Excellent article! It's fascinating to read a detailed description of the process from another author's perspective. I enjoy the revision process far more than writing the 'vomit draft'. Editing gets my hands dirty and my mind actively engaged in the problem-solving process. I create outlines before starting, but just like real people. it takes a decent amount of time spent together to suss out fictional people, too. There is always a point I realize the characters would have acted differently than I first imagined, and the rest of the novel needs adjustment.
Trad writers kipping rounds of edits? I've never heard of that, but I would absolutely refuse. I hire professional editors because I'm a magnet for silly mistakes, but I would never skip doing those steps myself first. Many of my favorite bits of writing resulted from reworking awkward phrases or plot holes, which were a lot of fun as well.
"Publishing tends to combine developmental, structural, and tactical editing under one banner."
I approach it that way too. After I finish a first draft, I do all of that for the second draft. Does the story have plot holes? Where are the pacing issues? Does the overall structure work? Creating this second draft is a challenge, but I don't even show beta readers the novel until I've done this stuff.
After that, I do rounds of editing to layer in foreshadowing, callbacks, work on each character's dialogue, doublecheck specific details, etc etc etc.
"You can write a “vomit draft” with no outline and pay a slightly higher tax in later revision, or you can spend time upfront to build the story and have slightly less editing to do."
I'd argue that doing the planning before writing a novel, including plotting and outlining, leads to significantly less editing later on because the story had structure and meaning from the start. I can't relate to writers who have to "find the story" after they wrote a first draft. Maybe that's why it's easy for me to do developmental, structural, and tactical editing in the same round of editing. The work I do before writing pays off in so many ways.
A very sound analysis of the skills needed to edit for publication, and how to unscramble the dilemmas we writers face!
I feel you play down the strong readiness of some trade publishers to get involved in voice and secondary content, forcing even established authors to write in registers that are not their own. In two cases close to me, good novelists, one with a million-dollar two-book contract, just gave up when her publisher tried to force her to change her historical fiction into bodice-ripping tat. The other had a lyrical drama set in Turkey but – because her first novel had been weirdly pigeon-holed as a thriller writer – was forced by a top publisher to completely rewrite it in 'her' supposedly established style. The book curdled, then was kind of put back to the original, but the experience broke her novel-writing motivation and she too left the trade soon afterwards.
I wonder what happened to the old in-house literary editors. I remember when I was starting out in books in the 1990s, a time of scissors and galley proofs, the skilled re-arrangements of an editor at the UK's John Murray brought out the best in me that I didn't know I had. I would love to enjoy that trusting, collaborative experience again – working with a freelance editor on a text that has no guaranteed publication doesn't feel the same.
You raise a good point, and you’re not wrong. TPs push hard at the developmental level, which often triggers structural and tactical revisions that the publisher might not care about, but that the author has to see through in order to have the story still work.
And also, sometimes one draws the failed writer who is using your book contract as a way to write their own. Very few novelists can tell the difference between an editor who knows what works and what doesn’t and an editor driving changes for personal reasons that don’t serve the art.
You’re also right that the old notion of the literary deuteragonist is dead. In TP, your editor is your boss, not a collaborator, and the same goes for your agent. If you hire a freelancer, you’re the boss—but also might not know what work needs to be done. The relationship between equals that might have once existed is no longer on the menu.
A very useful and well-organized essay, and I hope writers take it to heart and see the value in it. Incidentally, I think adverbs are permissible. However, they are often redundant (try taking one out and seeing if it really changes what you said) and using them a lot creates a visual/oral repetition of "ly" that gets tiresome. It's the ly, ly, ly thing that is the real danger of adverbs.
This is absolutely true. Also, adverbs are clunkier in other languages than in English. In French, the suffix is “-ment.” In German, it’s “-lich.” And some languages don’t have them at all, which tends to mean you pull an adjective and hope it works.
I find, when I go over rough copy, that about half the adverbs and adjectives earn their keep. And if you cut an essential adverb, you end up having to use a clunky adverbial phrase to replace it.
