Editor's Note

  • Editor’s Note: Lessons from author Stephen Kozeniewski

    c38b22cdee600a7f0235c6_L__V355587007_SX200_I love this series! It’s been so interesting and insightful to interview my author friends about their editorial experiences. Today, I asked author Stephen Kozeniewski about the process of editing his book, BRAINEATER JONES. You might remember hearing about the novel on my blog here. He tends to be funny and just a little bit snarky, so his interviews are always a pleasure to read.  Enjoy!

    Me:  Tell me a little bit about yourself and your books.  

    Steve: I am an army veteran of the Iraq war (although somehow in my day job now I work for the Navy – go figure.)  I’m going on ten years married to my lovely wife and we are the proud parents of two fur babies, both of the feline or “correct” category.  

    My first novel is an offbeat tale about a hardboiled zombie detective named BRAINEATER JONES who has to solve his own murder during the Prohibition era while trying to find enough liquor to keep his brain functioning.  (I got some good pre-publication notes from a beta reader named Becca…Becky…something.  Can’t remember.)  

    Me: Haha.

    Steve: My sophomore effort is a grand guignol hardcore horror masterpiece called THE GHOUL ARCHIPELAGO.  It chronicles a power struggle between smugglers, pirates, and robber barons set on the high seas of the South Pacific against the backdrop of the zombocalypse.  I’m fond of saying that BRAINEATER is 90% humor, 10% horror and GHOUL is 90% horror, 10% humor.

    Me: Pirates! Smugglers! Big words that sound cool!  (I just googled guignol. It’s a main character in a French puppet show known for its “sharp wit and linguistic verve.” In other words, it’s going to maintain Steve’s clever, impossible to ignore voice and style).

    When an offer is made on your manuscript, do you get to talk to the editor right away?  Do they give you an overall vision for the story or do they wait till the editorial letter? 

    Steve: I believe I had to wait about two months before my first manuscript made it through the editing queue.  (Becky can probably tell you this is lightning-fast compared to how long you would wait for a Big 6 editor.  One of the advantages of going with a smaller press is speed.)  As I recall my content editor introduced herself via e-mail, then after she read the manuscript we had a conference call to discuss the rest of the process.  She explained her overall impressions on the call, and pointed out her major, non-negotiable plot holes to fix.  The editorial letter was more specific with broad stroke concerns, and listed them from, say, 1-5.  Then my manuscript was marked up with individual changes, some of which were linked to one of the numbered concerns.  So if one issue was “3 – Be more descriptive” then one of the markups might be “What color are his pants – re: 3.”

    Me:  As a critique partner and beta reader, I love this editing method! If you go into a manuscript with things you know need to change, and tag the with an associated note and number it would make the process so much easier. For everyone! I’m totally stealing this idea!

    Do you have a specific method that helps you work through your editorial letter? 

    Steve: Well, I think it’s important not to get bogged down on any one change.  My first editorial letter was well over five pages and I had something like 200 markups on the manuscript.  I started out going in order, fixing each change as it came up, but if I hit a change that I didn’t know how to fix (or, worse, didn’t agree with) I would just skip it and go to the next one.  Once I had made, you know, 75% of the bubbles disappear it was less daunting to go back and really dig in on the ones that were giving me heartburn.

    Me: That’s how I worked through mine too and it did seem to help.  Once I got rid of all the “fix this transition” type things, I had an easier time focusing on the….”kill this character” elements. 

    How have you seen your writing change as you’ve worked with an editor?  

    Steve: It’s subtle things.  I have author friends who have told me instead of a devil and an angel they now have a content- and a line-editor on either shoulder.  It’s not quite THAT extreme for me, but there are times when my conscious mind stops and breaks in on the subconscious rhythms of my writing and says, “You need more description here” or “Is this character serving his own interests or that of the plot?”  Now that I’m aware of what an editor would say, I can try to incorporate a poor man’s version of editing into the writing process, rather than just fix it all in post.

    Me: Yes!  And I think it’s making rewriting and revision a little less painful.

