Do You Need an Editor?

Well, it depends on your level of knowledge in regards to grammar and spelling. By the way, this post is primarily aimed at writers looking to publish their prose fiction.

I'm rehashing the types of editors because once again, a writer told me they needed a developmental editor.

The only reason you'd EVER need a developmental editor would be if you never read fiction or watch TV or movies. Humans are inherently consumers of stories, whether it be nursery rhymes, the MCU, or your favorites uncle's wild tall tales. We instinctively understand story structure. Sometimes, a writer needs a course or a how-to book to point out what they already know. However, it amazes me how many writers don't trust themselves when it comes to storytelling.

What bothers me (in my experience) is how developmental editors want to change a writer's story to what the editor would tell, not improving the existing story. . I know developmental editors will deny that with their dying breath, so let's forget about developmental editors for the moment.

 

1) Copyeditors - These are the people who check for plot holes and consistency. 

Example: In the Bloodlines and Millersburg Magick Mysteries, my vampires' eyes turned a neon color and glow during extreme emotion or hunger. A copyeditor would make sure the story rules are maintained.

2) Line editors - These are the people who check the flow, style, and readability.

Example: I have a bad habit of repeating words in the same paragraph or page. A line editor would tag my repetitious use of "parking lot" or "spell".

3) Proof reader - These are the people that nitpick spelling and grammar.

Another one of my bad habits is typing "my" when I mean "my" and vice versa. leaving out prepositions and articles, or typing a comma when I mean a period. A really good proofreader would catch those mistakes that sleppied by the copyeditors and line editors.

4) Acquiring editors - These are the people who license books to be published by a trad publisher.

Example: A friend's novel was acquired and published by a now-defunct traditional publisher. When she got the rights back, a company scanned the book into a PDF. The friends then asked me to convert the PDF into a MS-WORD document.

There were still a ton of typos. Some were introduced by the publisher. Some were caused by the scanning software. I fixed them before I returned to the files to my friend. How do I know some of the typos were introduced my the publisher? I still had a copy of the nook file she submitted to the publisher for comparison.

What's worse is the remaining trad publishing  houses aren't paying for in-house editing. The cost is getting dumped on the writer, even though the trad publishers claim that's a service they still offer.

So do you need an editor? An editor should improve your work, not change it to fit their image of what your story should be. In the end, hiring one is totally up to your and your pocket book. However, you can save money by either learning to do it yourself or trading manuscripts with another writer.

Best wishes of your new career!

Deep in Proofing

Having started in corporate America in 1988, Microsoft products are embedded in my DNA. Yep, over thirty years before tracking devices were delivered to my bloodstream through vaccines.

(Just joking, folks. If you don't want to be tracked by corporations and the government, get rid of your damn cell phones!)

Anyway, I still rely on MSWord in my day-to-day writing. However, there's only so much spelling and grammar that can be programmed. And like any other programming, it can result in stiff dialogue. And since I write in English, the Autocorrect often goes spastic over names in other languages or new words that may have infiltrated English in only the last few years.

As a result, I've limited MSWord's Autocorrect function when I write. It's especially necessary when I work on the Justice series and its spin-offs. The Queendom of Issura, the main location of the series, is a blend of Chumash, Ertruscan, and Celtic cultures. Then add in Hawaiian, Dine, Hopi, etc.

Yeah, if Autocorrect were sentient, it would be yelling, "WTF, woman!"

What Autocorrect can't do is point out when I forget to add articles and prepositions in a sentence. Those are my biggest mistakes when I write. I hit the major nouns and verbs. Sometimes, I put in the wrong variant of an adjective or adverb.

This is why writers can't depend on any automated spelling check or grammar check programs. While these programs are helpful, they are not perfect.

That's why writers need to proofread their work or have a trusted person proofread the manuscript.None of us are perfect. Occasionally, we need some outside help.

And that's okay, too.

ARGH! It's Monday!