Your essay lays out the conundrum. The text becomes like silly putty. You push and prod in one spot and try to shape it but it distends and warps at another. I am working with a professional developmental editor on my second novel. They are working on the text this month while I rewrite my first novel (that they also edited). Here's the thing. This is an expensive process. Thousands of dollars. Very few of us can afford it. Hell, I can barely afford it. I do not expect to recoup those expenses. If I wanted to make money from writing, this is not the way I would go. Then why am I writing? Good question. I just want to write the best book that I can.
Excellent article! I wish I’d read this back in mfa school while writing my first book and having no idea whatsoever what the process was. Glad it’s written now!
The thing this maps so well also makes me notice what it leaves out: it assumes that the editing happens to a finished draft i.e. in passes after the fact. I've been chewing on whether the more interesting position for AI is earlier as editor-in-the-loop, while the last stretch of the draft is still being shaped, surfacing the structural/consistency issues before they harden, without steering the writer's hand. Might write something longer on this
Excellent essay. Editing is way more difficult than writing. If it wasn't, the writing itself wouldn't be worth reading. It takes a good editor to make a great writer. I'm learning that more and more every day.
This is one of those claims that is true but also has bad-faith interpretations or connotations (not to accuse you of intending any such.) In the publishing world, "difficult author" is one of those bludgeons used to threaten writers into taking bad deals or accepting conditions contrary to their interests. In the business world, it's "team player." We all understand that sometimes team playing is important, but the specifically corporate notion of "team player" is used politically and abusively and for no beneficial purpose.
You could apply this to social skills in general. Objectively, social skills are important. That has been true in every situation where two or more humans have interacted. At the same time, our society has allowed the rich to decide which social skills matter (i.e., define bourgeois culture and its rules and expectations so that outsiders get fucked over no matter what they do) and it has also allowed the maltreatment of neurodivergent people, when neurodivergent people can defensibly argue that the rest of the world is just as unskilled at understanding us, so... eh?
The publishing world is especially bad in terms of aggressively policing tone and behavior. Simply expecting literary agents to do their jobs is taken as unforgivably forward. And this is yet another reason we will all be better off when it collapses.
Excellent article! It's fascinating to read a detailed description of the process from another author's perspective. I enjoy the revision process far more than writing the 'vomit draft'. Editing gets my hands dirty and my mind actively engaged in the problem-solving process. I create outlines before starting, but just like real people. it takes a decent amount of time spent together to suss out fictional people, too. There is always a point I realize the characters would have acted differently than I first imagined, and the rest of the novel needs adjustment.
Trad writers kipping rounds of edits? I've never heard of that, but I would absolutely refuse. I hire professional editors because I'm a magnet for silly mistakes, but I would never skip doing those steps myself first. Many of my favorite bits of writing resulted from reworking awkward phrases or plot holes, which were a lot of fun as well.
"Publishing tends to combine developmental, structural, and tactical editing under one banner."
I approach it that way too. After I finish a first draft, I do all of that for the second draft. Does the story have plot holes? Where are the pacing issues? Does the overall structure work? Creating this second draft is a challenge, but I don't even show beta readers the novel until I've done this stuff.
After that, I do rounds of editing to layer in foreshadowing, callbacks, work on each character's dialogue, doublecheck specific details, etc etc etc.
"You can write a “vomit draft” with no outline and pay a slightly higher tax in later revision, or you can spend time upfront to build the story and have slightly less editing to do."
I'd argue that doing the planning before writing a novel, including plotting and outlining, leads to significantly less editing later on because the story had structure and meaning from the start. I can't relate to writers who have to "find the story" after they wrote a first draft. Maybe that's why it's easy for me to do developmental, structural, and tactical editing in the same round of editing. The work I do before writing pays off in so many ways.
A very sound analysis of the skills needed to edit for publication, and how to unscramble the dilemmas we writers face!
I feel you play down the strong readiness of some trade publishers to get involved in voice and secondary content, forcing even established authors to write in registers that are not their own. In two cases close to me, good novelists, one with a million-dollar two-book contract, just gave up when her publisher tried to force her to change her historical fiction into bodice-ripping tat. The other had a lyrical drama set in Turkey but – because her first novel had been weirdly pigeon-holed as a thriller writer – was forced by a top publisher to completely rewrite it in 'her' supposedly established style. The book curdled, then was kind of put back to the original, but the experience broke her novel-writing motivation and she too left the trade soon afterwards.
