Get me Edit!

What, J. Jonah Jameson, editor extraordinaire and bête noir of both SpiderMan and Peter Parker? That can only mean I’m going to talk about the  developmental edit of Stone By Stone.

But first a bit about Let This Be The Last, a 6,000 word story that reimagines the Norse god Loki.

I got a notion to do this when I was browsing Duotrope, a site that provides useful info to writers, like directories of publishers and their content specializations. Browsing through SF&F short-fiction publishers, I came across Flametree Publishing, that had an open call for stories about the trickster god. Now, I’ve never been good at writing prompts: “Write a story based on the song ‘My Home Town’”, stuff like that. But in the spirit of training I decided to work on this – a good writer should be able to write about anything, not just what bubbles up out of their own brain.

Here’s what I did. I knew from the start I wanted a story that mixed the age of myth with an SF future. What can I say, the idea seemed cool. Then I refreshed my detailed knowledge of the subject by spending a day or so reading everything Google sent my way. At first I was totally stumped. All the myths seemed, well, trite – I mean by definition they are stories that have been told and adapted for a thousand years or more. In a way, the most trite of all is the myth of Loki and Baldur. It occurred to me to wonder, why does Loki contrive the death of the most noble god? Is he jealous? Devoted to chaos and evil? Just a jerk? Then it further hit me, a new answer to that question might be worth writing about. After that, the three acts of the story – ancient Scandinavia, medieval Africa, and a future colony planet – fell into place. The 6,000 words were essentially done in 2 weeks. It’s with Flametree now, I won’t hear till March if they want it. Meanwhile, I think I’ll keep looking for similar opportunities – it was a good workout for the writing muscles.

Words, Words, Words

When Hamlet answers this to Polonius, he is uttering one of Shakespeare’s trademark ironies: books of course are nothing but words, but Hamlet’s blunt and deranged delivery makes us think, “Everyone knows books are more than that!” Now, having received an edit of Stone By Stone, and embarked on updating the book, I have a little insight on exactly how books are more than words.

If you don’t know what a developmental edit is, a quick definition: where copy-editing involves punctuation and formatting, and line-editing is about grammar and clarity, a developmental edit examines the high-level aspects of your story – character, plot and setting – and both analyzes and critiques your book at that level. The main reason to get a developmental edit is to answer questions like:

• Are the characters engaging and believable? Do we understand their wants and needs?
• Is the plot engaging and believable? Does it make sense? Does it pose problems that are big and interesting?
• Is the setting presented complimentary to plot and character? What is unique about time and place that bears on the story?

I started this process in July. Looking at different directories online, I read websites and bios for about 30 editors. I reduced that to a short list of 4. After video calls with these candidates, I made my pick. Something that quickly became clear – editors, especially good ones, are extremely busy. My chosen editor could not start till mid October. BTW, in future I will share their name. I’m extremely happy with the work, I just want to see how things go with SBS before I say more.

The edit took a month and a few extra days. What I received was a 10-page single-spaced letter, analyzing the book and summarizing key recommendations, and my marked-up manuscript. The MSS included tracked-changes and comments. There were more than 1,000 changes and 1,405 comments.

“I’m a Writer, not an Engineer!”

Dr. McCoy’s catchphrase to the side, I am finding that to deal with this feedback, I have to think like an engineer. There’s two reasons for writing a novel, (1) For your own satisfaction, and (2) To connect with readers. If (1) is your only goal, you probably don’t need an editor at all. But if you are aiming at (2), you have to come to terms with understanding that the raw insight and creativity of your story is almost certainly not enough to connect with anyone. Making that connection requires that some fundamental expectations need to be fulfilled for the reader, like:

• Relating to characters. No one is going to enjoy a book where the characters do things and we have no clue why they do them. Good books show us events that let us develop our own guesses as to character motivation. Great books bolster through things that characters say or think.
• Knowing why it matters. It may seem obvious that your detective character would go after the bad guy. It’s not obvious to your reader: Why this detective, and not someone else? It has to be crystal clear that if the main character does not accept the challenge posed by the plot, then very bad things will happen.
• Getting readers to turn the page. I expect we’ve all experienced books we “could not put down”. Likewise we’ve started some we just could not finish. Good books have a structure and a tone that takes you along for the ride: chapters that build tension and expectation, language that “feels right.” A common thing for poor books is they are like a lecture you just want to be over.

