You May Be Editing The Wrong Way

I teach a course at UCLA Extension about Developmental Editing. What I always find interesting is that so many of the participants come in believing they have a solid background in this type of editing. However, as they talk, what comes to the surface is that they are far from knowing what they are doing. So to are so many authors out there trying to get published. And then they wonder, why they are getting so many rejections. 

For so many authors, this is what they see when it comes to editing.

Image from The Write Life

While this might work, this is only scratching the surface. What we need to understand are the different levels of editing that you should go through with your writing. For so many, they have a brilliantly formatted and grammatically correct manuscript, and yet the writing is a piece of garbage. Ugh.

There are three levels of editing I want to talk about today: 1) Developmental Editing; 2) Line Editing; and 3) Copy Editing.

What you are seeing above is someone focusing on either line editing or copy editing. NOT, developmental editing. So let's start with the last of our three editing approaches.

COPY EDITING is when you are going through and checking it for typos and grammar. This is when you are arguing with your critique partner about the benefits of the Oxford Comma.

Now, let me stress we all need to edit for these issues. There is nothing more infuriating for me when I open up a submission and see basic grammar mistakes before I even look at the author's story. What does this tell me about their 80,000 word manuscript and the number of mistakes there. However, grammar and punctuation does not make your story better. Knowing how to use The Chicago Manual of Style just tells me you can use your Microsoft Word and make your manuscript look pretty.

Potentially, the person above was LINE EDITING a manuscript. Again, this is certainly a useful thing to do with your writing, but this is still not going to get you any closer to getting your book published and sold. When we are line editing, we are doing just that - looking at writing on a line-by-line basis. I often hear authors talking about the weeks they spent to get that first line of their book, or that chapter "just right." What they failed to remember is that their book still has 83,000 word manuscript still has 82,985 more words that make up the story. Again, let me stress, line editing is important. You are making sure the sentences flow together. You are making sure when you said your hero had blue eyes in chapter 1 that they are now not hazel in chapter 12. You are taking care of those awkward sentences.

The reality, however is that neither of these has made your story any better. Now, you have a grammatically correct and elegantly written piece of garbage. So how do we fix it???

DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING is where you need to be. This is where you are looking at all of those things you learned in junior and senior high when you studied TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and Shakespeare. These include: Plot, Setting, Character, Dialogue, Theme, and so forth. You need to be focusing in on this early on, in fact, you should be doing this before you even start your story. Is this plot even going to be something that is marketable? Is this something readers would like? Is this plot idea even something that you can write this many words about? If not, don't start it. 

Think about it this way. When you pitch your story to me, either in person or in a query, we are listening to you the concept of the story. We are making decisions to move forward based on the plot, setting character, dialogue and theme. We are not looking at your ability to use a semi-colon, or your ability to write an elegant sentence. In fact, readers also focus on this when they decide to buy a book or turn it down. 

This is what you are focusing on to make the story truly quality. The other elements are simply window dressing and not really going to get you very far. 

This is also why I emphasize so much the need for ALL authors to learn the craft of writing. How to create a story and how to make a story leap off the page. 

Now, with that said, if you are someone who is part of a writing organization and are interested in me coming to your conference and presenting to your group how to do developmental editing, please reach out to me. NOTE: I do not charge speaking fees.