I wonder what happened to the old in-house literary editors. I remember when I was starting out in books in the 1990s, a time of scissors and galley proofs, the skilled re-arrangements of an editor at the UK's John Murray brought out the best in me that I didn't know I had. I would love to enjoy that trusting, collaborative experience again – working with a freelance editor on a text that has no guaranteed publication doesn't feel the same.
You raise a good point, and you’re not wrong. TPs push hard at the developmental level, which often triggers structural and tactical revisions that the publisher might not care about, but that the author has to see through in order to have the story still work.
And also, sometimes one draws the failed writer who is using your book contract as a way to write their own. Very few novelists can tell the difference between an editor who knows what works and what doesn’t and an editor driving changes for personal reasons that don’t serve the art.
You’re also right that the old notion of the literary deuteragonist is dead. In TP, your editor is your boss, not a collaborator, and the same goes for your agent. If you hire a freelancer, you’re the boss—but also might not know what work needs to be done. The relationship between equals that might have once existed is no longer on the menu.
A very useful and well-organized essay, and I hope writers take it to heart and see the value in it. Incidentally, I think adverbs are permissible. However, they are often redundant (try taking one out and seeing if it really changes what you said) and using them a lot creates a visual/oral repetition of "ly" that gets tiresome. It's the ly, ly, ly thing that is the real danger of adverbs.
This is absolutely true. Also, adverbs are clunkier in other languages than in English. In French, the suffix is “-ment.” In German, it’s “-lich.” And some languages don’t have them at all, which tends to mean you pull an adjective and hope it works.
I find, when I go over rough copy, that about half the adverbs and adjectives earn their keep. And if you cut an essential adverb, you end up having to use a clunky adverbial phrase to replace it.
Your essay lays out the conundrum. The text becomes like silly putty. You push and prod in one spot and try to shape it but it distends and warps at another. I am working with a professional developmental editor on my second novel. They are working on the text this month while I rewrite my first novel (that they also edited). Here's the thing. This is an expensive process. Thousands of dollars. Very few of us can afford it. Hell, I can barely afford it. I do not expect to recoup those expenses. If I wanted to make money from writing, this is not the way I would go. Then why am I writing? Good question. I just want to write the best book that I can.
Excellent article! I wish I’d read this back in mfa school while writing my first book and having no idea whatsoever what the process was. Glad it’s written now!
The thing this maps so well also makes me notice what it leaves out: it assumes that the editing happens to a finished draft i.e. in passes after the fact. I've been chewing on whether the more interesting position for AI is earlier as editor-in-the-loop, while the last stretch of the draft is still being shaped, surfacing the structural/consistency issues before they harden, without steering the writer's hand. Might write something longer on this
Excellent essay. Editing is way more difficult than writing. If it wasn't, the writing itself wouldn't be worth reading. It takes a good editor to make a great writer. I'm learning that more and more every day.
As a writer, you want to be easy to work with. In any industry, you want to be easy to work with.
This is one of those claims that is true but also has bad-faith interpretations or connotations (not to accuse you of intending any such.) In the publishing world, "difficult author" is one of those bludgeons used to threaten writers into taking bad deals or accepting conditions contrary to their interests. In the business world, it's "team player." We all understand that sometimes team playing is important, but the specifically corporate notion of "team player" is used politically and abusively and for no beneficial purpose.
You could apply this to social skills in general. Objectively, social skills are important. That has been true in every situation where two or more humans have interacted. At the same time, our society has allowed the rich to decide which social skills matter (i.e., define bourgeois culture and its rules and expectations so that outsiders get fucked over no matter what they do) and it has also allowed the maltreatment of neurodivergent people, when neurodivergent people can defensibly argue that the rest of the world is just as unskilled at understanding us, so... eh?
The publishing world is especially bad in terms of aggressively policing tone and behavior. Simply expecting literary agents to do their jobs is taken as unforgivably forward. And this is yet another reason we will all be better off when it collapses.