Some questions for the editors

Over the years I've had a few questions for literotica editors begin rolling around in my head and I thought I'd finally dump them out here to see if I get a response.

One of the things I've wondered about is longer stories and series. I've found that some authors of longer projects seem to do their own editing and it often shows. Is it because it's harder to find an editor willing to take the time to edit longer stories?

Another question for editors is when you're helping an author that is creating a very long series, do you ever recommend that they keep in touch with their readers between chapters via their biography page? Especially when the story is well received and popular and the time between chapters goes well beyond the interval that readers are accustomed to.

That's all for now, I may add more if I hear back from some of the editors.

Author here, not an editor, but I always use Volunteer Editor(s) from the Literotica list. If I knew someone IRL, I would use them. I envy authors who have spouses or other family members or friends that can perform this function.

Some observations re your questions:

1. I would never submit a story w/o some editing by another person. At least they’re a fresh set of eyes and can catch simple typos, even if their grammar or editorial skills aren’t that strong.

2. Since I find myself writing longer novella length stories, it’s very difficult to find a VE who’s willing to commit to working on a story that long (25K words and up, or 7+ Lit pages). Realistically, 10K-15K words is about as much as you can expect for someone doing it for free – at least someone who knows enough to be helpful.

3. I don’t write long, drawn out multi-chapter stories that stretch out over months or years (in real time). If I have to break up a story into two or more chapters, I’ll likely find different VEs to work on each chapter. Then I would submit the chapters within a relatively short period of time, say one per week.

4. ‘The Flume at Falcon Rock’ was a 40K word entry to a contest, so a deadline had to be met. Due to an odd quirk of timing & various VEs dropping out, two other VEs ended up doing a separate light edit on the whole manuscript. They never got a chance to see the other’s edits & comments due to time constraints. I probably read through the damn thing more than a hundred times, but I’m still finding little typos (the count is up to 11 at this point – I’m sure there are more).

5. For my next submission (26K words), I split the m/s roughly in half at a natural break and found two VEs to work on the parts separately. Since this wasn’t a contest entry, I had time for them to take a quick pass at the part edited by the other VE when it was finished. The VE who worked on the 2nd part was somewhat at a disadvantage, not having read the beginning section. I drew up a more detailed synopsis and sent short excerpts to help her with the context and character arc, but I still found myself having to deal with issues that arose from this. I didn’t want to send her the full text since it would be unavoidable for her to not point out obvious errors, and that would be asking for more work than was promised.

I have edited and for longer stories I expect to have to catch the odd grammar and punctuation errors, and to help with the flow. I am not interested in editing something someone cannot spend a few minutes running through a spell check. If it looks like it was written on paper napkins then slapped onto a page I bow out.

Length for me is not an issue. As long as it's in a genre I agree to edit, then the only thing left is to make sure it's interesting. If I have to sit through 7 pages of he said/she said to get to a sex scene I'll probably take a little longer to do the job. Of course, the longer the story, the longer I need to do the job right.

Your observation about authors who write longer stories tend to edit themselves is correct in my case. Chapters 1,2 & 3 of my story were edited by me and there are a few things I could always correct in each. Chapter 4 was edited by my wife and I think I've counted 1. We both missed it.

If I do a job for someone and they are happy I'll send them a note once in a while to say hi and see if they need anything before I take a different job. I tend to try to help those I've already worked with because I know the story and I can see where they are going most of the time. Being familiar with it I can usually spot flow errors faster as well.

If I'm working on my story then I try not to take a job unless it's really important. I don't like being distracted when I write.

As for posting on the biography page to let fans know when to expect a new chapter, I don't. But that is entirely a personal preference and would really depend on the author.

Editing takes a lot of time and effort - I'm pretty sure most authors don't understand how much - if it's worth doing. I'd be peeved by an author who gave half the story to someone else to edit. If your story has a lot of errors, correcting those will divert attention from structural issues. Editing takes time, too. Unlike writing, it's not its own reward. Pushing an editor is likely to require a new editor, so be prepared.

Because editing takes a lot of time and effort for, usually, a fairly esoteric return, an editor is less likely to want to invest the effort in a longer work when he or she is unfamiliar with the quality of an author's work or uninterested in the subject-matter.

My guess is that fewer than one reader in ten, even the ones avidly waiting for your next chapter, will check your profile to see when you think the next chapter will be finished, but some writers do it.

GrandTeton said:

... I'd be peeved by an author who gave half the story to someone else to edit.

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When I contacted potential Volunteer Editors for 'Queen of Diamonds,' I mentioned the length of the story (26K words) and said there was a natural break roughly halfway. I offered the possibility of splitting the manuscript in half, in case they might be reluctant to take on the whole story.

Very few VEs even responded. For those who did, I suggested that I send them a short excerpt (1k+ words) to edit so that both author and editor could assess whether they want to continue the working relationship. One VE never got back to me; and another who said she would edit the excerpt backed out later, saying things had come up IRL and she couldn’t continue.