    Is there any step/trick/secret you learned with your first novel that you will apply to all the others?  Any specific mistakes you know now to avoid?  

    Steve: Just say no to “just.”  Watch out for overuse (or misuse) of parentheticals.  My editor also told me, “You can combine dialogue with narrative in a paragraph; you don’t always have to separate it.”  

    Look, every author has certain bugaboos and tics that slip into their writing.  The three above are just a few examples of mine.  Trust me, I’ve got a ton more (and my editor would probably tell you more than just a ton, but she’s a known liar.)  I think our tics are subconscious for the most part, even when you’re slavishly concentrating on crafting your words.  And if you do break yourself of the habit of using a certain turn of phrase it’s probably because you’ve replaced it with another bad habit.  And there’s nothing inherently wrong with individual peccadilloes.  In fact, it’s just one of those reasons why we need editors, so that another set of eyes can objectively judge your work.

    Me: Can you give us one special piece of wisdom that will help our manuscripts sparkle? Or maybe a hint of what you think editors are looking for? 

    Steve: Don’t use words like “sparkle,” especially if it’s about vampires.  No, um…I think editors just want to know that you’ve put the same thought into penning your prose as they are about to put into fixing it.  It’s not like they’re ogres.  I’ve “won” arguments over wording and even plot points whenever I could justify my choice.  Just because you can justify your choice doesn’t always mean you made the right choice stylistically, but it’s better than saying, “Oh, I dunno, I just threw words against the page and saw what stuck.”  All of which is a long way of saying, “Know why you wrote what you wrote and be able to articulate it if you don’t want to change it.”  I think if you follow that special piece of advice you and your editor should get along just swimmingly.  🙂

    Me:  As always, it’s a pleasure to have Steve (and his vocabulary) on my blog!  If you want to know more about him, click here or check out BRAINEATER JONES for a sampling of his wicked wit.

  • Editor’s Note: Author Jessica Lawson shares her experience with her S&S editor

    Acutal and Truthful AdventuresDo you know Jess Lawson?  You probably should.  Not only is she a brilliant writer, whose debut THE ACTUAL AND TRUTHFUL ADVENTURES OF BECKY THATCHER will pub in July, but she’s a great member of the writing community.  If you’re new to the industry, her blog is a great resource for information about agents, contests, and interviews from other  authors.

    Today Jess has agreed to share what she learned from her editor Kristin Ostby of Simon & Schuster BFYR.

    Me: Tell me a little bit about yourself and your book.

    Jess: I’m a stay-at-home mom with two little ones and two teenage stepchildren. I love to hang out with my kiddos (taking walks and hitting the library are our main activities) and cook, and I sometimes have grandiose plans to get in shape. I used to enjoy watching television and movies, but since I’ve started writing, my free time finds me fairly glued to the computer. I live in a small town in Colorado where we have to seasonally inform our landlord about bear damage to the trash bin at the end of our driveway, and I regularly see a fox family trotting around the neighborhood (which makes me feel like I’m in one of my favorite Roald Dahl books). My debut middle grade novel, The Actual & Truthful Adventures of Becky Thatcher is both an origin story and a retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It’s coming from Simon & Schuster in July of this year.

    Me:  How genius is that?  When I heard her idea, I remember thinking, “Why couldn’t I have come up with that first?  Give Becky Thatcher a voice and a character?” But since I’ve read her book, I can tell you she wrote the story much better than I ever could have.  It’s beautiful and heart-warming and painfully sweet.

    When you had your initial call with your editor, did she give you an idea of how she wanted the story to change or the vision for the project?

    Jess: Kristin is everything a writer could hope for in an editor. Not only is she incredibly smart and savvy, but she’s so easy to speak with and was gentle in her initial guidance. She went over the editorial letter to make sure I understood any requests (for more tension in scene X, or a bit more inclusion of side character Y) and we discussed a few newish possibilities that she’d suggested incorporating.

    I got very lucky and her vision for the story was consistent with what I’d turned in. I know that won’t always be the case— it was a serendipitous entry into my experience with the editorial process that left me excited (rather than nervous) for future editor/client interactions.
     
    Me: So when you got your editorial letter, how did you plan your attack?  Was there any special method you used to work through the changes?

    Jess: My first order of business was to NOT dive in. I took a solid three days to think about the letter and allowed myself to make notes on paper, but didn’t touch my computer. Then I was fairly methodical, going through each point one-at-a-time, being careful not to let myself get distracted. Once everything had been addressed, I read through the entire manuscript to see if the changes were incorporated smoothly.

    Interestingly enough, her notes caused me to make changes and additions that she didn’t even ask for. It’s like her thoughts sparked a bit of creative power that had been untapped without her encouraging/coaxing notes.

    Me: How has working with an editor changed your writing?

    Jess: Well, it’s certainly made me more paranoid about my manuscript submissions. Kidding, kidding. Seriously, though, it’s opened my eyes to a list of questions that I wouldn’t have necessarily asked myself. Now I find myself taking the feedback and suggestions my editor made on my first novel and trying to incorporate those things into other works. It really is a learning process that has affected the way I look at writing stories, and I find myself trying to touch on those lessons learned—to tease certain things out of the manuscript myself, so that she can spend her time looking for more ways to help me polish the story.

    Me: What kind of mistakes have you learned to avoid?

    Jess:  I’ve learned to avoid living in my own head too much as I write/revise. Just because I can picture my setting or know exactly what a joke means doesn’t mean my readers do, unless I make it clear.
     
    Me: What’s the greatest lesson you’ve gained from working with a professional editor?

    Jess: That a story can always benefit from more depth. And “depth” doesn’t mean adding paragraphs of description or including long monologues where a character waxes poetic about their true feelings, etc. It means teasing out the core of your book’s characters, plot, and theme, and finding the essence of what your story is “about”… and then translating that essence to the written page in a way that your readers can connect to. And tension. There is almost always a way/place to add tension to a manuscript.

    Me: YES!  I totally agree! Working with an editor made me see so many layers to every character and in the plot.  I think the best books probably have pages of scrapped material where the author has created backstory that isn’t essential to the story, but is to character development.

    Jess: Thanks so much for having me on the blog!!

    Me:  Thanks for being here!!

  • Editor’s Note: Lessons from Author and Copy Editor Dahlia Adler

    DahliaI’m loving these Editor’s Note posts!  I feel like I’ve learned so much already — about improving ancillary characters and sacrificing the scenes we want to write for the ones that move the story along. Today’s post is full of gems from Dahlia Adler, author of BEHIND THE SCENES, and copy editor at Spencer Hill.

    Me:  So, Dahlia, tell me about yourself and your book.

    Dahlia: I’ve been writing contemporary YA for about as long as I can remember, and I’ve been interning/working in the publishing industry since I was eighteen. Currently I work as an Assistant Editor in the Mathematics group of a STEM publisher, a Copy Editor for two very different publishers, and a Blogger for Barnes & Noble’s book blog. My debut comes out on June 24, 2014, and it’s a contemporary YA Hollywood-set romance called BEHIND THE SCENES. It’s (hopefully) funny and sexy and touches on some issues I think will be a little unexpected, and I’m very excited for people to read it!

    Me: When you had your initial call with your editor, Patricia Riley, did she give you an idea of how she wanted the story to change or the vision for the project?

    Dahlia: A little bit, but really, the biggest thing I got from Patricia was that my manuscript was very clean as is and wouldn’t be getting any huge big-picture edits. Based on the call, I was really primed to both amp up and streamline the character development, and that did indeed turn out to be the biggest focus of revisions. She also mentioned one (non-romantic) character pairing she really wanted to see, so it was fun to contemplate how I’d work that in.

    Me: When you got your editorial letter, how did you plan your attack?  Was there any special method you used to work through the changes?

