11 tips for getting quality editing on a minimal budget

Professional editors are expensive. You'll get no arguments from me on that one. Behind the scenes, editors constantly agonize over what rates we should be charging, trying to find the balance between being affordable and actually earning enough to pay our own bills.

And as much as editors try our best to be affordable, more often than not, a writer's budget doesn't extend far enough to make such a venture worth the pennies involved.

Developmental editing (my area of expertise) is the one aspect of editing that seems to suffer the most from this cost dilemma. Under ideal circumstances, every writer heading down publication roads would be able to hire a developmental editor to help them with the story and characterization aspects of their manuscripts, and hire a copyeditor to help with language and the line-level editing. It would be fantastic if every writer could benefit from the professional eye on how the narrative is constructed. But the cost of such a venture doesn't make it practical. So, writers need to think outside the box to find that help with editing.

Today, I want to explore some of the ways that you can edit your manuscripts cheaply without compromising your editing standards.

5 Tips for Self-Editing (by Kristin Noland)

Writing takes a community, sharing ideas and supporting one another. So, when we get approached with an article that shares hard-earned knowledge, we couldn't be happier to pass that information.

Today's post is written by Kristin Noland, a fellow editor with her own take on things. Kristin is a developmental and line editor, specializing in speculative fiction, specifically fantasy, paranormal romance, dystopian, and apocalyptic fiction.

So, take it away, Kristin, and let's share some wisdom!

5 Tips for Self-Editing (Guest Blog)

Before we get into how, let’s cover the why you should self-edit.

Competition

If you are going the self-publishing route, your novel will be competing with traditionally published ones that have been through multiple drafts and edits.

If you are planning on using traditional publishing routes, your work will be competing with submissions which have gone through multiple rounds of editing.

Your Readers

You want readers to get pulled into and enjoy the world you have created. To do that, you need to make sure you have a well-written, entertaining, and engaging novel that hits your readers' expectations.

You Become a Better Author

By self-editing, your writing skills will improve.

With the why explained, let’s get into the 5 steps of self-editing.

The Stages of Editing

When I tell people that I'm a freelance editor, it's quite common for people to assume that I spend my days just looking at spelling, punctuation, and grammar. I don't get this reaction from just the general public either. Many writers, especially new writers, also make this assumption. However, editing is so much more.

Editing falls into three main categories:

developmental, which encompasses the rewriting process and critiques;
copyediting, with the line-edits and of course famous punctuation-and-grammar concept;
and proofreading, which occurs after a manuscript is typeset for publication, looking for any errors that were either missed or introduced during the typesetting process.

Each stage is necessary for the production of a publishable book.

The initial drafting of a story is a solitary practice. However, during the different editing phases, it's vital for every writer to seek out those extra sets of eyes to provide objective input. The who and the when will depend entirely on what stage your manuscript is at.

The stages of editing are the same for both traditional and self-publication, it's just the players that may change.

Writing relies on a reader’s knowledge

If you read through various blogs about writing, there is a common theme: Don't treat your readers like they're idiots. This is 100% true, because your readers will have experiences and knowledge that they bring with them, interpreting your stories with that eye. But are you taking full advantage of that preexisting knowledge?

The acclaimed science fiction writer Ray Bradbury wrote many novels and short stories that were printed in the 1950s and 1960s. His readers had survived World War II, bringing with them the knowledge and experiences they had from during the war, including the colloquial terms. Readers of today can still enjoy his stories, but there will be elements we will miss because the subtext is meaningless without the World War II experience.

Today's readers of 2001: A Space Odyssey laugh at how far off-base the predictions regarding space travel and artificial intelligence were. But it was written in 1968, one year before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. Had the space program continued at the rate it was back in the late 1960s, not stopping at the moon, then we would likely already have a colony on Mars today, changing some of the meaning of that book and movie.

While we are hopefully crafting our stories in such a way that they are timeless, there will always be a partial reliance on preexisting knowledge to understand some subtext. It's time to look at how much hidden subtext is buried within your own writing based on the experiences and preexisting knowledge of your current readers.