I finally found two VEs who were both OK with taking on half the m/s. I would have been happy to let either of them handle the whole project if they were up for it, but both chose editing the partial story. They completed their short excerpts successfully, and I felt their editorial styles were close enough to make a co-editing project work.

I would have been happy if either had said they only wanted to work on the whole m/s, but I think the split (i.e., the ~13K length) was what made the project doable for both of them. Both VEs were given a chance to weigh in on the other half of the m/s once the other editor was done.

I definitely think their editorial efforts made a much better end product and were a major factor in the story getting such a favorable reader response.

I'm an editor. I have done it professionally in the past, but for very different types of writing. I take on fairly long literotica stories (I think the longest so far was 33k words). The reason I can manage this is that authors are rarely looking for me to take a flawed story and turn it into a publishable one; they are often looking for help with some aspect of the story, or a particular problem they have, or just to move them a little further along towards being an effective writer.

The main way I make long editing projects manageable is by combining traditional editing with teaching:

If the author wants line-editing help and there are few errors, it's fairly straightforward; if there are lots of errors, I will comb through 3–4 pages until I get a sense of all the frequently occurring issues, fix them, show the author how I fixed them, then send them off to fix all other instances of those errors on their own — once they've done that, they can send it back to me.

If the author wants help with flow and structure, it doesn't take many pages to diagnose their problem. Common writing flow errors include over-writing, excessive description, hanging onto pet passages that don't actually contribute to the story, lack of variance in sentence and paragraph length, etc. I have a laundry list of these in my notes, and hints and tips that I wrote over the years that I can simply copy and paste for the author.

If the author wants help with overall strength of story, it's a quick task for me (as an experienced reader and editor) to read the story and detect the weaknesses and areas for improvement.

I edit for folks here for free; elsewhere, if I'm getting paid to take a piece from so-so to great, it's a much more involved process.

Why editors?

Why can't writers check their own stuff? If you misspell, or if your grammar is bad, then you should surely spot that yourself. I think that too many would-be writers here are too lazy to do the legwork. Am I being too critical?

Cirnhoj said:

Why can't writers check their own stuff? If you misspell, or if your grammar is bad, then you should surely spot that yourself. I think that too many would-be writers here are too lazy to do the legwork. Am I being too critical?

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Yes and no. Some authors don't, and in a few cases can't, sort out the simple errors that make an editor's life difficult. It's not easy to keep your eye on the story when distracted by having to cope with basic issues - not so much spelling given the spellcheckers, though lots of wrong words get through if it's on automatic, but grammar and punctuation. The other aspect of editing - does your story work? how can you make the story more compelling? - usually requires a second set of eyes, which could be a beta reader or an editor, assuming there's a difference. An author gets invested in his or her work and while some are sufficiently talented to always (or nearly always) write well despite that level of absorption, and fix their own errors, a second set of eyes usually helps visualize what's happening with the story, and sometimes what's happening that's not as good as it could be. Editing is partly teaching, as well. There are rewards for the editor when the teaching is taken up and absorbed, with errors never repeated. I was lucky enough to have one such writer a few years ago, but it's a rare experience, unfortunately.

Cirnhoj said:

Why can't writers check their own stuff? If you misspell, or if your grammar is bad, then you should surely spot that yourself. I think that too many would-be writers here are too lazy to do the legwork. Am I being too critical?

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Yes and no. Writers should do their absolute best to fix their own spelling and grammar, but sometimes you aren't aware of your own weaknesses or cannot spot your own mistakes. It's very common. Plenty of famous authors (Hemingway, Bukowski etc.) famously had horrible spelling and grammar mistakes in their pre-edited works.

I'm an editor and I try to be very careful, but sometimes I go back to one of my own pieces and see errors that I could have sworn I'd checked thoroughly for.

So long as you're not being lazy, everyone benefits from a second pair of eyes.

Editing.

I still get the impression that some writers think that an editor should do a lot of the work for them. If you're a writer, then write. Invent a story, work out a plot, devise dialogue, spell and grammatise correctly. Don't come up with an idea and expect others to polish it for you. You really do need to work hard to write something good. You should respect yourself enough not to leave half the credit with other people. Sorry to be such a grouch!

Cirnhoj said:

Why can't writers check their own stuff? If you misspell, or if your grammar is bad, then you should surely spot that yourself. I think that too many would-be writers here are too lazy to do the legwork. Am I being too critical?

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It's harder to do than one would think. As a writer, you get so into your story, the characters become living breathing people. So you don't see the simple stupid mistakes the spell checkers can't find. Like 'here' for 'her.'

A problem I have is picking the wrong word the spell checker suggests. That makes for some interesting mistakes. Since I KNOW what the word is suppose to be, my eyes simply skip over the error. Think angle vs angel—equally useful but hardly interchangeable.

I use to read my stories out loud but found out I had to do so only when no one else was home.

In all the stories I have posted here, I've always had another set of eyes look it over. Some editors were fantastic while others didn't know much more than I do. One editor I used took out all the periods in my story 'to improve flow.'

Bottom line? It's always best to let someone else check your work.