My Experience with Professional Editing
I've delayed writing about this topic for a couple of reasons. I wanted to wait until after my second book was professionally edited but also, there are many opinions on editing.
Some of the underlying questions are: should you hire a professional editor? If yes, how many? When should you utilize an editor? Should you hire an editor if you are looking to traditionally publish? What does the process look like? How is the editing done?
One of the reasons for such varied opinions is that professional editing is a huge cost when it comes to self-publishing thus can be a barrier for authors. There may be other options available where money is tight.
As usual, I'm going to refrain from providing advice and will focus this post on my experience and what works for me. To keep this blog reasonably short, I won't get into the events leading up to my debut novel’s professional editing except to say that I didn't understand how much I needed it until I got it done. To read about my chaotic writing process, see my blog post: What is My Writing Process?
Generally, there are three types of edits:
Developmental edit - overall story assessment including story structure, plotting, character arcs, world building, etc.
Copy/line edit - clarity, flow, style, sentence structure, word usage.
Proofreading - final spelling, grammar, punctuation, typo check.
I've noticed that terminology isn’t used consistently, particularly "copy edit", so it's important to be clear about what you are getting.
A story may make sense in an author's head, but translating it onto the page in a way that makes sense to the reader is an entirely different matter. For my debut novel, I was initially leaning more toward a proofread, and was unsure if I needed even a line edit. Ha! This was definitely new author error.
I hired one editor to do all three edits.
It can be hard to get constructive feedback in the form of a sea of red tracked changes and comments, especially on something as personal as creative writing. Edits are suggestions, not absolutes, but keeping an open mind helps make the novel better. I wanted a critical review, and my editor's questions forced me to think through aspects of my story. Where I didn't understand the feedback or wasn't sure how to fix the issue, I asked for clarity. I accepted almost all of the edits.
The professional edits for Imperious Realm fell into a few general themes. Fortunately, my editor had an acute understanding of my world building, pointing out where I needed to better explain the system I had created. Clarifying the political system helped me tighten the plotting. The sociology was fairly well contemplated but the need to clarify medical references and science fiction was identified, so I proceeded with explaining these further and consulting with people I know. (Google only gets you so far.) Characters were also mostly developed but the edits helped refine them because discovery writers like me have too many thoughts and sometimes I can't make decisions.
I think the line edits and proofreading are self-explanatory. I was unsurprised to learn that I have a knack for writing strong dialogue, which makes sense because reading or writing paragraphs upon paragraphs of exposition is boring to me. Actually, I get easily bored. I guess that's why there's constant conflict in my stories. Writing constant tension also happens to be one of my strengths—or so I am told. Hopefully other readers agree.
Once I incorporated the feedback, I reviewed my book a few more times before publishing to make sure our eyes hadn't missed anything or that I hadn't made small story errors. There will always be typos in any book regardless of self or traditionally published. It’s a matter of minimizing errors. For this reason, a good friend of mine also graciously agreed to review my book before publishing.
I applied my learnings to Twisted Monarch, and this draft read much more smoothly. Book 1's professional editing was focused more on pulling back unnecessary detail whereas book 2 was focused more on line editing and adding details to help further build the fantasy world.
I try to get my manuscript in the best shape possible for professional editing, but I don’t fret as much anymore on minor grammatical details. I'd rather focus my draft on the more important aspects of my book.
Also…I’ll be the first to say that I am an author, but I do not understand commas.