Content Editing for Fiction
Content Editing for Fiction
This might be obvious to some (well, hopefully most), but there are serious differences between editing fiction and nonfiction. There are certainly similarities. No matter what you are editing, consistency, accuracy, and readability are always important. However, these things are applied differently to fiction than they are to nonfiction.
In this lesson, we are going to take a look at the process of editing fiction and determine what the major responsibilities of the editor are in the initial stages of draft development. In the next lesson, we'll look at the process of editing nonfiction.
This may seem like another obvious point, but good note-taking skills are probably the most essential part of editing for fiction and nonfiction. When you begin an edit, you want to make some general observations, especially if it is a longer text you will be helping develop. All editors should make use of a style sheet, a sheet of paper with an alphabetized list of special notations on the document.
For the purposes of editing fiction, we're going to start with three rules for the text overall. We'll then move into an examination of specific aspects of the text.
First impressions of a story are often the most important. This isn't because those first impressions are always correct. Sometimes our first impressions are misguided and need reworking. However, there is always a reason for the impressions a text makes on a reader. Identifying these reasons will help you identify problems both with the text itself and with your own editing skills. No one is perfect, and editing is a constant learning process. You make mistakes, too. Learn how to identify your own misconceptions.
So what do we mean by first impressions? Ask yourself these general questions. Don't slack on your answers either. It's very easy for an editor to look past these general issues so that they can get to the "important" stuff. But these are important, too! Like we said, answering these questions will help you better identify the specific areas you will later need to focus on.
Is the story appealing from the start?
Do you enjoy reading it?
To what kind of audience would this story appeal, and do you think the story is completely saleable to that audience?
Now that you've answered these initial questions, go back to them and try to identify what made you give those answers. If the story was not appealing from the start, what was it that turned you off? Was it the pace? Characterization? Dialogue? Description? Voice? Everything?
Don't try to solve all the problems at once. Make some general notes about what you enjoyed, what aspects of the story helped you to identify the audience, what aspects of it could be changed to create a faster-paced opening (or a slower-paced opening, if that's what the author wants or what the text needs).
. . . At least where praise is due. Give some positive comments. For example, identify as many things as you can that the author did well. Point out what worked and why. We don't want to beat that glass half-empty, half-full thing too much, but it's always better to identify strong points in the text so that the author has something to model when he or she is working on those aspects of the text that are much weaker. Positive reinforcement is always better in the long run than trying to teach by showing what not to do.
You've attended to the generalities; now you are ready to go in-depth.
Now we're going to get into the nuts and bolts of your content edit. Your initial impressions of the text will help both you and the author more readily identify specific areas that need work. You should never ignore any of the following aspects, but it is certainly true that not all of them will be of equal importance in every edit you perform.
Think of yourself as Tarzan and the text as a jungle. You'll use specific vines to get from tree to tree, and some of these vines will take you farther than others. However, in the end you've still got to traverse the entire jungle in order to get where you want to be.
Do you recognize any of the following?
"Call me Ishmael."
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins."
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."
"I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man."
"A screaming comes across the sky."
These are the famous opening sentences of Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville; Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov; A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens; Notes from Underground, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; and Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon. Now we know that not every novel has an opening as great as these. In fact, most don't. That's why these are classics. But even so, the point of the first few pages of a work of fiction is to draw the reader in and establish some kind of tension.
They also help, in one way or another, to establish where the author begins in terms of plot. The opening line is a diving board into the text. It can be a high dive or a dive extremely close to the water. It's what the author does in the air between the board and the surface that guarantees a readership.
Let's look at some questions you will want to consider when examining the opening of the text and the main plotline.
Are the first few sentences or paragraphs attention-grabbing? Is the main character's problem made clear?
Is the plot clear? Is it believable? Are there holes? (As you answer more of the questions in the following sections, you'll be able to recognize different opportunities for identifying plot holes.)
