Worth the Effort: How to Turn Your Editor's Notes into a Great Book
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Views from the Midlist is our ongoing new series of articles from award-winning and bestselling author Chris Humphreys. Chris has published eighteen books over his two decade career, with such illustrious houses as Doubleday, Knopf and Orion. But the fact is that traditional publishing just isn’t what it used to be – even for the midlisters who have found success within the system. Views from the Midlist is a monthly feature in which Chris pulls the curtain back on his experiences in traditional publishing, his adventures in indie publishing, and the craft of writing.
Ah, editing! How often have I finalized my latest novel—examined every character arc, checked for build, suspense, climax, denouement, done my spell and grammar checks—and pressed “send” with a self-satisfied smile. “It’s near perfect,” I think. “They’ll probably send it straight to copy edit.”
And then I get my editor’s notes.
This happens every time. No matter how many novels I publish, there is Pride before the Fall. But those disappointed feelings only last a minute at most. That’s because the process of editing is worth the effort.
Whether you’re working with an editor at Penguin Random House, or FriesenPress, or a freelancer you’ve hired on someone’s recommendation1, an editor is there to help you clarify your vision, so that what your readers get out of it is what you intended. Our job, as the writer, is to find the right words, based on the editor’s guidance. This is the chance to find out what our ideal reader thinks of our work—the person we are actually writing for. Because an editor represents your ideal reader. They are the one who assesses what you are trying to do—and will help you achieve it.
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Here’s a useful analogy from the theatre. An eminent director at Stratford, Ontario, had a smart, young assistant director. He told her that what he wanted from her, after having watched a scene, was for her to say: “So this is what I got from it. Is that what you wanted me to get?” Clarifying the director’s vision. Not supplying her own. Which is what an editor does: Clarifies your vision...for you. This applies across the board and to every aspect of the writing: character, structure, voice, action, suspense etc.
When I receive my editor’s notes, I swiftly remind myself of my mantra: writing is a journey, not a destination. (Well, okay, it is a destination in the end—a finished book being read by others.) To reach that glorious moment, you have to keep in mind that writing is a process. Each stage of that process is as important as any other, and the editing stage can be the most exciting of all—if you approach it with both passion and humility.
An example from my own life: when I delivered the first draft of The Hunt of the Unicorn to my editor in New York at Knopf (said book now gloriously repacked and republished by FriesenPress), I’d broken with my tradition of writing in the third person, past tense (He said… she went…) to first person, present tense (I say… I go into…). I’d just spent three years channelling Vlad the Impaler, so I thought “of course I can get into the mind of a fifteen-year-old Manhattan schoolgirl!” My editor said, “This choice is fine—if you want the book’s tone and voice and its protagonist to be snarky. Is that what you want?”
It absolutely wasn’t. I wanted people to really like Alice-Elayne, not be put off by her sarcasm. So I reverted to third person, past tense (a change that wasn’t simply swapping “I” for “She” but rewriting every bloody sentence!) and let her be snarky sometimes, in dialogue.
Editors also often ask for cuts. This is especially true of first books, where the writer tends to put everything into it, like cramming all the goods into the front window of a newly opened store. With my first novel, The French Executioner, the editor asked for a cut of 25,000 words. I wept as I contemplated “killing my darlings”—a term in writing where you are forced to take out what you thought was a glorious piece of writing. But she was quite right. My “glorious writing” was slowing the story, obscuring the character development. Once I got what she meant, I merrily slaughtered darlings left and right. By the end, I’d cut 33,000 words and the novel was all the better for it.
One thing that’s important to remember, though: editors are not omniscient. They are (hopefully) smart people with opinions. But an opinion is just that—what someone thinks. Many new authors believe that their inexperience means they should, in every circumstance, defer to their editors’ opinions. Always remember: it is your book. You know it way better than any editor ever will. So listen to the question behind the question: Is this the effect you want? If it isn’t, change it. If it is, defend it. Explain. Remember how writing is a process? Working with an editor is a process, too.
And here’s another big truth about editing: because you know your own book better than anyone, when an editor suggests a fix on page 35, you might realize: no, she wants that changed because she didn’t get what I did on page 15. The main fix is there. Then the action on page 35 becomes clear.
The fix may well be elsewhere. Earlier in the book. Later in the book. Both.
The point is that the editor has asked you to clarify your intention.
“So this is what I got from it. Is that what you wanted me to get?”
Where this gets harder to navigate is when you start tackling “authorial voice.” Easily one of the trickiest aspects of writing, voice is almost impossible to teach. It is, literally, the voice the reader “hears” as they read the book. Here’s a passage that illustrates the voice of JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye:
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me and all that David Copperfield kind of crap…”
If Salinger’s editor had said, “JD, the narrator—he’s kind of annoying here. Can’t you make him more sympathetic and, well, nice?” they would have lost the point of the book. The voice, in this case, makes the story. So if there’s a style choice or passage that you know is integral to the voice of your book, discuss it with your editor. There’s an old English expression: you don’t buy a dog and bark yourself. The editor wants to hear your “bark,” not supply their own. Because that’s also what the reader wants: to hear your fresh voice. And the editor’s job is to point out the effect your choice has.
“So this is what I got from your ‘voice’ choice. Is that what you wanted me to get?”
Finally, a last example on structure. This is where the editor tells you that you started the book in the wrong place, or that you don’t need that prologue, or (in my case) that I’d started with the wrong characters entirely.
I was quite an old dog (I seem to be stuck in canine analogies, sorry) by the time I wrote Fire, my thirteenth novel and sequel to my novel, Plague. Notes tended to be few, and really specific—never something majorly structural. I’d conceived this exciting opening: a minor character from the first book, Aloysius Maclean, does a highway robbery…and is then surprised by my heroes, all told from Maclean’s point of view (POV). So I was quite shocked when the notes came back—and my editor told me she thought I’d begun entirely wrong. She explained: second book in a series, a year since the first one was published, we needed to begin with our heroes’ POV on the first page, in action, not entering casually on page 30.
I chafed, I wept, I argued…and then I surrendered. Because she was absolutely right. So for the first time ever, I junked the first hundred pages of the novel and re-wrote it entirely.
Old dog. New trick. And never too late to listen to that question: “So this is what I got from it. Is that what you wanted me to get?”
Enjoy your editing journey. Learn from it. And please comment on the post to ask me any follow-up questions.
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1 My advice is to always pay a professional. Friends, family and—god forbid—lovers will either shower you with useless praise or be overly stern because they want you to stop this bloody daydreaming and get back to real life.