No visits to the cinema this weekend. I crashed hard after getting Famine in French Vanilla uploaded last week. And despite all the editing work, a few typos slipped by. A reader was kind enough to contact me privately, so I need to get an update uploaded. However, I'll make another pass through the book because I'm sure there's more hiding in the damn manuscript besides the three the reader found.

The weekend was spent getting caught up on all the administrative work that piled up over the last two months. It desperately needed to be dealt with.

I jumped into War in White Chocolate first thing this morning. Initially, I was rather proud of waking up before my alarm went off. Only to discover, f***ing Apple had reset my iPhone to its factory settings. In reality, I woke up forty-five minutes late.

*sigh*

At least, I didn't totally miss sprinting with writer friends in the Rockies. One of them and I do an evening session, too, so I should be able to stay on track for getting the third book of Soccer Moms of the Apocalypse written and released in plenty of time.

This afternoon, I need to get caught up on classes I'm taking. I missed the last several homework assignments for Advanced Depth. I'll retake that class later this year. Depth is an area I know I'm deficient in.

If you pay attention to suzanharden.com, you'll notice I added a new book at the bottom of the list, A Mischief of Magpies. No, it's not a new Justice book. I took a Covers 101 class since covers are something else I suck at. It's not that I'll stop using any of the lovely ladies who provide their services. I just like being semi-proficient at jobs I expect other people to do for me.

Anyway, I liked the six covers I put together using stock art so much, the storytelling part of me clicked into gear. Now, I really, REALLY want to write these stories. I wish I had more time in the day to write everything. I already know I'm going to die with stories untold.

More Drizzles, More Editing

Most of our spring flowers survived Monday's snow. The first bunch of daffodils to bloom were already on their way out. The heavy slush merely accelerated the process. And I found decongestant in stock at the grocery store this week!

*damn allergies*

It's feeling more like spring. Warm drizzlies were just starting as Bella and I stepped outside for her constitutional. However, she got her hair and nails done yesterday, so she had no desire to sniff around after her business was finished. She's a princess pup after all.

I'm trying to wrap up the last proofing of some things. Later tonight, I'll be loading the stretch rewards into BookFunnel to send to the backers. And then for the rest of the weekend, I settle into the last scenes of A Measure of Knowledge.

I've been debating on whether or not to end it on a cliff-hanger. I'll probably write both endings and have my alpha readers let me know which one they prefer.

Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

A Drizzly Day for Editing

Mother Nature is running the gamut of weather this week. On Monday, it snowed. Yesterday was chilly, but bright and sunny. Today's a lot warmer, but the rain we weren't supposed to get until after sundown arrived a little early.

Which means it's an excellent day for text-to-voice editing and proofing with a peppermint mocha to sip. Even though it's 4/20, caffeine is still my drug of choice.

Despite the picture, I'll probably make my own here at home. I don't feel like putting on my shoes to go out.

Enjoy your day wherever you are!

Still Proofing

One last check through the paperback copy of A Matter of Death. The rest of you have a marvelous holiday weekend!

Time Crunches and Writer Stupidity

I've had my head down for the last couple of weeks in order to get A Matter of Death finalized and proofed before my formatter is out of the office for the rest of this month. DH and I went to see Rocket Man a month ago, and I haven't even had a chance to write up my review. So I haven't blogged much either.

So I'm doing my meerkat pose to see what's going on in the world.

And overall, it's pretty much a typical July in the publishing world.

Trad pub is slowing down as acquiring editors vacation on Mummy and Daddy's estate in the Hamptons. Smashwords is having their semi-annual sale. And Amazon does shit to their store.

Why Amazon updates right before their super-spectacular Prime Day is beyond me, but July's the month for all software roll-outs, and by gum, they're sticking to that schedule!

The other thing that happens right before Prime Day is scammer clean-up. So a bunch of top-selling authors had the ban hammer dropped on them.

Folks, piece of advice. It's Amazon's store and they can do whatever they want. Their rules are posted and/or easily found. Acting dumb when you're clearly violating the TOC doesn't become you.

And if you're a writer who's worried about your account, here's the rules. Simply stated:

1) Back/extraneous matter must be 10% or less of the total e-book file.

