Author query: The good and the bad of copyediting
Published by Deanna Hoak October 1st, 2006 in copyeditingI know, without a doubt, that authors differ in what they want in a copyedit. I think the primary reason I’ve been able to make a living freelancing for so long is because I do a decent job, overall, at analyzing the style of each author whose work I get and determining what that author needs the most; frankly, that need differs with every project, and I don’t approach any novel with the same set of rules in mind. I’m really very much against the strict application of any style–including The Chicago Manual of Style, which is the standard in the industry–for that reason.
But what I’d really like to do with this post is see what, exactly, authors have loved and hated in their copyedits. If you’re an author, please consider taking the time to offer up specific changes or queries you’ve really appreciated and really disliked; provide examples of both if you can. Editors who’ve witnessed such exchanges are also welcome to reply, but I don’t want examples that people have heard about secondhand. (I have to hope that some of the copyediting horror stories I’ve heard are simply rumor, and if they are I don’t want to propagate them.)
If you really loved a particular copyeditor’s work, feel free to mention that person’s name. There isn’t any reason in the world that good copyeditors shouldn’t be acknowledged.
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I'm a freelance copyeditor specializing in fantasy and science fiction. SF/F novels I have copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Golden Spur, John W. Campbell Memorial, Quill, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. In 2007 I was short-listed for a World Fantasy Award for my copyediting.
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Are you looking only for comments about fiction copyedits? So far, my experience has been in technical writing.
When my short story got into Sofawolf’s _Best In Show_, they asked me about the capitalization of one of the alien terms I’d used. (I replied that, reconstructing my intent, one was capitalized and meant “Starship Captain,” and the other was lowercased and meant “tribal leader.” But that I wasn’t insistent on either and would be happy if they decided to change ‘em. Without looking at the book, I believe that they actually kept the differing capitalizations, for which I coo.)
I’ve never had true copyedits that I disliked, on my fiction. (Now, on my work-for-hire, I’ve had a word cut that totally changed my intent — “large minority” to “minority”… Grr.)
Michele: You can use nonfiction; just note that’s what it is.
You know mine :)
I like to think that one of the reasons for the uptick in postive reviews for Abyss & Apex since I took the helm is that we don’t just put up stories as-is. If something took extensive rewrites but had a dynamite story underneath worth getting to, we did the work with the authors to make it so. It might be something as subtle as insisting on circularity like I did with “Museum Beetles”or as draconian as the six months of hair pulling that resulted in the agreed-upon final version of “Emmet, Joey & the Beelz.”
As for horror stories? Let’s just say I had an author that was so dificult to work with I am inserting a kill-fee clause in our contracts. And I will never buy another thing from the person again. It may be art, but your story is also _product_ and entertainment. If no one “gets” what you are trying to do, I think you need to rethink the whole publication process. Self publish your navel-gazing and be done with it.
Not exactly on topic, but sent because we love you, if you haven’t seen it already…
http://community.livejournal.com/cranky_editors/352145.html
Aw, thanks, Danny. I hadn’t seen that yet. :-)
My experience is limited to technical writing. In some respects I’m lucky… typically the editor (performing a copyedit) marks up changes on the PDF, and I make the changes in my source files.
I get great comments and catches - but when I disagree, it’s easier to question than to get a change “undone”.
I think the best edit I received was on an article I wrote for a technical writing e-zine. I had written an article about how to get more out of a common tech-writer’s tool. The editor (Deborah Ray) suggested revisions to change the intro into a problem/solution format. It was a new way of thinking about how I organized my writing, and that guidance helped me with more than just that article.
When I was writing Regency romances I once had a copyeditor who replaced the majority of my commas with semicolons, apparently on a whim. She was also bored by the manuscript or pressed for time, since she gave up the semi-colon replacement about halfway through the manuscript, and from that point on there were only a handful of corrections that she bothered to make.
Chatting with other authors at that publisher revealed that I wasn’t the only one who’d experienced the semicolon queen, and our frantic pleas to our editors meant that she was eventually dropped from the list of freelancers.
The other problem I ran into was that the copyeditors were frequently unfamiliar with period language and usage. For example, the Earl of Endicott is correctly addressed as Lord Endicott. He will never be referred to as Lord Stephen Endicott. Not even if the copyeditor feels that Lord Endicott is too stiff and formal, and decides to change all the heroine’s references to him to “Lord Stephen” instead.
That publisher was known for wildly inconsistent copyedits, so I wasn’t alone in my frustration with them. Since I’ve moved to writing fantasy for Bantam, my experiences have been overwhelmingly positive.