I decided to write up a quick post to warn about some problems I’ve seen recently regarding editors. X (formerly Twitter) recently had writers talking about their experiences with editors. Some writers obviously do have problematic experiences and are rightly wary about working with another editor. However, I wanted to flag up a few issues.
Editors who are offering to return a manuscript in an unreasonably short period of time may be using AI, while charging YOU for time they never spent on your manuscript. Furthermore, they should not be feeding your copyrighted material into an AI without your permission in the first place. Consequently if you see someone offering a one week turnaround for a developmental edit of a full-length novel, reject it. Developmental edits, done properly, take weeks.
Also beware of writers who fancy themselves as editors because they ‘edited’ their own work. It is very common for these people to have no editorial training and no feedback from professional editors on their editorial work. Some of these writers are simply looking for a side gig to help cover their own publication costs, or they’re unaware of the sheer amount of work involved. If you want another writer to edit your work, ask them about their training or membership of a professional association. Some writers have undertaken training.
I will probably add to this post when I have more time, and I will list some of the training you, as a writer, should be looking for in an editor. I will also include professional associations which have codes of conduct, including the Editorial Freelancers Association and The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading. I’m personally a member of the EFA, one of the organisations I trained with. The Chartered Institute is more focused on copyediting and proofreading.
If someone is offering to edit your work, and they have no training, no membership of a professional organisation, and they are offering a fast turnaround of your manuscript, WRITER BEWARE.
As an editor, I often see developmental editing as narrative excavation, like an archaeologist carefully brushing away one layer after another, revealing more and more of a site over time. Indeed, each time I do another read of a manuscript, I feel like I’m moving down to a deeper layer in the story, noticing more issues.
Why single reads don’t work
Years ago, I noticed a post on an editorial forum where an editor, more experienced in line editing and proofreading, asked for advice. They were doing a manuscript critique on a memoir and had run into a problem. The memoir was so well written that they didn’t know what to say to the writer (who had obviously paid for the critique). Worried about not giving the writer good value for money, they wondered if they should price the edit down or offer some line editing.
But here’s the problem. They hadn’t finished the first read of the manuscript.
They had come to the conclusion that the memoir was in a great state on the basis of less than one read. (They also appeared to finish the critique shortly after posting, so very little time was likely spent on this edit.)
I offered no advice to this person myself, waiting instead to see what others would say.
No one picked them up on the fact they hadn’t even finished the first read. No one thought their editorial conclusion was premature. No one mentioned that you ought to read a manuscript more than once, or that to understand whether the narrative works or not, you need to see how the latter part of the book and the ending fits in with the rest of the story.
I think part of the problem here was that not everyone giving advice actually worked in developmental editing, and some were new to developmental edits and manuscript critiques after working in copyediting and proofreading.
But I’m telling you now, single passes of a manuscript do not work, unless you want to just give something akin to a beta read, but through the eyes of a developmental editor. It’s a different matter if the read is a final check after previous rounds of editing. But that’s not the topic here.
Why a single read falls short
The example I gave above involved a memoir. Memoirs are not autobiographies. They are not the story of a life. Instead, memoirs are focused on a particular event, subject, or period.
Examples of memoirs would include Traudl Junge’s memoir of working as Hitler’s secretary. Likewise, Helga Schneider’s Let Me Go: My Mother and The SS is focused on a particular topic – Helga confronting her former SS mother decades later in a retirement home. Schneider weaves in memories and information she gathered when researching the Holocaust and the Nazis, since her mother had worked at a notorious camp.
Memoirs don’t suddenly pivot to a whole other subject, not if they’re written correctly. They have an overriding theme.
So if the manuscript goes off on a tangent later in the story, that would need to be fixed. And only at least one complete read of a manuscript would identify such a problem.
More reads are advised to check that all the threads match up, there are no plot holes or inconsistencies, no weakly drawn characters, a lack of sensory information, a lack of location information, etc. And very importantly, the structure of the narrative also has to be examined.
There is no perfect manuscript
If you’re an editor confronted with an intimidating manuscript, with a fantastic plot, great characters and locations, and what looks like a good structure, fear not. Rereads, like archaeological or forensic excavation, will reveal more. Each pass takes you down into the subterranean layers of a narrative. This is one of my favourite things about developmental editing. Diving deeper into the story.
In fact, my own experience of developmental editing and manuscript critiques is that the more times you read the manuscript, the more problems that emerge.
