What sort of editor do you need? What genre do you write? Do you have to like the person? Can you test drive an editor? How do you know when you need to fire an editor? OK, that one wasn’t covered in the panel, but if you have ever shown an editor the door, you know when the time has come.
So, what sort of editor do you need? And if you say, “I don’t need an editor! My manuscripts are perfect, and clean, and ready for publishing,” you really need an editor. Just ask any fan of someone who has gotten “too big to edit.” It shows. Even Shelby Foote, who turned in his first and only draft in longhand, needed an editor. Fresh eyes are important, lest you, oh, duplicate an entire chapter other than a few paragraphs at the start and finish. Yes, it happened. At least once. I’ve not read anything by that author since, in part because of the lack of editing (even though the person’s copy was pretty darn clean), in part because I got the sense that the stories were phoned in.
So, what flavor of editor do you need? Gone are the days when “my publisher” did everything in house, from accepting the story to guiding the author on rewrites and improvement to typo catching and continuity smoothing. Now you hire your own, unless you are a Big Name Millions Maker.
Copy editors are the typo catchers. They also look for missing punctuation, run-on and fragment. Copy editors often catch a few things such as “Wasn’t he blond in the last chapter?” and “I thought he died in chapter four”, but that is not their job. They do the final tidying and corrections of the words, not the plot and other things. A good copy editor also might also flag terms that have developed a new implication or meaning that you the author should be aware of, but that is not his job. He is the grammar boss and spill, er, spell catcher, ah, checker.
Developmental editors are the people you approach when you have an idea and some basics but nothing more. If you want to see how to get from “I have a setting and characters, and don’t know how to get to where I want to take them” to a workable plot idea and perhaps outline, they are the people you hire. They sometimes help steer a series, but those are getting very rare. Some “developmental editors” are actually structural editors, so do your homework before spending lots of money and getting unhappily surprised.
A structural editor seeks out plot holes, addresses questions like “who exactly is the protagonist?”, or why the middle and end don’t link up well, and so on. She is making certain the novel works as a story and is coherent. If you have friends read your book, and they all say that the bad guy is actually the good guy, a structural editor is who you need to talk to if you can’t spot the problem. No foreshadowing? Structural editor. A good structural editor will not rewrite the book, but will help you strengthen the story and fix weak areas and rough spots.
Look at what your proposed editor has worked on. Are they in your genre? If not, that might be OK, or it might be a hint to seek elsewhere. If you search the books on-line and they have lots of “Nice story but so many typos!” then this is not the copy editor for you. Some people will give you references. Check to see if the reference author is in your genre, and what their experience was like. I don’t like having my paw held. Other people do. Also, did the editor get the work done in a timely manner, allowing for Life? If not, no matter how great their work is and how easy they are to get along with, they might not be the person you want to hire. Or you could be OK with that.
After you do your initial research, see if you go for a test edit. Most professional editors want to see a sample of your writing, and will do that chapter, then return it to you for a low fee. You can see if his style works for you, and he can check out your genre and chops. Better to decide that the person is not the editor for you before you commit serious time and money, and get less-than-helpful comments. Likewise, the editor wants to be certain your genre and skills fit their expertise. If you need a structural editor, a good and honest copy editor will suggest that, then ask you to come back after that is done.
If an editor tries to rewrite the entire book, run. If she tries to polish your voice out of the book, run. If she insists that there is One True Way to tell a story, and you are NOT on a contract with her and the publisher, run. Likewise, if the person wants a lot of money before he will consider working with your manuscript, and won’t do a sample for you, think twice or more. If they assure you that you “Don’t need a contract in writing” then be very, very, very careful.
Too, look on line for places like “Predators and Editors” and other sites. In fact, that should probably be a starting point to weed out the crooks and creeps from someone you want to sign a contract with.
Mad Genius Club 
11 responses to “Picking an Editor”
I’ve been guilty of the duplicated chapter thing once or twice in my early books but I think I have them all ironed out now. Artifact of some quirk of the way I was using Scrivener.
This was a Big Name author. Scrivener might have played a role, but I’m not in a position to ask, and the publisher should have caught it.
Ouch, that’s terrifying!
I keep looking at the description of a developmental editor and wondering who gets to say that she has a characters and setting but no story — so could someone help… I guess if you pay enough. I figure that it’s my job if I want to call myself an author, to invent the story and when I don’t have a story for a character I need to move on. Very curious.
A lot of “developmental editor did X” anecdotes sound to me like something the writers would have figured out eventually on their own, especially with enough beta reader feedback. But sometimes you don’t have enough time, or enough feedback, to work with, or can’t get enough emotional distance for other reasons.
Ignore the above, I got structural and developmental editor mixed up again.
I’ve had cases where I got the setting first, then had to wait for characters to wander in. Or had a scene and a character appear, but it was years before the rest of the story developed. The Bard’s Song stories are one of those. I knew I had an interesting person and possible world, but what it was going to be … didn’t feel right. Three years passed before I had all the pieces. Since I’m not on a hard schedule, that was OK. If you are trying to write for a living, and none of your friends (or your rubber duckie) can help you talk through the knots, then hiring a developmental editor might be the way to go.
You’d have to be awfully sure you could recoup that money. I know that lots of people have more ideas than I do, so I suppose it would make sense for them.
It does have to be clear enough. Both Magic of the Lost God and Through A Mirror, Darkly took years to pull together, and no editor could have really helped because I had to build up enough characters and settings. (I originally thought that Lost God was in ancient, not 19th century, Egypt.)
I tried out a structural editor that was recommended by a fellow writer with a couple of chapters from one of my new books. She spotted some important things but is very expensive. Once I’m finished with Son of Silvercon, I’ll try making the changes she suggested and see where things are headed.
Thanks for this article. I wanted to make the editing panels at LibertyCon but always seemed to have a conflict. Then there’s recording the audio book for Advance Guards, writing the next novel and the other, shorter project, and the blog, and moving, and… Ah well, tomorrow comes whether I’m ready or not.:)
I’m thinking about hiring a structural editor. The feedback – both positive and negative – from alpha readers (first half of the book) was valuable. Having a pro look at it seems reasonable. But, I want to finish it first. I’m finding enough problems on my own, still.
I highly doubt that the book will pay for the editor. It’s far too niche to ever make money. It seemed like a good story to tell for my first attempt. If it fails, so be it. That said, because it’s my first, getting feedback on structural issue will – one hopes – prevent me from making the same mistakes should I attempt another.
That is, more of an author-training investment than just “improve this book”.