Does the main character (or do the main characters) have a definite problem to solve? Is this problem solved by the end of the text? If not, does the non-solution leave the reader in an awkward place?
Is it easy to quickly determine the time and place of the story? (We'll look at this again later.)
Does the story contain scenes that do not add to the plot?
Does the story contain secondary plots? Are there too many? Not enough? Is it confusing?
How is the pace? Is it fast enough to keep your attention? (We'll look at this again as well.)
Does the conflict and tension in the plot and secondary plot end reasonably? Are there things that still need to be explained?
Emotional conflict is one reason readers get interested in a story. In fact, most conflict is established through our emotions. If the proper tension isn't established at the beginning of the text (or close to it), readers often feel as if they have no reason to continue. We'll talk about pacing, which can of course greatly affect tension and conflict, a little later. For now let's identify some of the questions you can ask that should help you to develop conflict in a text.
Before we begin, it should be noted that even physical events create emotional tension. In other words, a book about a bank robbery can have just as much emotional tension as a book about divorce, or religion, or family, or society. Conflict can be introduced to the text in many ways, so keep an open mind.
Here are some questions you should ask when editing for conflict and tension in a text.
Does the main character experience some sort of physical or emotional conflict or an existential crisis?
Is there conflict between the main characters? How is it expressed (through action, dialogue, attitudes, or values)?
Do the characters have the ability to transform each other?
Are there too many or too few conflicts? Was (were) the conflict(s) resolved?
If the conflict is not resolved, does the text provide the reader with the material to make a decision about why it cannot be resolved? If the conflict is resolved, is it resolved in a believable manner?
So you've established the plot. You've developed conflict to solidify that plot. Now you need to start looking at even smaller details.
It may seem odd that we've included setting this far down the line, but setting can be far more nuanced than even most readers realize. Setting acts as background music to the text. But it's not often that we really pay attention to the background music. Think about Muzak. We know it's there, and we often even sing along, but we don't pay attention to how it affects our shopping. And it can sometimes drastically affect how much we buy.
Point of view establishes a certain amount of intimacy with your reader. First person allows you an intimate look into the character's head, and this can be beneficial in many ways. A reader understands the motivations of that particular character and gets succinct details of the character's surroundings. However, that reader can also easily be fooled into thinking that the character is infallible. An author can use this to his or her advantage to create smokescreens behind which protagonists and antagonists struggle for dominance in the story.
But if that isn't the author's intention, then the effects can be negative. After all, a reader needs some kind of objectivity in the text to establish context. If there isn't a purpose for an intense first-person narrative, are you sure it's necessary?
Here are some questions to consider when developing setting and point of view.
Does the author provide adequate background information so the story seems real?
Is there too much description?
Does the author choose realistic names for people, places, and things?
Are you convinced that people in that time or place would act that way?
Is the timing and order of events consistent? Is it written in the first, second, or third person?
Why was that point of view chosen? Would another point of view have improved it? Does it need more points of view? Fewer?
Many films and novels make use of stock characters: the Bad Guy, the Flirty Guy, the Wolf, the Loner, the Meek but Intelligent Kid, the Cold Woman, the Harlot, the Nerd, the Jock, and the list goes on. Sometimes these characters are incredibly useful to writers. Would National Lampoon's Animal House have had the same cultural impact if it hadn't made use of stock characters? Probably not. Would The Goonies, or E.T., or The Princess Bride have resonated as soundly with their audiences if their characters had not been so identifiable and relatable? Probably not.
But each of these uses of stock characters is carefully balanced with exposition. Sure they are stock characters, but they have been tailored to the setting and point of view of the story, and vice versa. There are Bad Guys, and Good Guys, and Loners, and Older Brothers, and Jocks, but their environment and the other characters in the story balance them out. Then there's the matter of delivery.
You may have heard it before, but there is no way we can ever say it enough. Even seasoned writers must ask themselves whether they show or tell. This can be a frustrating exercise. After all, description tells a person what's in a room, or what characters are saying, or what the sunset looks like, or how tall a man is. But the misconception is that description must be overt. Description can, and most often should, be buried in the general narrative of the story. Look at the two following sentences:
The moon was full and bright.
