DarkWater Editing

You have put down your pen or stepped away from the keyboard because the manuscript is finished. It could be a short story you have been working on for the past month or a novel that has taken you the better part of three years to complete. It was a lot of hard work, but now that it’s done, there is an odd hybrid of exhilaration and dread that blossoms at the thought of someone else reading it.

You have read it, of course; there are portions you’ve probably read a hundred times. Still, now that it’s done and you’ve had a chance to read it, from beginning to end, you are not sure what to think about it. Part of the problem is that your role as the author fundamentally compromises your judgement as a reader of the work.

Everyone needs an editor. For the moment, you will simply need to put aside my own obvious interest in the subject and trust me on this. And know that by editor I simply mean a second set of eyes willing to read the work critically. There is no manuscript that cannot benefit from the eyes of someone other than its author. Sometimes, of course, that benefit can come from a friend or loved one, but often friends and loved ones lack the background and vocabulary needed to properly discuss their impressions. Furthermore, it is hard to get an unbiased opinion, at times, from those closest to you.

An editor is a professional reader with a solid knowledge of grammar and punctuation. They are able to assess a manuscript critically and have not only the vocabulary needed to properly voice their opinions, but the experience and instincts needed to offer clear, actionable advice.

Presumably you wrote your story for the enjoyment of your imagined readers. If that’s the case, let your first reader be a trained reader, one who will afford you the feedback necessary to make your manuscript as clean, focused, and poised as possible.

My role as an editor is to take what you’ve written and clean it up in order to present it in the best possible light. If there are grammar or punctuation issues, I will work through them. If there are inconsistencies in spelling or usage, I will ensure that they are standardized. If there are continuity errors or small factual gaffs, it’s my job, as a thorough and critical reader, to catch and fix them.

If there are quirks or peculiarities to your writing, small habits of which you may not be aware, I will point them out and discuss their potential consequences. I will be able to talk intelligently about style, tone, and technique. I am able to comment on plot, pacing, setting, and characterization.

When all is said and done, my job is to fully divine the story you were attempting to tell and understand the characters you were attempting to portray. At times, one of the hardest things for a writer to do is recognize the subtle disconnects that creep in between intention and execution.

Your manuscript is your manuscript, and I respect that. I have no interest in trying to transform your story into one which I would write in your place. My job is simply to help you tell the story that you are trying to tell.

Writing and editing are two different tasks. When you hire an editor, you are hiring an experience reader with a specialized skill set who can catch things that you may have missed and offer perspectives on issues that, as the author, you might be too close to see on your own.

Editorial Assessment

An informed, in-depth discussion of your manuscript by someone with both the experience and vocabulary to make meaningful, constructive contributions. The editor reads the current draft from beginning to end and provides a detailed written summary of their impressions and concerns. They will discuss the manuscript’s strengths and its areas of opportunity. They will ask obvious questions and seek to clarify what it is you are trying to accomplish. If you have any concerns of your own about the manuscript, the editor will be able to offer their opinion. It is often amazing what a fresh set of dispassionate eyes can see. An editorial evaluation is especially helpful if you are unsure of your best next step.

Developmental Editing

A developmental editor considers the manuscript as a whole: its strengths and weaknesses, its challenges and opportunities, and whether it delivered on its promises or met the stated (or implied) goals of the author. It can also address general stylistic concerns with the writing. In other words, a substantive edit looks exclusively at the big-picture issues. Rather than looking at them in overview, however (as in an editorial evaluation); the editor addresses then in detail throughout the manuscript on a chapter-by-chapter or even scene-by-scene basis. In a fiction manuscript, substantive editing might focus on the consistency of tone and pace, character development and motivation, and the viability of the plot. A non-fiction substantive edit might examine the overall structure of the manuscript, chapter flow, consistency of argument, clarity of thesis, and the effectiveness of charts, tables, images and appendices.

Line Editing

Line editing falls somewhere between developmental editing and copyediting. It involves more than grammar, punctuation, clarity, correctness, and fact checking and also concerns itself with issues such as style, tone, word choice, and rhythm; however, its focus is still fixed on incremental improvements made on a line-by-line basis. On a practical basis, copyediting usually involves some level of line editing; how much is often a matter if discussion at the start of a job.

Copyediting

A copyeditor will work through your manuscript and strive to make the writing as clear, concise, and correct as possible. Copyediting is about improving the writing (or copy) on a line-by-line basis. This includes spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors, but it will also involve the tightening up of the language to avoid phrasing that is redundant, unclear, or cliché. It will also attempt to catch continuity errors within a manuscript, and it will actively correct factual errors. A copyeditor’s job is to take a working manuscript as is and clean it up, line by line.

Proofreading

Traditionally, a proofreader supplies the final set of eyes on a manuscript that has already been typeset (i.e., a proof) before it goes to print. They read through your proof and correct errors which have either crept in during the layout process or managed to survive the attention of previous editors. While copyediting is about rigorously improving the text, proofreading is strictly about hunting down stray errors in the results and auditing design elements. Proofreading is not simply light copyediting; it is a different process. If a manuscript hasn’t been copyedited, it requires copyediting rather than proofreading.

Some people have strong opinions on ghostwriting. For me, ghostwriting is nothing more than a service that falls along a spectrum of services I provide. It makes good use of my skills, and it’s something I enjoy.

It’s also a lot more common than most people recognize, especially when it comes to memoirs and certain other types of non-fiction. Everyone has a story to tell but not everyone has the skills, time, or temperament (and believe me it takes all three) to tell theirs. Hiring a professional writer to bring your story to the page is merely a lucid, straightforward means to an end.

You are paying the ghostwriter to do what you (for whatever reason) cannot do on your own. They write on your behalf and are paid accordingly.

As a writer and editor, there are a number of ways that I can end up working as a ghostwriter:

“I’ve got this great idea for a book, but I honestly don’t even know where to start. I know I’m not up to writing it myself, but it’s important to me that it gets written.”

It’s not uncommon for someone to have a story or book idea and recognize that they simply lack the time, inclination, or skills to do it justice. They will come to me with a detailed outline, notes, or just the germ of an idea, and I will put together a proposal that we can both agree on, and then write it on their behalf.

“I’ve got this manuscript I wrote seven years ago, and it’s important to me. I brushed the thing off last month and reread it, and the thing is, well, it needs a lot of work—I know that—and at this point in my life I just don’t see myself every pulling it together the way I think it deserves.”

That’s no problem. As a ghostwriter, I am happy taking a rough manuscript and simply reworking it. I look at this scenario as a natural extension of editing—the difference being that instead of making suggestions, I am simply doing the heavy lifting myself.

“I thought what you suggested in your edit was terrific. Honestly, I was willing to give up on the project altogether, but now I’m excited again. I just don’t think I’ll be able to pull off your suggestions. Can I hire you to take it over the finish line so to speak?”

Yes, of course. If you initially contracted me as substantive editor (or even an evaluator for that matter) and liked what I had to say about your manuscript and feel that my vision for the manuscript is something you’d like to see made a reality, it’s simply a matter of coming to terms.

Now the latter two scenarios are really ghostwriting-lite, but that is my point. Editing and ghostwriting fall along a spectrum. There is overlap there, and I don’t waste too much bandwidth trying to determine what side of the line each job fall on. Ghostwriting covers a great deal of ground. Some projects will be fairly straightforward while others will represent a huge commitment of time and effort. Prices will vary—a short story might be contracted for as low as a couple hundred dollars, while a book-length manuscript would be significantly more expensive.

Talking to me about it, though, is free.