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kateelliottLast year I was asked:
Will debut novelists need to implement more editorial changes than an experienced novelist?
I think that depends but on the whole I would say Probably with a side dose of Maybe.
Why “maybe?”
In some cases, a debut novel is one that has been lovingly crafted and revised and re-visioned over many years, down to the smallest detail. Such novels may be polished gems hard to replicate under any other circumstances except those of a novelist who produces a novel (or short fiction) at long intervals. I’m not going to deal with that subset today.
Realistically, a new novelist (not quite the same as a debut novelist, who may have written 20 novels before getting one published) is likely to not have as much experience with the ways of narrative, plot, character, tension, emotional arcs, pacing, using details to enhance the plot, characters, and story, and all those other things that more experienced novelists theoretically have spent years learning how to craft.
The unfortunate truth is: I am a better writer now than I was 20 years ago.
The chances are that you will be, too, with time and words invested.
I say “unfortunate” in this case not because it is a problem--in fact, it is a feature not a bug--but because the disconnect between writing the best work you can at the time you are writing and the idea that it may well still be flawed can be a deep chasm to bridge. I’m still in the process of bridging that chasm, and I expect I always will be. That’s okay. The idea of topping out and reaching my limit scares me far more than revising does. I’m more likely to become obsolete than to become perfect.
So a debut novelist may expect more editorial requests, although s/he may not necessarily get them depending on other circumstances.
In a similar vein, an experienced novelist who is moving sideways, as it were, into a new genre may function in that new genre in a similar fashion to a debut novelist. If I were to write a genuine YA, or a mystery, or a Delta Force thriller, I might expect to see more and a different type of editorial comments than I have grown accustomed to writing in my comfort zone of sff.
I still expect to get significant editorial requests. Partly this has to do with the fact that I have not yet written a perfect novel (see cage match between perfection and obsolescence, above). It likely also has something to do with how I work in the general sense. Maybe I’m a fairly sloppy early draft writer; maybe there are readers out there who, reading any one of my books, shake their heads and mutter to themselves, “man, this could have used at least one more revision and probably four,” not to mention the readers who wonder why such crap got published to begin with, but they’re not on my side, so let us allow them to retire to greener pastures and get on with their lives elsewhere unsullied by my flaws.
I revise a lot. On the whole, most writers I know also revise a lot. This is not a flaw. I think of it as a strength.
What if the author is really able to justify why they’ve written something a certain way?
Well, sure. I’ve done this myself, but I have learned to be cautious about this and to take a long hard look at a critical comment in such contexts before I try to justify my version as the better one.
There are several reasons for this.
One is pragmatic and can be summed up as:
Choose your fights.
Not every disagreement is worth challenging. You are showing respect for your editor’s skills and experience by listening to her/him. That doesn’t mean you have to roll over and do everything you’re told. It just means it is better to be someone who is good to work with rather than difficult to work with. And believe me, if you challenge every suggestion your editor makes, you’re being difficult to work with. Unless your editor is simply incompetent, in which case you need to be asking yourself why you are working with a publisher who would employ an incompetent editor, or you should ask if you simply are so much the wrong fit for this person that you and your book would be better off elsewhere.
Furthermore, make sure that if you stand your ground and refuse to change something that it is really truly worth refusing to change. If you’ve built up good will by being pleasant and hardworking beforehand, you’ll have a better chance of making a convincing case for when you do say, “I think the way I’ve written that is the best way.”
I’ll give one example. I revise a lot, and I listen to my editors, although that doesn’t mean I always and necessarily do exactly what they suggest in specific terms. So when we were working on revisions for Crown of Stars, Book 4 (Child of Flame) and my editor at DAW Books said to me, “I think having Sanglant sleep with another woman [while he is separated for about three years from his wife] makes him unsympathetic,” I had built up enough good will via previous work with her to say, “that may be, but the fact is, he has sex with other women for several different reasons.” What I did then was work on making his frustrations with the situation clear, but I did refuse to make him celibate under the circumstances because it went against everything I knew about him as a character. I could refuse to make what was to me a major character change because I hadn’t been fighting over every change, large or small, through all the previous volumes.
Another reason to listen to your editor, however, goes like this:
Experience has taught me that I may be wrong.
Shocking, I know. My children and spouse in particular will be hornswoggled to hear me admit this.
Editors are trained. They see a lot of books. Most editors who stay in the field do so because they know what they’re doing. They have seen it all before.
While it is within the realm of possibility that sometimes the editor is wrong and you are right (see example above, because I was absolutely right about Sanglant), consider carefully as you reflect on the changes you are being asked to make. Stand back as far as you can from your own feelings.
They may actually be right, and you may be wrong.
Bear in mind that being right may mean they have correctly described the problem, or it may mean that they simply have realized there is a problem but can’t quite pin down what it is. So sometimes an editor may make a comment that seems wrong to you but which may be right: right in the sense that it identifies an underlying problem. Figure out what the problem is, and fix that.
In such cases, don’t get stuck on the literal words of the comment. Don’t even get stuck on things that may be wrong in the editor’s comment. Try to see if there is something going on in the background -- maybe something the editor isn’t specifically aware of or isn’t highlighting -- that is an issue worth dealing with, rewriting, or making more clear. Sometimes changing a not so obvious thing clarifies the obvious thing.
I’ll raise this issue again when I talk about beta readers, next.
Next up: why for me allowing other eyes to see the manuscript has been crucial for my writing process. Although it won’t be up tomorrow.