The full moon's shining rays bounced off the placid surface of the lake in such a way as to fill the entire valley with its light.
Notice a difference? Not only does the first sentence lack the poetry of the second, but also the first sentence is passive, while the second is active. The moon actively bounces into the valley rather than being passively full.
Here are some questions to help you edit for characterization and exposition.
Do you learn enough about the main characters' physical appearances, feelings, beliefs, principles, and outlooks? Is there too much of this sort of information? Do the main characters undergo some sort of change in the story, and if not, do they remain believable by the end?
Are the characters believable, or are they stereotypical and one-dimensional?
Are the details accurate and consistent?
Is there enough detail regarding the main characters' lives and personalities? Is there background information about the main characters' families, friends, work, worries, aspirations, etc.?
(We'll talk about dialogue more in a moment, but . . . ) Is the dialogue proportional to the exposition? Is there too much exposition? Not enough?
How is the pacing? Is the action balanced with slower-paced description and dialogue?
Is there enough information about time and place? Do characters move great distances in short amounts of time? Do characters end up in two places at the same time? In other words, does the action in the story accurately reflect the amount of time it would take to complete these actions in the "real world"?
At many publishing houses, the first thing the acquisitions editors look at is dialogue. While there are many things that affect readership, and it's true that no single aspect of a text is more important than another, dialogue is so prominent that it can potentially have devastating effects if written incorrectly. Most day-to-day speech is boring. After all, 90% of the time, we're at work, taking care of personal responsibilities, or sleeping. No one wants to read the dialogue between a person and the lady at the mail counter at the post office unless it has something to do with the plot or helps establish the scene.
Ultimately, authors have to create dialogue that doesn't sound like day-to-day dialogue but that fools us into thinking that it does. Dialogue must blend in with the rest of the text but deliver vital information in a completely different manner. You can see why acquisitions editors use this as a tool for determining the talent of the author. If the person can write dialogue, the text could very well be worth publishing.
Here are some questions to ask yourself when editing dialogue.
Do the characters' words suit their personalities?
Is there too much or too little dialogue? Does the dialogue support the plot, or was it merely filler?
Can you determine the characters' conflicts, feelings, and objectives from the dialogue? Does the dialogue they utter match their characterization?
Is the dialogue natural and uncontrived? Is it forced?
Is the dialogue too much like regular speech? Does it contain too many incomplete sentences, pauses, or restarts? Is there too much profanity? Not enough? Are there too many clichés?
Is it easy or difficult to determine who is speaking if names or genders aren't part of the dialogue?
Style and tone are the most elusive of the bunch here. And to make it even more frustrating, determining and refining style and tone means going back over everything we've already talked about and looking at it all again. It doesn't take long to get frustrated, both as an editor and as a writer, with establishing a work's style and tone. But why is it so frustrating?
To be honest, it's because not everyone can successfully create his or her own style. Not everyone can develop a unique "feel" to his or her writing. Think of it this way. For every Stephen King, or Chuck Palahniuk, or Amy Tan, there are a dozen (or several dozen) writers that write like them. These authors are refining their own skills and model themselves on something that works.
And this is not a bad thing. But creating a style that belongs to only one person can take a long time. Consistency is key. If a text consistently applies all that we've talked about here, then the style and tone should be satisfactory.
Here are some questions to ask when editing for style and tone.
What is the overall style of the story? Is the story too stylized? Does the text support the artistic licenses the author has taken (if any)?
If it is genre fiction, does it follow typical conventions? If not, does it make use of an innovative new style to overturn typical convention? Does it simply establish its own?
Try to identify five things that help set the tone for the text. If you cannot readily identify at least three, the text may need serious work.