Note how none of this has to do with creativity, theme, or meaning. The same requirements apply to both a bubbly rom-com, and to a grimdark cautionary tale.

What does this have to do with engineering? Like a programmer responding to a code review, I am trying to take my editor’s feedback in a spirit of improvement, not criticism. I will tell you, it ain’t easy. Among those 1,405 comments in the MSS were probably about a 100 to the effect of “Why is he doing this?” My impulsive reaction was frankly, “Isn’t it obvious?” or “How can you not see that?” But just like when receiving a code-review comment to the effect of “The way you wrote this conditional is unclear”, I had to set my first reactions aside and try to see things through the commentor’s eyes. Sure enough, I had to admit, they were right, it wasn’t obvious what motivates my main character. It was obvious to me, and not just because I wrote it – my life experiences set me up to understand my own characters.

Another way dealing with editorial feedback is like engineering is how you do the needed changes. An widely accepted practice in software engineering is the minimal necessary change – the smallest thing you can do to meet a requirement. It’s the same with revising your book. To make your character’s motivation more clear, you don’t have to rewrite the whole book, you look for an important action the character takes, then you insert a thought or some dialogue where the motivation is clarified. Bonus points if you refer to a foreshadowing event that is the origin of the motivation. Net-change: probably 2 lines or less.

But, they have to be the right two lines.

You Write It, You Own It

Here’s where I am now. After I read through the letter and sampled the comments, I had a call with my editor to go over the main findings. The goal was to make sure I understood them correctly, and also to explore some of the bigger criticisms. Next I read every manuscript comment, responding with a quick notation like AGREE, EXPLORE, CLARIFY and so on, plus some short ideas on approach. Then I exported all the Word comments to an Excel file, so I could read them more easily. Going through the comments and responses that way it was easier to identify patterns.

I then created a revision plan document. This document has 22 changes and/or improvements to make. One example:

Condense Prologue

Shorten upfront part, eliminate several Civspace species from the prologue, get to Keret and Talon-va more quickly.

Like many SF books, mine has a prologue that sets the stage for the different species and planets in the story. My editor felt there was too much infodump in it. The new version is 459 words, down from 869, and features only things that directly bear on the story – Talon-va is the founder of the planet Caron, where the story takes place.

Here’s a bigger one:

Split and Condense Childhood and Adolescent Chapters

Split longer chapters into two, properly interleave into the flow. Maybe adult chapters need splitting to do that.

To start with, don’t change content, just the boundaries.

After the chapters are split, all non-adult chapters need pruning and focus. Emphasize connection points to Finn’s adult life.

This speaks to my editor’s biggest point. In Stone By Stone, I use a structure where 3 story arcs – the main character as a child, adolescent, and adult – are told simultaneously through interleaved chapters. The adult story is 75% of the content. I did this for several reasons: I wanted to do something that was structurally distinctive, and I wanted to convey important back story and worldbuilding in a more impactful way than flashbacks. My editor felt this was more a hindrance than a help, that the changes in perspective would be confusing. Their judgement was, this would reduce the marketability of the book.

I hope it’s clear from the above that I’m not switching to flashbacks. What I will do is make these non-adult chapters shorter, so they are less of a break from the main action. I’ll also “punch up” the main character’s early life events that explain his motivations as an adult. Will keeping the current structure make the book harder to sell? Maybe, though I’ve asked a number of people about this, including pros from the industry, and no one seems to feel what I’m doing is an explicit disqualification.

What it comes down to is, I own this book. Where execution is concerned, I will take my editor’s advice and try my best to make improvements. But as far as my vision for the book — I’m not going to give that up without even trying.

Ok, J. Jonah is growling at me for my next revision. Till next time …