    Dahlia: My method for juggling anything is to start with the things that are basically screaming at you to be done, because those will always go the fastest. The other biggie is anything that really echoes your own deep, pushed-down thoughts of “OK, I know this is an issue, and maybe I can get away with it, but if someone calls me out on it, I know it needs to fixed ASAP.” There was a huge one of those in this book, where I basically glossed over a period of time in a way that was glaring, and of course that came up in the letter. I ended up adding 11,000 words in that spot in a way that fixed a lot of the other issues, including the character pairing I mentioned above.

    So, tackling that trouble spot really came first, and helped with a lot of other things. Another top priority was really nailing this one specific secondary character, because he has sort of a weird role in the book, and the feedback was that a lot of people were confused by him. You never want something like that, and for me personally, I think it was good to be challenged to really understand and clarify what he’s doing there, so I really went into each scene with him and honed in on his dialogue and interactions until I felt like he was much more clearly defined.

    Oftentimes, revisions can seem so daunting, but the trick is to figure out what’s giving off the unintended/unclear impressions. If a character is “unlikeable,” why? If a motivation is confusing, why? And what’s interesting is that so often, it’s just one phrase, one line of dialogue, that shapes the way a reader views a character or scene. So I attack revisions by trying to figure out where I went wrong in the reader’s eyes in the first place, and I think doing that critical reading before attacking saves me a lot of heartache and darling-killing!

    Me: How has working with an editor changed your writing?

    Dahlia: The thing is, even before I send my books to my agent or editor, I run them through the CP/beta gamut. So it’s hard to say my writing has really changed as a result of having a professional editor in my life, because I’m always revising like crazy based on brilliant critique. Professional editors are definitely less forgiving and make you dig deeper, and I’d probably be less likely to gloss over things now, but I don’t know that my writing itself has really changed.

    Me: What kind of mistakes have you learned to avoid?

    Dahlia: A big one I’m trying to work on is not having enormously long sentences. (Me: Ha! I have exactly the opposite problem!) And part of this is because yeah, they’re unpleasant to read, but it’s also a question of ensuring that not all my characters sound the same. I have a tendency to sound like me in my writing, but when you’re doing a multi-POV book especially (as I am now, for my follow-up to BEHIND THE SCENES), you have to be really careful. Vocab isn’t the only thing that has to vary; speech patterns do too.

    Me: What’s the greatest lesson you’ve gained from working with a professional editor?

    Dalia: Hands-down the different ways you can affect and create character development in your writing. Yes, I added 11,000 words to fill a gap I shouldn’t have left, but all of the new scenes do so much to show development in ways I would never have thought to do on my own, as do many of the edits throughout. BEHIND THE SCENES is a romance, and there are kissing scenes and flirting scenes and all that, of course, but so much of couples is in how they fight, and handle their unique issues, and interact with the important people in each other’s lives, and I love how much more of that there is now.

    Me: As a copy editor, what are common mistakes you come across?

    Dahlia: Number one is definitely lay/lie/laid, with raise/rise being a close second. This is wrong at least once in almost every manuscript I read. But that’s what copy editors are for! The occasional typo is never gonna keep you from getting an agent or publication, but if your manuscript is riddled with typos, it kills it for me as a reader. Dangling modifiers are another huge one, as are subject/verb agreement and using action tags as dialogue tags.

    Me: If there’s one (or more) thing you could tell writers that would help them polish their stories, what would it be?

    Dahlia: Push yourself. Don’t leave holes just because you can get away with it. Don’t rely on communication breakdowns or easily clarified misunderstandings for plot devices. Don’t start subplots you don’t finish. You will love your book the most when you feel like it’s finally doing everything you wanted it to do. Give yourself that opportunity, because you never know how many chances you’ll get!

    Me: Nothing drives me crazier than a plot that hinges on a conversation that didn’t happen!  Thank you so much for sharing your experience and wonderful tips!  I really appreciate your insight! 

     

    If you want to know more about Dahlia, you can visit her blog or follow her on Twitter! OR, if you want to be awesome you could add her book, BEHIND THE SCENES, to your TBR list!

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