Criticism is probably one of the most difficult things to write. Historically, critics have taken a beating in the press. Sometimes it's been for good reason, and sometimes it's been for no other reason than that a critic has given an honest (and accurate) appraisal of a work of art. Whatever the case, criticism must be dealt with in an extremely careful manner.
It should be noted that there is a major difference between being a professional critic or reviewer and writing criticism for an individual to improve his or her work. One of the most important aspects of writing criticism as an editor is that you are only attempting to help an individual improve his or her work. A snarky review may have its place in The New Yorker, but it has no place in a manuscript edit.
In a minute, we'll get to the type of information you need to give an author. For now, let's look at the way in which you provide comments. Luckily, this is an easy thing to do. Even if you only remember the following, you will already be on the road to providing excellent and objective criticism: always, wherever possible, make your comments about the text, not the author.
What does this mean? It means phrasing things in such a way that the focus is put on the text itself. For example, look at the following comments.
What do you mean by this? vs.
The meaning of this sentence is unclear.
You've lost me here! vs.
This paragraph lacks cohesion.
You need more examples here. vs.
This section could be strengthened by more description or examples.
Note that in each of these pairs, the first sentence is aimed directly at the writer. The second sentence focuses on what actually needs to be changed: the text.
There are some cases where you will need to address the author, but these should be kept to a minimum.
It would be most desirable for authors to have a pretty good idea about how to improve their own text. And generally, they do. However, after staring at a particular passage describing a particular scene for several days, an author may lose his or her bearings in terms of what works and what doesn't. After all, the scene is perfectly painted in that author's head even if it reads rather badly on paper. This is why an outside perspective is essential. You may not be able to answer every single question an author has about his or her text, but your job as an editor is to do it as completely as possible and provide as much guidance as possible.
The best way to provide guidance is to provide concrete examples. We mean concrete examples in two different senses. In the first sense, you should provide the author with concrete examples from their own text. Don't just say, "This paragraph is vague," or, "This paragraph needs more description"; find individual sentences that you can highlight as needing improvement. Don't just say that a sentence is vague; highlight specific words that need better definition.
In the second sense, you should provide concrete examples of good prose that the author can model, either in their own work or in other work. Building on the examples in the last paragraph, if the author has a particular passage that is perfectly constructed, point it out and suggest that the author mimic this kind of language. If the wording is vague, provide specific words that the author may use to replace it rather than simply indicating that the wording is vague.
We wanted to make a quick note here about biographical works and works of creative nonfiction. The memoir is rapidly growing as a genre, and it's obvious why. Personal information about an individual's life helps us to gauge our own place in the world. Sharing the experiences of others helps us to grow personally. And while there may be a lot of pop biography out there (a Snooki memoir, really?), the reason why people are so fascinated by memoir is that it gives the individual a chance to see how others deal with the day-to-day problems and issues they face.
Editing this type of nonfictional work is actually more similar to editing fiction than traditional nonfiction. Authors can take quite a bit more creative license when talking about their own personal memories than they can when writing historical nonfiction or a type of nonfiction that is expected to be objective and impersonal. So when editing this kind of nonfiction, remember to bridge the gap between this lesson and the next and apply the processes from each unit that seem to elicit the most positive change in the text.
Remember that first impressions are the most important. Eyeing the things that make a story a good or a bad read after your initial review will save you time in the long run. You'll know from the very beginning the types of problems you need to look for when you begin a more detailed evaluation of the text.
When you begin to dig into the text, remember to keep in mind that all the elements we've described here work in concert with one another. There is a certain hierarchy, to be sure. It helps to work from the general to the specific. But remember that style and tone may be some of the things you don't consider until later on in the edit; they can often force you to go back and reexamine earlier editing decisions you've made.
Provide solid examples when giving suggestions. Don't just say characters need more development, give an example passage in which more development would improve the text.
And remember, first impressions work two ways. Make sure that the comments you leave in a document are positive ones. There's always a nice way to say something, even when it's criticism.
Last Updated: 09/29/2022