So You Want to Get me in Trouble?
So you all want to get me in trouble? Ok, let's go for it...Let’s talk about the E word. Yes, I mean editors. Can’t live with them, can’t shoot them. Whoops, I just ended that sentence with a pronoun, didn’t I? Here’s the issue: editing is vitally important, and that means that editors are vital to our craft. My biggest issue with editors is when they major in the minors and miss the essentials.
A friend of mine gave me a finished draft of her novel to read, which was quite good and will be released soon. However, I was appalled to see things that the editor missed. And no, I do NOT mean nitpicking about commas or worrying about a split infinitive in the third paragraph of the second page. You get my drift.
Her editor missed things that can make an author look really stupid.
For example, my friend used a phrase that wasn’t actually in circulation until about 100 years after the time period in which the novel was set. There was also a major discrepancy concerning the length of time it would have taken someone in that region in that century to travel to. She had a person taking a “day trip” that would’ve actually taken about a week during that century in that location. (We all remember that impossible "day trip" to Asheville in Crawdads, right?) There was also one scene in my friend's book where a minor character’s eye color miraculously changed.
Well, these mistakes happen for a lot of reasons. Sometimes a writer changes a character’s looks, but overlooks one sentence where the change wasn’t made correctly. Other times, certain scenes are cut, but the author forgets to cut a scene that REFERS to the scene that was cut, thus creating confusion. This is why editors are supposed to catch those mistakes, and you’re probably wondering why they don’t.
My personal opinion, and it may not be popular, is that they fail to see these things because they are so fixated on little things that don’t matter, such as whether or not a sentence ended in a preposition, if there are “smiling words,” if the author started a scene with weather, and of course, the highly debated Oxford comma. Bottom line is, readers don't care about those things.
Editors, however, become obsessed with them.
The sad part is, they become so fixated on those little bits of nonsense that they miss the major things like the ones I mentioned in my friend’s novel. She didn’t need to feel bad...I caught a lot of those things in my own book while my editor fussed about commas. All authors probably do.
I truly wish that the old-time editors would come back on the scene. The ones who caught true mistakes like plot holes, confusing dialogue, century discrepancies, etc. In other words, stuff that actually matters. Where are those editors? I bet there’s a lot of writers hiring right now.
A friend of mine gave me a finished draft of her novel to read, which was quite good and will be released soon. However, I was appalled to see things that the editor missed. And no, I do NOT mean nitpicking about commas or worrying about a split infinitive in the third paragraph of the second page. You get my drift.
Her editor missed things that can make an author look really stupid.
For example, my friend used a phrase that wasn’t actually in circulation until about 100 years after the time period in which the novel was set. There was also a major discrepancy concerning the length of time it would have taken someone in that region in that century to travel to. She had a person taking a “day trip” that would’ve actually taken about a week during that century in that location. (We all remember that impossible "day trip" to Asheville in Crawdads, right?) There was also one scene in my friend's book where a minor character’s eye color miraculously changed.
Well, these mistakes happen for a lot of reasons. Sometimes a writer changes a character’s looks, but overlooks one sentence where the change wasn’t made correctly. Other times, certain scenes are cut, but the author forgets to cut a scene that REFERS to the scene that was cut, thus creating confusion. This is why editors are supposed to catch those mistakes, and you’re probably wondering why they don’t.
My personal opinion, and it may not be popular, is that they fail to see these things because they are so fixated on little things that don’t matter, such as whether or not a sentence ended in a preposition, if there are “smiling words,” if the author started a scene with weather, and of course, the highly debated Oxford comma. Bottom line is, readers don't care about those things.
Editors, however, become obsessed with them.
The sad part is, they become so fixated on those little bits of nonsense that they miss the major things like the ones I mentioned in my friend’s novel. She didn’t need to feel bad...I caught a lot of those things in my own book while my editor fussed about commas. All authors probably do.
I truly wish that the old-time editors would come back on the scene. The ones who caught true mistakes like plot holes, confusing dialogue, century discrepancies, etc. In other words, stuff that actually matters. Where are those editors? I bet there’s a lot of writers hiring right now.
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