(Edited to add: This is a guest post written by Shannon Stacey)
You’ve seen the view from the Executive Editor of Samhain’s side of the desk here, but I thought today I’d give you a glimpse of the view from the other side. What’s it like, as an author, to go through the editing process? I’ve done it eight times, so I’ll give you a quick overview and then I’ll offer up a few specifics that might help if you’re thinking of submitting to Samhain.
(Obligatory caveat: Angie has been my editor throughout all my contracts with Samhain. Other editors may do things differently, plus the working relationship between an editor and each of her authors varies. Therefore your mileage will, as well.)
FOREVER AGAIN was published in January of 2006 (it was one of Samhain’s four launch titles), which means we probably started the editing process in the fall of 2005, therefore Angie has been my editor for almost four years. I’m not really sure how she feels about that…
Anyway. I’m a fairly clean writer, so our process is generally two rounds of edits and a round of final line edits.
Round One: Oh my achin’ ass. These hurt. The comments in the documents (edits are done electronically through track changes) are scary enough, but it’s the general impression in the body of the email that really makes you cry. This is where you hear your hero’s a flaming asshole or your secondary guy (and future hero) is a little creepy. Maybe you didn’t develop the romantic arc clearly enough on the page so the HEA isn’t believable. Or the dreaded I just don’t love it. In the document there are cheerful little speech bubbles pointing out plot holes and awkward sentences and timeline issues and pet words and…just about everything a writer can possibly do wrong in a book.
Round Two: With the heavy lifting out of the way, this usually seems a little easier, but the magnifying glass is out for the fine tuning and a thousand little errors need to be fixed. Okay, not a thousand. (Well, again, your mileage may vary.) If there was a large issue that required substantial rewriting, those sections will be edited and there’s the question of whether it effected other parts of the story.
In both rounds, commas are fought for and typos are fixed. Issues are hashed out. For two books in a row, Angie and I went ’round and ’round about the capitalization of Navy. I lost in both cases. I’ve learned through almost Pavlovian conditioning to trust Angie’s judgement. When I disregard her suggestion, the reviews criticize that element. When I implement a change she suggested, the reviews love that element. Seriously.
Once the book’s edited within an inch of its life, it goes to…Final Line Edits: This is a crucial step in the book’s process and, though I stet a lot of issues dealing with voice and such, I’m always blown away by the number of things the final line editors catch. Usually syntax/grammar/spelling/typos and such, but they’ll also speak up if they think a comment needs to be made. The FLE for NO SURRENDER questioned the clarity of an event from 72 HOURS that’s mentioned, as well as commenting on the timeline of the ending.
Just for fun, here are my five favorite editorial comments from Angie:
5. Is this a word?
4. Something about this sentence just isn’t right.
3. Hello run-on sentence!
2. I don’t think this is a word.
1. This sentence is just kind of…ugly.
If you’re thinking about submitting to Angie, there are a few things you can do to help ensure your manuscript doesn’t make her do something rash. Like running off to Las Vegas, where she’ll stand around on the street sucking down suspiciously disguised beverages, for example.
10 Things You Might Want to Doublecheck in Your Manuscript Before Subbing to Angela James:
1. Make sure none of your adverb adjective combos or whatever they’re called are hyphenated. (“Softly-mounded” for example.) I keep putting them in, she keeps taking them out.
2. Be certain, especially in love scenes, that none of your characters’ body parts are autonomous. Hands and eyes that go a’roaming remind her of Thing from The Addam’s Family. Funny, but not so much with the sexy.
3. Check, doublecheck and triplecheck your timelines. She bags me every single time I convince myself nobody will catch a timeline glitch. They’re one of her “things”.
4. If you’re one of those writers who fires off a draft, figuring you’ll polish it up if she accepts it because that’s what editors are for, you might want to submit to a different editor. At a different publisher.
5. Watch for a lot of thens and and thens. I’m especially guilty of this synopsis-like construction during love scenes and fight scenes—scenes that I’m heavily choreographing in my head and trying to translate onto the page. (Yes, the following comment exchange is for two paragraphs in a love scene and there were more on the page. Ouch.)
6. Pronoun confusion. Make sure every one of your pronouns clearly belongs to the character/item/whatever it’s supposed to. Angie’s very hung up on pronoun clarity. Also— Reflexive pronouns. Umm…I’m still not sure what that even means. Certain usages of himself or herself, for example, will earn an editorial handslap. Since I don’t quite get this rule, I just write and then change it when she points it out. Better for you, though, if you do it right.
