Thinking about the job of editing
March 5th, 2010
I’ve been thinking a bit about this, as I’ve been nose-to-the-grindstone on editing the third edition of Primetime Adventures. There’s a part of me that wants to encapsulate in a relatively small amount of text what I do as an editor. Talking about grammar and organization and stuff is all well and good, but I think those are means, not at end. To that, I have the following two duties I hold myself to as an editor:
- My job as an editor is to make your text match your intent
- My job as an editor is to call bullshit on your intent (or what I perceive your intent to be) when warranted
Grammar, spelling, all that copy editing stuff is there to make the text communicate well. Organization is there to make the act of processing and understanding the text to flow as smoothly as possible (among other uses). But none of that matters if you’re communicating something other that your intent. And your intent doesn’t matter if it’s off, or if I misunderstand your intent because of your text.
I think about that from a whole-book level, from a chapter level, a spread or page level, section level, paragraph & sentence level. I think that makes me a slower editor than I could be, and I know I don’t have that luxury on a larger book to be that critical and detailed, but right now that’s the editor I like being. Revealing a writer’s intent is rewarding.
(This probably bleeds into game development, which is why Paul credited me as both editor & developer on A Penny For My Thoughts.)
Anyway, back to work. I just wanted to share some (likely disorganized) thoughts. Feel free to call bullshit…on my text or intent.
- Ryan
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Actually, that’s a pretty clear job description for what an editor should be doing. At least the kind of editor that handles this type of duty (as opposed to one who only does copy editing).
I agree… so long as you’re sure you understand the writer’s intent, and that the writer has explicitly agreed that you’re allowed to substantively edit their text. That sounds like it should have a “well, duh, yeah!” response made to it, but no, I think that clearly needs to be expressed in advance between the writer and their editor. Many writers acknowledge they need editing, but what they usually consider editing is just copyediting or proofing. When you get in there and discover exactly what you’ve talked about above, that their intent is not aligned with their text, then it’s best to make sure that the writer is totally on board with your alignment of text to intent … or else bad things happen, and someone starts flinging accusations only to be cut short by a rap to the head from a collapsible bite-stick.
But I digress.
As an editor in my day job (and a freelancer for some RPG folks), I’m always anxious about the above, as well as angsty at the pocketbook level about doing substantive editing or rewriting … it occurs to me that if I’m doing that much revision, then I needs to get paid and/or acknowledged as a *writer* or contributor in some way, just as Paul did with you on “Penny.” Any editor knows that there’s a huge difference in the amount of time spent on substantive editing vs. copyediting, possibly an order of magnitude.
So, my disorganized reply to your disorganized yet on-target thoughts is “you’re absolutely right about the need for an editor to align text with intent… if that’s what the writer’s intent is for having you as an editor.” That’s got to be clear up front, or unhappiness will abound.
Tom,
What you said 100%.
Working with Paul on Penny was always about dialogue, but he was a pretty reachable guy on this project, so asking him low-level stuff like “what do you actually want to achieve with this paragraph?” was easy to do. I have worked with less reachable writers where I have to assume a lot more about intent because dialogue was infrequent.
That’s to say that I don’t see achieving my two primary duties as something done solely by text-changing. Dialogue is key.
I can’t remember where, but there was a paragraph in Penny that Paul & I went back and forth about. I kept asserting that it was unclear, so I eventually rewrote it to be what I thought he was saying. His solution was “That’s not what I meant…but you’re right in that it was unclear. Here’s what I mean.” That experience has stuck with me as a lesson in trying not to assume I know the intent something that needs rewriting, if that makes any sense.
Of course, I often find myself in the curious position of editing for a writer who is also the publisher, so I often frame things in the form of conversation rather than dictation. I’m an editor who often only has authority to walk off the job, and everything else is looked at as mere suggestion. But, I find that’s a healthy way to converse with writers (at least, I do right now). And that was a total tangent, wasn’t it?
- Ryan
That kind of relationship in editing, where it’s collaboration and dialogue twixt writer and editor, is precisely what I look for in the freelance stuff that I do. If that’s not there, then generally I’m not interested in doing it. Thankfully just about everything I’ve done has been that kind of work, or close enough to it. I get too much with the day job of what I have no control over, primarily because our writers pander to… er, write for… a specific audience with whom I have little in common.
In re: tangent, hey, I’m firmly possessed of the opinion that it’s impossible to go off on a tangent on one’s own blog, since for the most part, a blog is pretty much a collection of tangential thoughts.
I got here through the circuitrous road the internet sometimes takes, but yeah. That sounds right.
The lack of power is really an interesting issue. People in the indie-crowd often speak of “Creator-control”, but the editor is also a creator, no? Heh.
That lead me to realize that sometimes editors around here are more like proofers, due to the lack of the dictation ability.
Guy,
As an editor, I try not to think of myself as a creator. That muddies the waters. Of course, sometimes the writers think of me that way.
Long ago, I was editing a friend’s story for my anthology, Finis: A Book of Endings. I marked it up heavily, and sent it back to him for comments. He sheepishly IMed me asking if I wanted co-author credit.
My response was more or less: “Fuck you. I’m your editor. You wrote this. I just took out the scaffolding you left in.” (For the record, he was someone with whom I could answer with vulgarity, so it was a friendly “fuck you.”)
But yeah, some are more like copy editors than managing editors. For RPGs, I’m ill-content to just copy edit. So I turn down jobs that look too much like that. I’m a craftsman, and I’m doing this thing because I love it.
- Ryan