071,219,2494,296,291,2495,197,19,1536,496,480,501,2496,495],"class_list":["post-6605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advice-for-writers","category-editors","category-writing","tag-advice-for-writers","tag-authors","tag-book-publishing","tag-books","tag-copy-editing","tag-crime-fiction","tag-developmental-editing","tag-editing","tag-editors","tag-freelance-editing","tag-mysteries","tag-novels","tag-novels-of-suspense","tag-publishing","tag-publishing-advice","tag-thrillers","tag-traditional-mysteries","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6605"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6617,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6605\/revisions\/6617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}