How Much is Too Much?

[rolanni]

Today's question for the group mind: How much editing is Enough; how much is Too Much; and d'ye ever crave more?

kinzel and I are ...fortunate, I suppose the word is... in generally being edited lightly. This comes with its own set of terrors, of course, and it's not at all unknown for us to impose upon friends to beta-read our latest novel and ask them to Do Their Worst.

However, out there in ListWorld, I've been reading tales from writers -- many of them multi-published authors who clearly know what they're doing -- whose editors edit their proposals, to the extent of not letting them continue on what I consider to be the Real Work -- that would be, writing the book -- until the proposal is up to the editor's standard. This seems beyond foolish to me, but what do I know? My feelings about proposals are ambiguous at best.

Comments

[ctate.livejournal.com]

I suppose that since I'm one of the friends-and-relations that od_mind alluded to having complained about some qualities of the books, I should step in. I'm having trouble phrasing things in a way that is not going to sound hostile, though. Be warned, I guess, although I wasn't trying to attack you; i was bitching aloud about what I saw as missed potential. (Oh, how insulting it is to tell someone that you think they have potential...!)

I'm going to quote here from a mailing-list thread in which I wondered about editors' roles in the writing-and-publication process:

Publishing industry question: whose job is it to find & address these kinds of flaws? Improbable interpersonal conflict; strong reliance on deus ex machina in plot construction; uneven characterization; scenes out of place and/or insufficiently connected to the rest of the book? I have a persistent feeling that these books are, more than anything else, badly -edited-...

Harsh, I know, and all of it certainly arguable (and argued indeed, in following discussion), but it's the paragraph that kicked off the whole discussion, so it should probably stand as written. It was the culmination of a thread that started out with me moaning about all the various things that Really Bothered Me about I Dare.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

whose job is it to find & address these kinds of flaws? Improbable interpersonal conflict; strong reliance on deus ex machina in plot construction; uneven characterization; scenes out of place and/or insufficiently connected to the rest of the book?

The buck stops with the writer. It is truly said -- and often -- that a good editor is worth six months (those being the six months that, were there world enough and time, the finished manuscript would cool in a nice, dark drawer before the author has it out to do a final in-depth cold read-and-edit). However, if the writers have chosen to tell a flawed story, or a story that is beyond their skill, and/or have misstepped so that the veil of Disbelief is dropped -- that's our fault, and no getting 'round it.

That said (insert evil grin here) -- we do occasionally deliberately put scenes out of order. There are a couple of actual craft reasons for doing this -- for instance, when we want to show the same action from the perspective of two different viewpoints. Sometimes, though, we Just Get Muddled. I Dare -- see discussion above re Carpe Diem -- is notable for the very odd shape of its narration. Given the ground we had to cover, and working with the handicap of needing to introduce a Major Player all at once, instead of working him naturally into the flow of Carpe Diem and Plan B, we did the best we could. Possibly, we could've done better, but probably not Right Then. It is, alas, a truism that one can only write the best book one is capable of writing NOW.

I do like to think that our characterization is usually pretty good, and the relationships not so much improbable as interesting. But -- tastes vary. There are people out there who find Thomas Convenant to be an entirely believable character. There are people who do not believe in partner-bonding; there are those who abhor love stories, believing that they feed into the subjugation of women. I'm thinking that for every person who finds a character and their relationships true there are at least two who find the same character and relationships false. See Thomas Covenant, above *g*

[ctate.livejournal.com]

[Digressing for a moment into specific critique: I agree that your characterizations are usually very good indeed; that's why certain ... variations bothered me so much in I Dare. My problem wasn't who the characters were, but rather that they were not consistently portrayed.]

Is it never the editor's job to say "this isn't ready; fix it"? I would have (naively?) thought that the single most important difference between self-publishing and not.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Is it never the editor's job to say "this isn't ready; fix it"?

Sure it is. But the editor's name doesn't go on the book, and our book is only One of Many that a particular editor is responsible for. Though I'm sure conscientious editors try to give equal time to all their children, the reality is that books which are Good Enough will get less attention than books that Really Need Help, and High Profile books.