A Beginner’s Guide to Working with an Editor: Part 4 (Expectations)
Managing expectations in the editing process
Hopefully, as you work through your editor’s feedback, you will see your manuscript coming together, with rough patches being smoothed out, gaps being filled in, and errors being eliminated. But what if you don’t like the edits? Or you feel like your editor didn’t do a good job?
First off, it’s important to understand that, with the exception of clear-cut mechanical issues such as noun-verb agreement or the distinction between it’s and its, the majority of your editor’s proposed changes are only suggestions—albeit informed, educated ones. If you don’t like the solution your editor proposed, you don’t have to accept it. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a valid suggestion. (It also likely isn’t the only solution.)
Remember, you hired a professional editor for a reason. Before you click “reject,” ask yourself where your resistance to your editor’s proposed changes is coming from. Do you feel like they misunderstood what you were trying to say? (If they misunderstood, your readers might too.) Do you feel like some of their proposed changes are arbitrary, reflecting their personal preferences rather than addressing actual problems? (It happens, but good editors try to keep this temptation in check.) Does your editor’s insistence on applying the rules undermine your creative use of words or phrasing? (There is a hard-to-define line between intentional disregard for the rules and awkward phrasing that will cause the reader to stumble and pull out of the text.)
Poor editing can happen, but for the most part, if your editor proposed a change, they did so in the audience’s interest. Editors work hard to balance respect for the author’s voice with the needs of the reader. They may decide that it’s worth simplifying your language to eliminate any possibility of confusion or withdrawal. Or they might suggest that you expand on an idea to fill in a gap or flesh out a character. These suggestions are ultimately judgment calls, and it’s okay for you to question them. But make sure that, like your editor, you set aside your personal preferences and consider whether the suggested changes will ultimately benefit your readers.
That said, if you feel like your editor is imposing their own style on your writing or missing the point, you are well within your rights to raise your concerns with them. They may be able to offer alternative solutions to the changes you are uncomfortable with. Or they may simply acknowledge that, in the end, it’s your manuscript, your call—even if they are confident that their changes would make it better.
Better, not perfect
What if you find lingering typos or spelling errors in the edited manuscript? Does that mean your editor didn’t do their job? If you follow any of the many editing forums on social media, you’ll see authors asking this question all the time. After all, that’s why you pay an editor, right? To fix all the errors?
Strange as it may sound, perfection is not the goal of editing, and it should not be your expectation. Writing is highly subjective, and there is rarely just one right way to do things, even when it comes to the application of grammar rules. Rather, editing is about making a manuscript better. If the editor did this, they did their job.
Depending on what stage of editing you’re at, your editor might not even be worrying about spelling mistakes and missing punctuation. At the structural editing stage, for example, the text is still changing, so spending time correcting minor errors is potentially a waste of time. Even at the copy-editing or proofreading stage, though, it is possible for your editor to miss an error here and there. The real question is, how many errors did they catch?
The editing community typically thinks in terms of acceptable error rates. Essentially, the more errors there are in the draft manuscript, the more errors your editor is likely to miss. For example, with an error-correction rate of 90 per cent, if your manuscript had 100 errors, your editor would miss 10 errors; if it had 1000 errors, they would miss 100.
This is why it’s beneficial to self-edit before you hand over your manuscript to a professional editor. The cleaner the manuscript, the more the editor can focus on the more meaty issues that will really set your manuscript apart. It is also why you shouldn’t skip proofreading, even if you feel like your manuscript has been edited to death. Ideally, proofreading is done by someone who isn’t already familiar with the text, but just the fact that the manuscript is now formatted differently can help an editor see some of those lingering errors that they missed before.
Creating the conditions for best results
There are a few factors that can affect your editor’s error rate and that you can control:
- budget: the project budget will influence how many times the editor reads through the manuscript at each round (and how much time they can devote to each read through—or pass, in editing lingo); the more times they read through, the more errors they are likely to catch
- timelines: editing works best when the editor has time to set the manuscript aside and come back to it with fresh eyes, as needed; if your timelines are tight and don’t allow for this, expect a higher error rate
- quality of the manuscript: a higher-quality draft manuscript will almost always result in a higher-quality end product
If the idea of acceptable error rates is hard for you to swallow, try playing “spot the errors” in the next published novel you read. I can almost guarantee you’ll find a few!