2) Don't have banned subjects in your books, which includes, but is not limited to, incest, rape, necrophilia, dubcon, etc.

3) Don't use trigger words in your title or description, which includes, but is not limited to, virgin, rape, daddy, etc.

4) Don't bookstuff.

5) Don't use click farms to increase your rank.

6) Don't buy thousands of your books to increase your rank, hit a bestseller list, etc. Also, don't giveaway cash or a cash equivalent in order for people to buy your books for you.

7) Don't use your books to promote contests or giveaways. They are illegal or have serious restrictions in many countries where Amazon sells books. Amazon ain't getting fined for your shit.


This isn't a complete list by any means. However, I have my own rule: don't do any of this shit, then whine when your Amazon account is terminated. You ain't getting any sympathy from this corner of the multiverse.

Proofreading Hell

I overslept this morning. I don't even remember turning off the alarm when it went off. How much of my behavior is a bit of dread over today's task?

I'm at the point in the production cycle where I do the text-to-speech playback of a novel, in this case Hero De Facto. I try to make it fun by using a woman's voice with an English accent. Also, the slightly different accent and pronunciation helps to keep my attention on the words.

But this is the super nit-picky part. Ouch, that sentence is garbled. OMG! I forgot another article! Oh, dear, that paragraph sounded a lot more coherent in my head.

Cthulu! I hate my critical voice!

On the plus side, this is the last big step before I turn the file over to my formatter. Then, fingers crossed nothing major happens, I'll be able to get pre-orders up next week.

Focusing on that sense of accomplishment will get me through the next several hours. And y'all will have a new book to read soon.

Proofing the Proofs

Last week was spent getting ready for the writing workshop at our local library. This week I buckled down to go through the paperback proof copies of A Modicum of Truth and Sacrificed.

The e-books were published way back in February and March of this year. I'd ordered the paperback proof copies and took AMoT with me on our Easter trip to Nashville. I even managed to get through the first 100 pages while Genius Kid drove.

When we got back from Nashville, I turned on the afterburners to finish the first draft of Hero De Facto. It was done on April 16th. However, the next day was my first biopsy. The paperback proofs got shoved to the corner of my desk and were subsequently buried under a  mound of medical records, cancer literature, and doctors' bills.

I'm slowly but surely getting things taken care of and paperwork filed. But with CreateSpace's upcoming merger with KDP Print, I want to get these paperbacks finalized before the switchover, which could be any time now.

So I pulled them out of the pile and started reading through them.

And now I really want to write the next books in each series. LOL

Typos and Passive-Aggressive Readers

First of all, we all make mistakes. No human can avoid it.

Second, all writers do their damnedest to produce a quality product.

Third, it doesn't matter how many people you hire or who volunteer to proof your work, invariable one little typo slips by, which takes us back to the first point.

I belong to a few readers groups and forums (the other people are well aware that I am a writer), and I do read a few reviews sometimes to determine whether I want to download a particular book. There seems to be a disturbing trend for readers to grade a book they've read, and I don't mean on the writer's storytelling skills, but their grammar and spelling.

The majority of these type of readers used to be English instructors, but there are two other types I've noticed that are on the rise. One type are people who want to be writers. The other type are ones that want to sell you services.

How do you tell the various types?

The English instructors come right out and tell you who they are. For example, they have a beef because your sentences are fragments, even though your story is written in first person with a protagonist who's drugged or injured. Or a teenager must speak in perfect sentences. Or they taught with Strunk & White while you prefer the Chicago Manual of Style. But they generally feel they must save the universe from your alleged bad writing (which consists of one "from", accidentally spelled "form").

The folks who want to be writers like to jump on indies because there's nothing holding them back any longer from writing their Great American Novel. Paradoxical, I know, but their excuse for not writing for so long was the agent and trad publisher gatekeepers. Now, there's really nothing holding them back, but their own fear. They can't admit that fear so they lash out by complaining about other writers' style and/or typos.  These people you can tell because they usually complain about your typos in a comment that is in itself full of typos.

