How to be a Novel Editor
Are you seeking direction on how to be a novel editor?
For those who love words, the question of how to become a novel editor can be an exciting start or an overwhelming obstacle. Here I share some tips on how to make it happen!
I quit smoking more than twenty years ago. This doesn’t make me an expert on dealing with addiction.
I broke my ankle last July and have recovered full function since then. This doesn’t make me an expert in physical therapy.
But I am an expert in storytelling and in editing works of fiction. Yes, I wrote some novels that were published by traditional publishers.
But I also have Ph.D in English literature, for which I studied how stories work; I have countless hours of professional development as a writer and editor (including classes, workshops, conferences, and more); I have been taught by mentors on the job for many years; I have watched and experienced how other editors work; I have networked with hundreds of colleagues to understand how they work and to identify best practices; I read and critique dozens of stories/novels a year to identify how they work (or how they don’t); I listen carefully to the feedback of students and clients; and, most important of all, I am willing to adjust what I know when I encounter new information.
That’s how you develop expertise in a subject matter.
Personal experience is always a great place to start (for example, you’ve written a novel or you had a manuscript edited) but it’s not the end. It’s the first step.
If you want to move beyond your own personal experience to understand how to edit for others, the self-paced package of classes, DE 1 – 6, is a great place to start.
Other Helpful Content
Focus on a limited number of problems in story development
Typically in a manuscript evaluation or developmental edit, I focus on what I perceive to be the three-to-five most important concerns I’ve noticed in the ms. This is the approach I teach my editing students. Editing too many problems at once overburdens the author In any given ms, there may be ten or fifteen developmental problems…
Making Your Offer Clear
There’s a fast-casual restaurant I walk by every day that has a sign in the window: Pick Any 3, Get 1 Free! That sounds clear enough, right? But below the offer, they list what you can pick from: – 1 dinner (grilled chicken, burger, ham-and-cheese sandwich) – 3 large drinks (Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Dad’s…