Will debut novelists need to implement more editorial changes than an experienced novelist?
I think that depends but on the whole I would say Probably with a side dose of Maybe.
Why “maybe?”
In some cases, a debut novel is one that has been lovingly crafted and revised and re-visioned over many years, down to the smallest detail. Such novels may be polished gems hard to replicate under any other circumstances except those of a novelist who produces a novel (or short fiction) at long intervals. I’m not going to deal with that subset today.
Realistically, a new novelist (not quite the same as a debut novelist, who may have written 20 novels before getting one published) is likely to not have as much experience with the ways of narrative, plot, character, tension, emotional arcs, pacing, using details to enhance the plot, characters, and story, and all those other things that more experienced novelists theoretically have spent years learning how to craft.
The unfortunate truth is: I am a better writer now than I was 20 years ago.
The chances are that you will be, too, with time and words invested.
I say “unfortunate” in this case not because it is a problem--in fact, it is a feature not a bug--but because the disconnect between writing the best work you can at the time you are writing and the idea that it may well still be flawed can be a deep chasm to bridge. I’m still in the process of bridging that chasm, and I expect I always will be. That’s okay. The idea of topping out and reaching my limit scares me far more than revising does. I’m more likely to become obsolete than to become perfect.
So a debut novelist may expect more editorial requests, although s/he may not necessarily get them depending on other circumstances.
In a similar vein, an experienced novelist who is moving sideways, as it were, into a new genre may function in that new genre in a similar fashion to a debut novelist. If I were to write a genuine YA, or a mystery, or a Delta Force thriller, I might expect to see more and a different type of editorial comments than I have grown accustomed to writing in my comfort zone of sff.
I still expect to get significant editorial requests. Partly this has to do with the fact that I have not yet written a perfect novel (see cage match between perfection and obsolescence, above). It likely also has something to do with how I work in the general sense. Maybe I’m a fairly sloppy early draft writer; maybe there are readers out there who, reading any one of my books, shake their heads and mutter to themselves, “man, this could have used at least one more revision and probably four,” not to mention the readers who wonder why such crap got published to begin with, but they’re not on my side, so let us allow them to retire to greener pastures and get on with their lives elsewhere unsullied by my flaws.
I revise a lot. On the whole, most writers I know also revise a lot. This is not a flaw. I think of it as a strength.
What if the author is really able to justify why they’ve written something a certain way?
Well, sure. I’ve done this myself, but I have learned to be cautious about this and to take a long hard look at a critical comment in such contexts before I try to justify my version as the better one.
There are several reasons for this.
One is pragmatic and can be summed up as:
Choose your fights.
Not every disagreement is worth challenging. You are showing respect for your editor’s skills and experience by listening to her/him. That doesn’t mean you have to roll over and do everything you’re told. It just means it is better to be someone who is good to work with rather than difficult to work with. And believe me, if you challenge every suggestion your editor makes, you’re being difficult to work with. Unless your editor is simply incompetent, in which case you need to be asking yourself why you are working with a publisher who would employ an incompetent editor, or you should ask if you simply are so much the wrong fit for this person that you and your book would be better off elsewhere.
Furthermore, make sure that if you stand your ground and refuse to change something that it is really truly worth refusing to change. If you’ve built up good will by being pleasant and hardworking beforehand, you’ll have a better chance of making a convincing case for when you do say, “I think the way I’ve written that is the best way.”
I’ll give one example. I revise a lot, and I listen to my editors, although that doesn’t mean I always and necessarily do exactly what they suggest in specific terms. So when we were working on revisions for Crown of Stars, Book 4 (Child of Flame) and my editor at DAW Books said to me, “I think having Sanglant sleep with another woman [while he is separated for about three years from his wife] makes him unsympathetic,” I had built up enough good will via previous work with her to say, “that may be, but the fact is, he has sex with other women for several different reasons.” What I did then was work on making his frustrations with the situation clear, but I did refuse to make him celibate under the circumstances because it went against everything I knew about him as a character. I could refuse to make what was to me a major character change because I hadn’t been fighting over every change, large or small, through all the previous volumes.
Another reason to listen to your editor, however, goes like this:
Experience has taught me that I may be wrong.
Shocking, I know. My children and spouse in particular will be hornswoggled to hear me admit this.
Editors are trained. They see a lot of books. Most editors who stay in the field do so because they know what they’re doing. They have seen it all before.
While it is within the realm of possibility that sometimes the editor is wrong and you are right (see example above, because I was absolutely right about Sanglant), consider carefully as you reflect on the changes you are being asked to make. Stand back as far as you can from your own feelings.
They may actually be right, and you may be wrong.
Bear in mind that being right may mean they have correctly described the problem, or it may mean that they simply have realized there is a problem but can’t quite pin down what it is. So sometimes an editor may make a comment that seems wrong to you but which may be right: right in the sense that it identifies an underlying problem. Figure out what the problem is, and fix that.
In such cases, don’t get stuck on the literal words of the comment. Don’t even get stuck on things that may be wrong in the editor’s comment. Try to see if there is something going on in the background -- maybe something the editor isn’t specifically aware of or isn’t highlighting -- that is an issue worth dealing with, rewriting, or making more clear. Sometimes changing a not so obvious thing clarifies the obvious thing.
I’ll raise this issue again when I talk about beta readers, next.
Next up: why for me allowing other eyes to see the manuscript has been crucial for my writing process. Although it won’t be up tomorrow.