I've seen writers try to elicit specific information from these two types of readers, only to be met with the response, "I'm not doing your work for you!" Frankly, these are perfect examples of why you leave reviews, whether on a private blog or a retailer's site, alone.

The third folk are fairly nice about your book's need for a major edit...until you ask them specifically what they found wrong. Then they equally nicely say they will tell you...for such-and-such fee. Solicitation shouldn't be on an unaffiliated blog or retailer site, but that's my personal opinion.

Once in a while though, you'll get a reader who nicely points out a problem and tells you what that problem is. For example, one of Alter Ego's fan sent her a lovely e-mail that said Chicago is on the shore of Lake Michigan, not Detroit.

We had a pleasant discussion about typos and how writers react to criticism. This reader was quite worried I'd be upset. I was actually more embarrassed than anything, especially since I named the correct lake for Detroit everywhere else is the novel. (It's Lake St, Clair, by the way!)

I thanked the reader profusely and sent her a corrected copy of the book and an Amazon gift card.

Does that mean you should send a detailed list of problems to every writer of every book you've read?

Not necessarily. It's one thing if it's an indie published book and you think the writer will respond civilly about a typo or three. (I wouldn't send a criticism of theme, style, etc. If you didn't like it, then it simply wasn't the story for you.) But for a trad published, there's is quite literally nothing the writer can do once their book is published.

On the other hand, don't send the writer a private e-mail saying, "Hey, you f***ed up!" without being a little more specific. Otherwise, that's just troll behavior, and it doesn't help anyone in the long run.

Self-Editing

This morning, DH schlepped his dad up to Toledo to get Muffy shaved off. We're keeping our fingers crossed that there are no complications. NW Ohio is getting the full 80% chance of rain the weather forecasters promised. So it's a rather stressful, dreary day to start with.

And I'm sitting here, staring at my screen, and mulling over an innocent comment from last night's dinner.

I went with DH to a business function. The folks are sweet and laid back, and dinner was held at a hole-in-the-wall place that serves real Mexican food, not the over-spiced stuff most Americans think of as Mexican.

Invariably, someone at dinner asks me if I'm still writing. I take that one in stride. There's a great number of people in this town that dabble in the arts but still have their day jobs.

When I said, yes, but right now I'm concentrating on editing a couple of proof paperbacks, that took my listeners by surprise. One lady, eyes wide, asked, "You do your own editing?"

Uh, yeah.

I didn't realize how deep one of Dean Wesley Smith's writing myths reached until that moment.

The following are my thoughts, and my thoughts alone, on the subject of editing. YMMV.

1) Developmental editing

Writers don't need this. If you can't grasp story structure from reading books and watching TV and movies, writing probably isn't the profession for you. (Hint: Wanna learn classic three-act structure? Go watch Star Wars.) To me, using a developmental editor is wanting someone to validate your talent by paying them an obscene sum of money.

2) Copy editing

This has to do with the consistency of the story and the possible research involved. Writers should be able to do this themselves. For example, is your heroine's eyes blue throughout your story? Which interstate runs through Las Vegas if your using that city as a setting? Seriously, you shouldn't need someone to babysit you through the basics.

3) Line Editing

Here's where grammar, spelling and punctuation come in, and dammit, if you're a writer, you should know the basics of your craft. In comparison, it's like a carpenter knowing whether to use a hammer or a screwdriver on a nail. I don't cut myself any slack in this area. I read a lot of U.K. English books, so I have a tendency to use the U.K. spelling for words. I always have to double-check!

4) Proofreading

This is the one area where hiring someone makes sense. And that's assuming you can find someone who does quality work. Notice I said QUALITY. Quality and price do not correlate. In fact, I've had better proofers who've asked for $25 Starbucks or Amazon gift cards as payment. And honestly, if the proofer misses something that you find later, do you really want to pay them thousands of dollars?

Are there exceptions to needing extra help? Of course, there are. But a writer with dyslexia still does not need a development editor! And yes, I know a couple of very talented writers who are dyslexic.

Now, I going to Starbucks for my peppermint mocha before I tackle some editing.

Angry Sheep signing off!