May 2019
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May 2019
May 2019
akitsukino
May '19

I would definitely want the best version of my story and I heard the best way to do that is to get an editor. I heard for novels they can get pretty pricey and it's hard to find a good one. Questions:

  1. What was it like having an editor?

  2. How did you find them?

  3. How did you work together/ contact? Over email? Skype?

  4. How long was the piece of writing you sent them?

  5. How much did your writing change afterwards?

  6. How much did it cost?

This is mostly about novels, but I heard some webcomics have editors too, so tell me about your experiences!

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    May '19

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    May '19
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Short_Insomiac
May '19

I am an editor for some friends, aka i add comments explaining why their writing is stoopid or if they misspelled something, but at least im kind abt it lol.
1 having an editor is either a. you know whats going on in my mind i gotchu homie or b. wHAT THE FLIP FLAP IS A MADMAN'S MANUSCRIPT THIS IS A YA NOVEL NOT POETRY
2 hi im one of them, u can also get a co-author as an editor, but the professional/paid one are expensive as hecc
3 i use google docs most of the time, or texting
4 usually it starts off with an idea or a couple pages and i just start... asking questions abt whats going on and explaining some better/cooler ways to voice their ideas
5 I don't know, though I do find that the writers get lazier with spelling/ grammar but better at sentence structuring and rhythm
6 I work for free??? will also work for free food or coffee but whatever

yansusu
May '19
1

I tried using one once with a short story (Edit: ~6k words) just to see if they were good and if I'd like to get one for my longer projects. To be honest, I wasn't that happy overall.
I decided on a small bureau that opened close to where I live but we worked over email. I sent them the document I wanted edited and they sent it back with comments.
Other than one stylistic choice where we disagreed, the rest were small stuff like words or images they didn't deem fitting (e.g. "childhood" since the story was set in a middle-ages inspired fantasy world or "brotherly love" because real brothers aren't always close ~). I changed more than half of those small things but kept the stylistic choice (It was about having a storyteller which they thought wasn't something that should be done anymore in this day and age while I thought it fit the narrative pretty well and since the thing was inspired by Arthurian legends ... well. We didn't agree there.)
The whole thing cost me about 100€ and I honestly wouldn't do it again. The things I would have been interested in (and that I paid for according to their price list!) would have been characters, setting, plot - that kind of thing. And I got zero comments in regard to any of that so it was more or less a waste of money to me. But at the very least I know who I wouldn't hire anymore :smiley:

Edit: I'd just like to add that there are different types of editors. Depending on which you want the prices and the feedback should change.

Lady_DarkStar
May '19

I can't say that I have ever specifically hired an editor. I have dealt with them though. When I was writing for money, the place paying me provided the editing. I didn't have any choice in picking who edited my work, and unless I could come up with a better alternative to their edit, I was stuck with it.

The above link doesn't tell you the type of editor, you will have to do some checking to find the type you need.

turtleme
May '19

Hello. I've been working with editors for a few years now and I remember how hard it was first finding the right one.

  1. Having an editor, if the right one, is reassuring and almost emboldening. The "perfect" editor will specialize in the genre that you write in, love the premise of your manuscript, and edit in a way where it's more refining and polishing while keeping your voice as an author.

  2. You can find them through several different mediums. You can find them here on on Tapas forums, or through a place called kboards. There are a lot of good editors just looking to get their foot in to the freelance editing field so oftentimes their rates will be a lot cheaper than they usually would be. If you have the money and you're really looking for the best, you can visit this site. https://www.the-efa.org/hiring/1
    Either submit a job posting or just look through the "resumes" of the countless professional editors on there.

  3. I work them through email mostly, or sometimes a direct line for messaging/chatting. I would have a 1:1 over the phone with them every once in a while but effective communication through written means lets your editor and you keep track of what you want, rather than trusting the editor will remember all the things you said over the phone.

  4. I hired an editor for my 150k manuscript and it cost around $2000.00 USD. Again, this will vary by the type of editing your editor will do for your manuscript as well has his/her editing experience and price per word.

  5. I'd like to believe that my writing changed for the better. Things that we don't notice that doesn't particularly make us bad writers (like repeating a specific phrase, dialogue tag, action) can be spotted by editors. That's just one example, but a lot of times, because an author is so invested into the amount of time that he/she has put into his/her manuscript that the author becomes very biased and adverse to changes even when it'll make the manuscript better.

