{"id":3716,"date":"2016-12-01T08:45:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T07:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3716"},"modified":"2016-12-01T08:48:01","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T07:48:01","slug":"editors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/3716\/","title":{"rendered":"Editors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regular commenter Watcher left the following comment<\/a> under my last post on writing:<\/p>\n

Editing, as anyone who has written anything knows, is an utter pain up the dark place. It may be having an idea is fairly easy, writing a draft is fun but editing really does separate the men from the sheep, as it were. You have to have a hard heart to edit something you have come to love. (By the way, when I was at Art College one exercise that came as a real shock to us kiddies was spending an hour drawing some plant and then being told to rub it out and start again. Naturally, we all tried to save the \u2018best bits\u2019 of the drawing. To edit, you have to be prepared to rub out the \u2018best bits\u2019 and, pooh above, that is really, really hard)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know I’m going to struggle with this. \u00a0In my professional life I write reports and when they are sent for review I take every comment and suggestion as a personal affront, believing my work to be the epitome of perfection first time around. \u00a0I exaggerate, but only slightly. \u00a0I really, really don’t like having my work edited.<\/p>\n

But I have no choice: an engineer cannot check his own work\u00a0and nor can a writer edit his, and I have no doubt a good editor will make my output much better. \u00a0The question I have, with my having no experience, is what exactly does an editor do? \u00a0Specifically, where does his\/her role start and stop.<\/p>\n

My guess is that an editor will take an objective look at the story and make suggestions with the goal of improving it in the eyes of future readers. \u00a0He will look at the book length, the prose, the characters, the overall story and other elements and then advise what changes ought to be made. \u00a0I would imagine they would include fleshing out a character, removing unnecessary scenes which are effectively duplicates of others, reducing the length of some sections, increasing the length of others, rewriting sections to make them more readable and to remove ambiguities, and possibly making recommendations to improve a character or storyline.<\/p>\n

But how far do they go? \u00a0Do they attempt to change the story, for example by substituting a sad ending for a happy one? \u00a0Do they ask the author to drop the first person narrative and rewrite it in the third person? \u00a0Would they suggest major alterations to key characters thinking readers will find them more accessible? \u00a0Would they want additional scenes included to make the story more like the one they<\/em> would have written were they an author instead of an editor?<\/p>\n

And how are the conflicts between the editor and author resolved? \u00a0Obviously an author must trust his editor, but how does one go about this? \u00a0How do you know whether an editor is adding value or destroying your work to satisfy his own ego?<\/p>\n

I would love to get some feedback on this, as it is obviously going to be a tough period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Regular commenter Watcher left the following comment under my last post on writing: Editing, as anyone who has written anything knows, is an utter pain up the dark place. It may be having an idea is fairly easy, writing a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[91],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3716"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3720,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716\/revisions\/3720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}