The Camera of Point of View

It's not surprising that a conversation about writing eventually turns to a conversation about point-of-view (POV). Exactly how the narrative shapes the perspective of the story will have a direct impact on the reader's experience.

The POV is not just about understanding which character will act as the narrator. Yes, that's part of it, but the POV also has a depth of perception that defines how much the reader knows about what is going on.

Classifying the POV isn't as straightforward as saying that a passage uses first, second, or third person. It's much more than that.

Today, let's look at an overview of the different narrative POVs that you might find within fiction, include a few examples, and possibly provide some insights into what effect the different POVs might have.

The difference between romance and women’s fiction (Guest Blog from Carron Stevenson)

The Spectrum of Genre

Whenever I meet a writer for the first time, the conversation often turns to what genre we read and write. Will we be able to find some common ground from which we can build a connection — other than the fact that we're both writers?

When I first started out on my editing career, I would encounter the odd person who insisted that they didn't write a genre. They wrote fiction. To this, I would nod and smile — and gauge whether they would be receptive to a quick education. But now, the writers I encounter seem to understand that fiction is marketed based on genre. It is important for a writer to understand the ins and outs of their specific genre and subgenre. Get it wrong, and the fans of those subgenres will flay you alive.

In today's post, we going to take a quick look at the spectrum of genre.

The difference between a critique partner and a beta reader

Getting another set of eyes on that manuscript is vital. Sometimes, we think we wrote something in a certain way, but for whatever reason, what we thought we put on the page isn't what we actually put on the page. Sometimes, we get too close to our stories that we can't see the forest for the trees. Without having that external input, vital issues easily slip through the system.

It can be a costly venture to employ a developmental editor, something that can be beyond the budgets of many writers. But a developmental editor is NOT the only way you can get that vital feedback.

Every writer I know, myself included, uses critique partners and beta readers as part of their editorial process. However, there seems to be some confusion about what these two types of readers do.

It's time to delve into the nitty-gritty as to what makes a critique partner different from a beta reader.

Realistic Character Occupations: U.S. Army Soldier, Patriot Launching Station Enhanced Operator Maintainer (14T)

To win readers over, we need to write characters so authentic they feel like real people. How do we do this? By brainstorming a character’s backstory, personality, needs, desires, and their day-to-day world. Lucky for us, one aspect of their daily life is a goldmine of characterization: the type of work they do.

Think about it: a job can reveal personality, skills, beliefs, fears, desires, and more, which is why Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi created The Occupation Thesaurus, a writing guide that profiles 124 possible careers and the story-worthy information that goes with each.

However, there was only so much space for only so many jobs.

Those of us at Black Wolf Editorial enjoy reading stories that have one of the elusive spies, assassins, or military personnel. On that note, we've coordinated efforts with one of our military connections to create this special entry to accompany The Occupation Thesaurus.

Staff Sergeant David Feinstein is a U.S. Army soldier with the unique role of being a Patriot Launching Station Enhanced Operator Maintainer (14T). That job title might be a little convoluted, but here, in a nutshell, are the key things that a writer needs to know.

Avoiding the Shiny, New Syndrome

There comes a point within a manuscript's life cycle where it loses its shiny luster. Sometimes, it's because we've been working on the manuscript long enough that there is nothing new in it for us to discover. Or maybe we've gotten stuck and have no idea how to move the story forward. Or perhaps we've hit a scene that we just don't want to write though we know it needs to be there.

Regardless the reason for why the manuscript now seems dull to our imaginations, that will be when a new shiny bauble dangles in front of us, distracting our brains from the story we are meant to be working on.

Some writers will chase the new shiny, but following every shiny, new idea can lead to the road filled with incomplete manuscripts. There is one thing that all successful novelists have in common: They finished a manuscript.

As such, every writer wishing to pursue publication needs to develop the discipline needed to persevere on a manuscript that has lost its shiny-new luster.