7. The dreaded ECHO. I’m not sure how an author can really check for this other than reading very, very thoroughly, but using the same word too often too close together is a common author quirk and a common editorial comment. If you can get rid of this, you’re that much cleaner. She has some kind of magic Repetition Radar.
8. Make sure modifying phrases are modifying the correct subject. This is HUGE with Angie. Another of her “things”.
9. Don’t give a lot of characters names beginning with the same letter. She’ll notice. And right now you might want to avoid naming all of your characters “C” names because…well, just because. (A little inside tidbit from NO SURRENDER: The young woman the DG has to rescue will always be named Claire in my heart. In the book it’s…something else. Isabel? Isabella? Something that doesn’t start with a C.)
10. The standard warning to avoid starting multiple paragraphs with the same word, whether it be a name, the or and. And watch the junk words—just, so, that. She hit FOREVER AGAIN so hard on my “that” usage, I still shudder to remember the edits. I think it took several books for her to break me of that habit. Do a find on “that” and challenge every single one.
As a matter of fact, she was rather traumatized the first time she had to ADD “that” to one of my books. I, of course, gloated.
Okay, if you made it all the way through that overly-long post, comment to enter to win a DIGITAL book from my backlist! Ask a question if you’ve got one or make a comment or just say hi and at 9:00 am est Friday Sunday I’ll randomly draw a winner!
Hi
Wow.
That was an incredible blog post.
It’s not just advice on submitting to a specific editor it is fantastic advice on editing your work before you submit to ANY editor.
I cut and pasted this and added it to my permanent writing advice folder to be re-re-read.
Thank you very much for sharing.
Love from Canada
Rob
xoxo
PS – I love that you have read the Valor series from Tanya Huff. Aren’t they great?
It’s refreshing to know that editors/ agents suffer the same literary pitfalls as the writers they represent.
Thanks for taking the time to share your fantastic advise. I’m looking forward to reviewing these points in my MS.
I also have an issue with time lines and seeing the word ‘that’. Love the post. Very instructional. I have your updates on my sidebar.
Great post! I never knew that repetition was called an “echo” in the biz. It bugs me as a reader, for sure, so I am glad y’all are trying to keep it to a minimum.
Would love to win one of your books!
Thanks for the great post! This gives a lot more detailed insight into the editorial process than other blog posts I’ve found, not to mention solid advice for any writer.
LOL—Anne Scott is my editor, and I can see so many similarities, esp. the timeline and the echo!
Timelines and echo are two of my readerly pet peeves, so yay for Angela!! There’s a rather well known paranormal author I can’t read because of her incessant echo issues. Oy.
Huh, good to know that some of my pet peeves (I really need to get a zoo to hold them all) as a reader & writer are held by others. Thanks for the valuable editing insight. Echoes drive me nuts, though I just called them repetitious. It’s one thing when it is done deliberately, for emphasis; otherwise it comes across as lazy. Ahhh, perception versus reality, right?
*crossed fingers to win book, cause now I _have_ to see result of that writing & editing*
How much do I LOVE this post! Thanks so much. You really took us into the process and let is know that even published writers have to go through some pain.
This is a very informative post. Excellent work!
I’m not an author and I don’t plan to become one (don’t have the imagination for it! unfortunately!). But I AM a reader. This post highlights how much work goes into creating a world that I devour in a few hours. We readers definitely appreciate all the hard work that you gals/guys put in!
When my boss writes anything he uses the word that at least once in every sentence. Being the good admin, I remove all but the most essential when I type his work and hand it back to him. He didn’t even realize I was doing it until I told him.
that was great post, thank you very much. I’m very guilty of the that-profusion in my own writing, and it’s nice to know (that) professional writers have the same problems.
This is good information for polishing any writing sample. Thanks for a great post!
Wow thanks for this post! I like to see the whole picture and this definitely gives the author prospective.
Don’t enter me in the contest, but here’s something Angie hates (and Moira Rogers/Bree will back me up):
ADVERBS! Oh, the agony of adverbs. I think she actually did a *headdesk*. Go through and look for anything that even remotely looks like “softly” “gently” or “slowly” and remove it. Hum the Schoolhouse Rock song “Lolly Lolly Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here” if you have to. I know I did.