Early on in my career, I was also confronted by what appeared to be novels and memoirs in a great condition on a first read. I used to worry about this, wondering what I was supposed to tell the writer that would justify the money spent on the edit.
But experience has taught me that first reads are deceptive. More emerges the more times you read the book. This is why good developmental editing takes time. It’s not something you can dash off in a single read.
There can be budget options where a developmental editor can read once and list the more immediate issues, but developmental editing is a problem-solving exercise. It’s not really something to be rushed.
For one thing, editorial advice that’s less integrated can lead to clashing solutions. Instead of a list of solutions for the same number of problems, a good editor will find the least number of solutions for the largest number of problems. This is because a single problem like viewpoint issues can actually impact the manuscript in different ways. To isolate an issue causing multiple problems is a standard part of a developmental editor’s job.
That’s why the skillset for developmental editing and line editing are not the same.
The benefits of reading on a large screen
I think any kind of editing benefits from a large monitor. It’s easier to spot issues. I use a widescreen TV as my monitor. It replaced the old one and I frankly now hate small screens. There is so much more to notice when the text is large and filling your field of vision.
In fact, it increases the sense of digging deeper, and plunging further into a manuscript.
In need of developmental feedback?
If you’re an author who’s looking for a manuscript critique or a developmental edit, I am open to clients from early February. You can check my services pages. As well as critiquing full manuscripts, I also offer opening chapters developmental edits and outline critiques. If you’re wondering about the pros of outline critiques, I’ve written a blog post on the subject. Link below.
Lastly, if you want my blog posts to land in your inbox, you can subscribe to my Substack email list (link below). I also post news about writing and novel competitions I hear about, plus news on my availability and any special deals I’m offering.
When writing your early drafts, you don’t need to worry too much about the nitty-gritty details of locations and character experience. You have the basic foundations of your story to lay down first. With each redraft and polish, you can add and remove things, reshaping your novel or memoir into its ideal form. But why are sensory details so important? Why should the reader care about scent and touch, etc?
The truth is that the human brain actually reacts to these details as if experiencing them for real. If you give great immersive sensory details, you help your reader inhabit your characters and enter the world of the story, leaving the real world behind.
Sensory details – and all senses matter – help ground your story in realism. You can show character reactions through sensory details, and show landscape and location too.
Obviously, you don’t want to overdo it with sensory description. It’s about maintaining a balance.
Sensory detail doesn’t just relate to the way the characters experience the outside world though. It also relates to their own bodies reacting to emotion. Here I would recommend a great book that helps authors to use better descriptions for emotional states. It helps you to show and not tell. I’ve recommended it to a lot of my clients.
The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression by Puglisi and Ackerman.
Opening chapters developmental edit deal!
If you want to check out your use of sensory information in your manuscript, or other issues, you can opt for an opening chapters developmental edit. This allows me to go over the first 12,000 words of your manuscript and give you the usual feedback on plot, character, theme, use of viewpoint, tone, dialogue issues (if any), whether you open your book in the right place, plus smaller detailed feedback that you can then apply to the rest of your manuscript.
The opening chapters developmental edit is usually £150 for 10,000 words. The current deal, running until the end of the year, is £120 for the first 12,000 words. You will receive a report running to thousands of words, plus a copy of your manuscript with comments in the margins. Feel free to contact me at karen@indiecateditorial.com.
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Whether you’re intending to self-publish or aiming for mainstream publication, the opening lines of your novel are prime real estate.
If you’re a self-publishing author, your opening pages (in the Kindle sample) should hopefully reel in potential readers to hit the buy button.
However, ordinary readers are a great deal more forgiving than agents when it comes to openings. While your opening should still catch the reader’s attention, leaving them wanting more, they probably won’t bail as fast as an agent. Readers might read a bit more of the sample before deciding if it’s for them or not.
Agents, on the other hand, are inundated with submissions. But they are paid through their work with existing clients. Any time spent going through queries is time away from that.
For that reason, they don’t have time to waste. They are looking to quickly eliminate as much of the submissions pile as possible. They don’t need or want to take on a whole load of people. Any excuse to reject will be taken.
There are obvious mistakes writers make, like sending the wrong genre to the wrong agent, etc. But the opening lines of a novel can also lead to immediate rejection. If certain problems show up in your novel’s opening, it will be assumed they likely appear throughout the book.
From an agent’s perspective, trying to fix such problems will be seen as too time consuming when there are other submissions in a much better state.
Hard as it may be to believe, some agents judge your manuscript that fast. Some claim they can tell whether a book is worth reading from the opening line. This probably seems unreasonable, so it’s worth digging into why it just might be true.
