How Much is Too Much?
Monday, August 15th, 2005 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniToday's question for the group mind: How much editing is Enough; how much is Too Much; and d'ye ever crave more?
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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.
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.
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Date: 2005-08-16 05:51 pm (UTC)Yes, but... the problem is not with the story, as I understand the word, or the structure of the story. It's with certain choices made in the telling of the story. Specifically, choices about how certain necessary actions or scenes are brought to pass.
I started to include a long example of what I mean, but I'll save it for the email. It may take me a few days to put everything together.
No, all I mean to say is that I can't fix that particular work now. It's been accepted, it's been published -- it Is, warts and all. The only thing I can do is try to improve my own skill for future work.
Exactly. If the problem is that you see the warts but don't know how to avoid them, I can't help. If the problem is that you don't agree that [points at a particular plot device] is a wart, then I can't help. If the problem is that you didn't notice a certain wart, and no editor brought it to your attention, then maybe I can.