Last I heard she was thinking of putting together a Adverbs Anonymous group for authors just like me.
Interesting and informative post, thanks. Lots of fun to read, also. *g*
LOL. Thanks for the advice. ‘Then’ is really easy to use too much if you aren’t aware. It’s just… so easy to shove into a sentence. LOL. Terrific post. I’ll definately be thinking about it when I am editing something I write.
Fantastic post!
Angie is a terrific editor, doesn’t let you get away with a thing, which is all to the good. It’s all about the book. If you don’t leave your ego at the door, then you are doin’ it wrong.
So, for some of my favorite comments, how about:
“Now it’s tomorrow and the doctor was supposed to come but didn’t.”
”
“Three adverbs in one sentence is quite impressive
“Doesn’t this week have two Tuesdays in it?” (yes it did – erm).
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here” (Actually, neither did I once I reread it).
Saying hi in awe of both you and Angie!
I’ve never had writing aspirations (I’d rather read and have no imaginative gene in my body) and reading this makes me realize all the more how much hard work it is and how lightly some people seem to take it.
As for editing: I want to be Angie when I grow up LOL. I’ve read some books edited by her and must say I find practically no inconsistencies or typos compared to other books. However, I don’t know if my assessment is of any value since English is not my mother language.
Pearl
This is fascinating, both for the ‘yay, I do that already’ and the ‘oh, no, I do that all the time’ moments! You have my sympathy on ‘then’ and ‘that’… I have the same problem with ‘that’ and also do exactly the same thing with ‘while’, trying to synchronise dialogue and action.
I particularly liked two of your points… ‘watch your continuity’ and ‘never give characters similar names, or names that start with the same letter, unless you REALLY HAVE TO’. As a reader who has trouble remembering names, I truly hate it when authors make it even harder by making them too alike. And as an avid comic book and sci-fi fan, I believe that faulty continuity should be punishable by death.
I love this post, but I couldn’t help but laugh out loud about not naming your characters names beginning with ‘C’. I *just* changed my MC’s name from Cheryl to Shannon. Go figure.
Great post, very informative. I am going to have to keep this one handy and it’s great to see it from the point of view of ‘going through it’. And I’m so going to change some character names now!
Great post, informative and funny. It makes me want to read your books! Thanks for the perspective and for the opportunity to win.
Patrice
Wow, this is a great post and with a viable edit double-check list at the end too. Thanks.
I knew I liked Angela’s attitude, but it sounds like I edit the same way she does. I wouldn’t want any of the authors who drew the short straw on me to blog about me on my blog though. Brave too.
What an awesome checklist to review before you submit to any editor… I’m currently waiting for my first ever edits and I running my ms against the checklist. I’ll find out next week.
Thank you for a lovely look at the other side of the desk.
Great post! I’m not an author with Samhain–yet, although I keep trying, but I do have books other places. I am a clean writer as well but it’s always surprising how much stuff is shaken out in the 1st and 2nd rounds of edits
I just don’t love it, lol. That one hurts so BAD.
Great advice.
Oh, the name thing–I’ve had two “D” characters, a brother Dylan and sister Dusty. Asst. editor kept getting them confused, so I changed one. Similar names can cause a “whose POV am I in again?” situation for the reader, which is not ideal.
It’s really enlightening to read about the editing process. I had a vague idea, but “vague” is the keyword here. Thanks!
Oh my gosh, Shannon. Thank you for writing an excellent, concise editing blog. This one’s being printed. :O) You’re a legend. Now, off to click print. Then I’ll make a coffee, and then I’ll cut the ‘and then’ out! Hehe
Excellent post… very useful! Now I feel the need to go back through my recently finished WIP and tag all the ‘that’s … I hadn’t thought about doing [that] before! Great checklist. I’ll be referring back to this in my edits to come.
Hmm…yep…check, check, and check. I also nail my authors on word repetition, similar names, junk words, excessive description, misplaced modifiers/dangling participles, disembodied parts, etc. Pretty much all of it. Also too many of the same sentence type. If every paragraph on a page starts with a participial adverb, you can guarantee I’ll say something about it. I’m really picky about participial phrases and unnecessary/excessive passive voice at the moment. My authors probably hate me for it during edits, but my publisher has thanked me for it, so I guess it all evens out. I’d hate to see one of my authors criticized in a review for writing quirks I was too lazy to point out.
Thank you. That was a great editorial tour.