Common problems with openings
Before getting into how opening lines can predict problems further into a manuscript, it’s worth looking at other obvious problems that can come up with openings.
Unnecessary prologues – some prologues work, including micro-prologues, but a lot of readers and some agents have an aversion to prologues in general.
Starting with a dream or waking up – waking up at the beginning might work if there is something unusual about the opening. A shock that wakes the main character, for example. Otherwise, waking up to a routine is not an opening hook.
Too much worldbuilding or info dumping at the beginning – this is particularly an issue in historical, fantasy and science fiction.
Flashbacks in the first chapter – these pull the reader out of an opening scene they were just getting bedded into. This introduces a speed bump. But flashbacks can also indicate that the novel is starting in the wrong place. If the event in the flashback is significant enough, the novel might be better opening there or just before that point. If the flashback is simply filling in information about the character’s recent problems, that can wait.
POV shifts in the first chapter – if your first chapter isn’t very long then any viewpoint shifts to another viewpoint character has happened before your reader had a chance to spend much time with the first one.
However, the point of this post is to examine issues with opening lines, not opening chapters. Especially since some agents say they can tell a novel has problems from the opening line.
First line issues
It can be hard to understand how someone writes off a whole novel on the basis of the first line. But it happens. With other people, they might bail at the end of the first paragraph or page. So what is going on? What should you look out for as a writer? What should you avoid?
Opening lines with too much past perfect tense – using the word ‘had’ – is an indication your novel is likely starting in the wrong place. You’re feeding in information about the past – it could be back story through telling/summary/exposition, but it doesn’t belong here.
Exposition/telling/info dumping in the first lines also suggests that too much telling and info dumping could be a problem in other parts of the manuscript. This includes back story – it doesn’t belong here.
Badly structured or over-long sentences. One thing you need to aim for from the very beginning is clarity. Any reader, agent or otherwise, needs to be able to enter the world of your book easily. Overly complex language, tortured sentence construction, and sentences that go on too long make things more difficult for a reader right at the beginning.
Pulled out perspective – this makes it hard to get close to a character. It could also be that the perspective is so pulled out that it’s not clear who or where the main character is. It’s really important to introduce your main character in a way that intrigues the reader.
Head hopping – if you are jumping in and out of different characters’ heads in the opening lines, agents will rightly assume it’s a problem throughout the whole manuscript.
Too many names introduced at the beginning – the reader doesn’t know any of these people and will not be able to picture them or know anything about them this early. Too many names – and this can also include place names – can lead to confusion. You want clarity and not confusion at the beginning of a book. Don’t introduce names unnecessarily, especially names relating to walk-on characters.
Too many strange terms/words/fictional vocabulary at the beginning – this relates more to fantasy and science fiction. But it front-loads the text with hard-to-remember words that again strip the opening of clarity.
Too much density of information, language, more complex punctuation like colons and semi-colons, can lead to heavily weighted opening lines that seem like too much hard work for a reader. Especially someone who’s having to go through submissions quickly.
Overly complex language for children’s fiction – write to the correct reading age.
Language, tone and writing style that doesn’t match the intended genre of the book.
When to work on your opening lines
The most important thing about writing a novel or memoir is to get your story down first and tinker with it later.
Getting the first draft down is a great achievement in itself, but you can’t get a perfect draft down. It isn’t possible. There are too many variables in a novel. So getting the first draft down then allows you to go over what you have and start shaping it into something even better.
You don’t have to dither over having the perfect opening when you’re just starting to write your novel. It will hold you back. Perfectionism is a motivation killer.
Don’t worry about your beginning when you start writing. Once you have your first full draft, you might notice a better place to open your story. You can then rework your novel’s opening.
But it’s also important to remember that the rest of your novel must live up to a gripping opening, with a relatable or intriguing character and a great hook.
Conclusion
Your opening lines are important regardless of whether you’re hoping to hook an agent or a reader. But ordinary readers will have more patience with your openings and give you a little longer before they bail.
Agents are strapped for time, inundated with manuscripts on top of their paid work and clients. So you must stand out right from the beginning.
Ideally, your opening should show not just a great opening hook, but point to a manuscript that is polished enough not to require a lot of editing.
If you want to check out some famous opening lines from fiction, you can check out this post below:
And if you’re interested in an Opening Chapters Developmental edit where I look at the opening 10,000 words of your novel or memoir, you can check out the appropriate service page below.
