My first and only publishing and editing essay.
Introduction.
In this essay, I will lay out the importance of editing in the creative writing world. This essay shall give the expectations put upon an author alongside the roles and relationships of two different editorial practitioners in the industry. It shall explore four of the key editorial points, these being, self-assessment, Beta reading, copy editing, and manuscript assessment. All these processes take place before publication and are vital for such a goal. I have chosen these four stages as they are key points in the process and are highly necessary. Fiction shall be the focus as this as it is the genre I intend to publish in. By the end of this essay, I shall have established why it is editorial work is vital to the success of a manuscript.
P1 self-assessment of the manuscript.
Let's start at the beginning. So, an author has their first draft, what's next? In short, self-assessment. Curtis Brown Creative poses these questions to new authors, 'Does your story get going from page one ? have you integrated each element of the plot ? Have you checked your spelling and grammar?'(Smart, 2022). Agents and editors alike are looking for a manuscript that really stands out. If they are constantly tripping over grammar and continuity mistakes in an author's work it is unlikely you'll progress to the next step.
For this reason, you will rewrite your manuscript many times before it is even seen by another human being. Whether this is to fix grammar and spelling – as I have had to do in my manuscript – or whether it's editing events to improve flow. All changes are important. Jasper Fforde writes 'there is only one real rule for writing – make it readable' (Fforde, 2002). Here Fforde isn't just talking about writing basics as I have, but the plot as well. Fforde and many other authors recommend reading work aloud, and discovering what phasing does and doesn't work for yourself. Never pass by an opportunity to improve yourself. Build your work up again and again until; one, it makes geometrical sense, two, the plot is clear throughout the piece, and three, the characters show realistic archetypes. Lastly, make sure your first page leaves the reader asking 'what happens next'. Once this is achieved, an author has established a good reading copy of their work. This means it will make sense without the author's preexisting knowledge of the story. Now the piece is polished down, it can be passed on to beta readers.
P2 Beta reading.
Beta readers, the author's usual second stage of editing, provide the key reader insight into the complete story. Ideally, Beta readers should be representatives of your target audience. Whether those be friends or hired help is up to the author. Jana Begovic says, 'the constructive criticism I reviewed helped give the book its final shape before sending it to a professional editor' (Begovic, 2016). As you can see, the critique gathered is helpful to an author because it offers a fresh perspective that will pick up on things the author misses due to various reasons. This critique could be about; foreshowing or referencing within a piece that's too subtle to be picked up on, a moment the reader feels a character breaks their given traits, or perhaps a continuity error.
The reason this is an important second stage is that, Beta readers may provide insight into changes the author wasn't certain of while working alone. A beta reader can help spawn an author's ideas until they know precisely what fix is required for a passage. As a part of the Jerricho writing group I recently used the 'ask Jerricho' feature to have one of their editors look at the beginning of my manuscript. The advice included links to documentation on how to avoid purple prose – as I tend to over-describe – links to copy editor applications and software, along with some individual sentence comments and adjustments. From this advice given I have again been able to adapt my work. This time in response to the advice I have cut done large amounts of description and taken out points of over-explanation. This is the kind of help you can expect from beta reading reviews.