  6. Answered in q. 4 but going more in-depth about that, most editors either charge per word ($0.005/word) or hourly. I prefer to charge by word since it's a lot easier to calculate, but it's preference.

JRHoch
May '19

I've worked as an editor for years and have used editors for my novels in the past. A good editor is worth his or her weight in gold. A bad one is a real nuisance. The important thing is to hire someone who understands your genre. Someone who works on memoirs or literary fiction is often a disaster for genre fiction because they don't understand the audience and the various conventions.

bjwebb
May '19

One thing no one has mentioned here is that there are different kinds of editors who all have different expertise and will work with you at different stages of a project. It's important to know which kind of editor you're looking for, and prices will vary.

  1. Development editor. This editor will give you feedback based on big picture stuff. They'll help you with structure, with character development, with making sure your story holds together and makes sense and pays off. This is the sort of feedback you can also get from beta readers, but a good development editor will be VERY good at their job, usually with a lot more experience than your typical beta readers. When you sell a book to a publisher, this is the first and primary editor you work with.

  2. Copyeditor. Once the book is as close to final as you can get it, the copyeditor comes in. They're looking at the words you use, making sure they're all correct. They're checking your facts. They're making sure you've been consistent in your style. A good copyeditor will give you feedback like "You've used the word door 700 times in your 3,000 words story; maybe find a different word." A good copyeditor will also be sensitive to your style and voice, not pedantic about what's "correct." If you work with the same copyeditor on multiple projects, they will often compile a style sheet for you, and will even keep track of details like, "This character's eyes were brown in the last book and blue in this one."

  3. Proofreader. The final eyes on a project. The proofreader is there to make sure there aren't any lingering misspellings, grammar problems, sentences that just run out, or whatever. This function can overlap a little with copyeditor (and I've seen a lot of indie writers use the same person to do both). Proofreading by itself is usually the cheapest editing service to pay for.

elyss
May '19

My editor is my GF and god she makes my pages drip with red sometimes.

  1. It's great having someone invested in your characters who also helps you avoid writing them out of character and/or badly.

  2. She's my GF, roommate, and BF

  3. No Contract.

  4. We do chapter trades. They range from 3 to 10 pages on word (double spaced) Though, the longer the are, the more likely we to trade something with similar pages size. ex 1 chapter (10 pgs)= 3 chapters (9 pages)

  5. My writing got waaaay better. She pointed out my bad habits like having a lot of dialogue with no action and such.

  6. We edit each other's writing as compensation.

KRWright
May '19

Editors are golden, godlike beings who honestly I don't know how I'd function without. If you get a good one, who is really knowledgable, and your manuscript is at the stage it needs to be for them to work with it, then it is like watching someone spin gold out of flax sometimes. Huge, huge fan of them and all the work they do!

Greetings
May '19
yansusu

@yansusu I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Some editors offer trial edits (usually 1-5 pages or a chapter) so that you can get a sense of how they work; if you ever need to hire an editor again, I definitely recommend looking into ones who do offer this as it can be a great help when choosing who to work with! :smiley:

yansusu
May '19

I actually knew about that. I still decided on them mostly due to the fact that they worked in the region where I live. It's often a little rough here for businesses to survive so I thought working with them would be a good thing. Just like I always went to the local bookstores after finding something I like on Amazon. Until I was fed up with always having to wait three weeks to get a single book ...
Well, at the very least I was smart enough to use a short story as a test and not started off with a novel :smiley:

And this whole post just made me look at the story again. It's ... well, it's not atrocious considering it's been quite a bit of time (and words) since then but there is so much more they could have found. :neutral_face: Just casually looking over the first scene makes me want to tweak it ... :smiley:

Greetings
May '19

It's cool that you wanted to support your local businesses though, and yeah, at least it wasn't a full book!
Though more power to you if you're able to spot some mistakes yourself now, it surely means you're getting better at writing in general so congrats! :grin::muscle:

yansusu
May '19

Hehe, yes :smiley: I do have to say that I'm super curious what stuff a good editor would see if they looked at my newer stuff ... The one thing I really love about the idea of having an editor is that you can find out about possible mistakes that you might commit with every piece of writing without knowing yourself. Ah, maybe I'll look for one again sometime after all.

Greetings
May '19

Yes! Editors are great for this! When a good editor takes your work apart it can make all the difference sometimes for both the manuscript and your future writing habits. :pray::sparkles: