Editor needed for series. (Japanese bilingual preferred)

[LitShark]

I have recently completed the first in a series of stories that I will eventually be adapting for the screen. I need someone to edit the story for posting on lit. I would prefer an editor fluent in Japanese as the story eventually moves to Japan and I want the Japanese characters to speak Japanese... You know realism and such. My own Japanese is shaky at best so my editor would double as a translator in spots.

I'll elaborate for those with interest. Thanks.

 

[snoopercharmbrights]

... I would prefer an editor fluent in Japanese ...

I think sr71plt may well speak fluent Japanese?

 

[LadyCibelle]

I think sr71plt may well speak fluent Japanese?

Ginger Ale spew!

 

[sr71plt]

I think sr71plt may well speak fluent Japanese?

Arigato gozaimassu, Snooper, for your vote of confidence. But, although I took a year of Japanese--and lived there, it was screwing up my Mandarin (which is also piss poor), so I stopped. So, Owabi shinakereba narimasen, LitShark, but I can't help you much. Gomen nasai. (I'm pretty sure I could do better for you than either Snooper or Lady C. could, of course.)

 

[LitShark]

Well for now the Japanese is a non issue, so if you wanted to help me out I could just work with you until you felt like you were unable to keep up with the translations. I do have a Japanese/English dictionary if push comes to shove. Let me know and I'll shoot my draft right over.

 

[sr71plt]

Well for now the Japanese is a non issue, so if you wanted to help me out I could just work with you until you felt like you were unable to keep up with the translations. I do have a Japanese/English dictionary if push comes to shove. Let me know and I'll shoot my draft right over.

Snooper and Lady C. weren't trying to be helpful to you, LitShark; they were ignoring your request altogether. They were just using you as a platform to make what they thought was a dig at me. Nice, aren't they? Wish I could help you, but I'm not one of the volunteer editors here, and I'm swamped with my own writing and with editing for pay at the moment.

Best of luck in finding help. If you are writing this for Lit., I suggest that you keep the Japanese to a minimum and that you make sure the reader understands what the Japanese conveyed. If you need some sort of guide to how to do that with a foreign language, you might scan through my recent "Clouds and Rain," where I use Chinese extensively to try to help set the mood but where I use it in individual words and short terms that I try, in various ways, to connect with a meaning in English so the reader doesn't get thrown off the rails.

And, actually, for this purpose it probably would be good to have an editor who didn't understand the Japanese at all. They then would be better placed to let you know if you had conveyed sufficient meaning and context to the majority English-only reader.

 

[LitShark]

Well this was all very amusing, but I went ahead and submitted without edits. Thanks anyway...

 

[meg1]

I'm sorry LitShark, I'm just not sure any of us feel qualified to edit foreign language stories. I've done it before and it really is hard.

A suggestion given once was to find an author that you like within your category and pm/email feed back that author to ask if he/she will edit.

The sad truth is that many of the editors here already have more on their plates than they can handle.

I hope it turned out well for you.

 

[LitShark]

I'm sorry LitShark, I'm just not sure any of us feel qualified to edit foreign language stories. I've done it before and it really is hard.

A suggestion given once was to find an author that you like within your category and pm/email feed back that author to ask if he/she will edit.

The sad truth is that many of the editors here already have more on their plates than they can handle.

I hope it turned out well for you.

Its alright, I'm not doing this for a contest or anything so I'm not too concerned with correctness. People will read it or they won't.

I feel I've overstresed the value of Japanese language to the overall story.

...The film will have subtitles.

 

[sr71plt]

Did you ever find a VE to help you with this, LitShark (one who didn't spew gingerale all over her computer when you asked)?

If not, and you come to needing help how to meld in the Japanese for effect, PM it to me, and I'll be happy to take a look at it.

 

[freshface]

Did you ever find a VE to help you with this, LitShark (one who didn't spew gingerale all over her computer when you asked)?

If not, and you come to needing help how to meld in the Japanese for effect, PM it to me, and I'll be happy to take a look at it.

I would recommend jumping on this offer even if you did find a VE. sr71plt's edit really improved my first story and, more importantly, taught me how to write future stories better.

 

[sr71plt]

How'd the story come out, LitShark? Posted here on Lit.? If so, can you direct us to it? Thanks.

 

[LitShark]

Sorry I never got back to you about your edits SR, I tend to be a little sensitive about my work.

The story actually got rejected by lit because of spelling errors (which I realize are copious in my draft) and I haven't tried again since. I think that for spelling and grammatical errors, I would prefer to just have them changed instead of pointed out.

If you are still interested in editing I've finished the second installment and am under way on the third. If you like I could send you part 2, I just got the initial impression from your comments that you didn't like the story and therefore opted instead to edit in my own time.

If you're still interested let me know.

 

[sr71plt]

Sorry I never got back to you about your edits SR, I tend to be a little sensitive about my work.

The story actually got rejected by lit because of spelling errors (which I realize are copious in my draft) and I haven't tried again since. I think that for spelling and grammatical errors, I would prefer to just have them changed instead of pointed out.

If you are still interested in editing I've finished the second installment and am under way on the third. If you like I could send you part 2, I just got the initial impression from your comments that you didn't like the story and therefore opted instead to edit in my own time.

If you're still interested let me know.

If you're not in a hurry, I could look at it, sure. I'm backed up into August with professional commitments and eXcessica.com edits, though. I'm not sure what you mean about having the errors changed rather than pointed out--and whatever I did with your piece was so long ago I don't remember it. If I did an edit, I would have made changes but shown them so that you could either accept or reject them.

So, you don't want it worked over from the first stallment so it can go on Lit.?

 

[freshface]

Sorry I never got back to you about your edits SR, I tend to be a little sensitive about my work.

The story actually got rejected by lit because of spelling errors (which I realize are copious in my draft) and I haven't tried again since. I think that for spelling and grammatical errors, I would prefer to just have them changed instead of pointed out.

Just curious LitShark, but why don't you want to see the corrections? It seems to me that if you are serious about writing, you should study the corrections so you can learn and improve. Running the spell checker should take care of the creatively spelled words. The remaining corrections are likely going to be of the horse/hoarse variety. If I got a spelling correction, I would want to grab the dictionary and look up both versions so I could use the words correctly. It's the same with punctuation and grammar. I want to learn what I did wrong, so I can do it better next time. That's especially true here, where the editors are volunteers. Wasting their time correcting the same problems over and over and over again doesn't seem like the best way to show appreciation for their efforts.

I really do understand being sensitive about your writing. My first exposure to professional editing was at work. Ignoring my editor or letting her correct errors for me are not two of my options there.

Seeing your baby covered in red ink can be really hard, especially at first. It already says exactly what I want, so how come I have to change it? But those first experiences taught me that it's not just about what I write but also about what the reader understands. As hard as it was (and is) to work through the editing process, the final product is usually much better than the first draft. If you have a good editor and learn from the experience, I think it can also make you a better writer. I was lucky to learn the importance of editing at work; I doubt I would have learned it on my own and my writing would reflect that lack.

 

[meg1]

I do understand being sensitive about having mistakes pointed out to you, I tend to be the same way. However, you really should pay attention to the corrections whichever editor makes for you.

Two things, first of all, I stop editing when a writer tells me to "go ahead and fix it". It makes me feel like s/he already did all the hard work and anything I'm doing on the story is a necessary inconvenience. Seeing as how my sole purpose is to help the author put out the very best story possible, that s sort of annoying to me. You really want to have a relationship with your editor. One where you can listen to the editor's comments without getting offended and your editor is willing to listen to what you have to say about why or why not you've accepted/rejected suggestions.

You feel like every time the editor points out a mistake, s/he is pointing out a place where you have failed, been sub par or a poor writer. That is not true. Just because your fingers decided to type "there" instead of "their" does not mean you are a poor writer, but you do want to know that they did that against your wishes.

You need to know that your fingers have the habit of typing against what your head is saying so that you can pay attention to them and make them type correctly. Find an editor who will knows you are sensitive about your typos and mistakes. That way s/he can be a little more careful in how they present corrections. You may want to pick an editor that doesn't take as full of a load as others, or doesn't edit as quickly. If you are willing to be more patient, then maybe s/he is more willing to be softer on you.

Please remember that it doesn't matter how good your story idea is; if you have so many typos that it interferes with the flow of the story, no one will read it. You will be a lot more upset if you do get your story submitted and subsequently get nothing back but negative comments about how much you needed an editor.

Writing takes a thick skin and a bit of a sense of humor. You have to take the good with the bad. Not everyone who leaves a feedback comment will be nice, that's the nature of the beast. If you let every single negative comment affect you, you will be completely torn down in no time.

I think you also mentioned that you wanted to turn it into a screenplay. Professionals are much more likely to be painfully blunt than anyone here. Better to learn in a place where the people volunteer their time to help others than to jump in where they don't care at all for your feelings.


(p.s. I doubt I used "affect" correctly. I've used it twice on two different forums now, and I still don't know which is which )

 

[sr71plt]

I try not to take ownership of the work. I'll point to things I think need to be reworked and I'll make changes directly that the publisher requires, and beyond that, I'll make changes (shown separately without erasing the original) that I think should be made (with frequent changes for the same thing being explained the first time).

But then I don't really need to see it again--or to have any explanation from the author why they didn't make the suggested changes. It's still their work. And when I'm hired by a publisher to edit an author's work, the publisher gets a copy of both the edited version and version after the author has reviewed it and I've cleaned it up. And I leave it to the publisher to negotiate with the author over any of my suggested changes the author didn't accept. All I want to hear from the publisher then is what they didn't agree with that I did--so that next time I do a book for them I might remember their preferences.

Which leads to agreement with the two previous posters. I'm not really all that interested in just making the changes I think are necessary without the author reviewing them (or doing any of the rewriting necessary her/himself). I certainly don't want to edit a followup work by an author where he/she hasn't learned/developed from habitual mistakes (and we all make habitual mistakes) made the first time around.

 

[snoopercharmbrights]

... You really want to have a relationship with your editor. One where you can listen to the editor's comments without getting offended and your editor is willing to listen to what you have to say about why or why not you've accepted/rejected suggestions. ...

I agree wholeheartedly; this is extremely important.

... You may want to pick an editor that doesn't take as full of a load as others, or doesn't edit as quickly. If you are willing to be more patient, then maybe s/he is more willing to be softer on you. ...

However ... I don't understand this. How is an editor "softer"? Does that mean not mentioning errors which the editor has spotted, or just doing a sloppy job of editing?

... I doubt I used "affect" correctly. I've used it twice on two different forums now, and I still don't know which is which

Anything which has an effect on something has affected it. However it is the author's job to effect the changes which affect the story.

 

[meg1]

However ... I don't understand this. How is an editor "softer"? Does that mean not mentioning errors which the editor has spotted, or just doing a sloppy job of editing?

of course not, i would never purposely do a sloppy job editing or leave a mistake i find. however, depending on the skill of the writer, for some i take the time to explain of the changes and suggestions i am making. I leave grammar notes and comments on flow or fluitdity. for others, i just make the changes, because i know that when the look at it, they will know why (those papers look like they have been marked up w/ a grading marker.

for new writers i always try to be very gentle in my comments, because i know how scary it is to submit, and i don't want to hurt their feelings, or make them think that just because a story is full of mistakes, it's hopeless. remember, i only joined 3 months ago. i remember that i almost didn't submit my first story because i was so nervous, and really really didn't want anyone to say anything bad about it. i wanted a good story, but to be honest, i would have preferred if people didn't say anything about the glaring mistakes. (they did, they were right, i will fix them)

Anything which has an effect on something has affected it. However it is the author's job to effect the changes which affect the story.

that's just mean. now i'm more confused than i was (except i have an odd suspicion that i used it correctly).

 

[snoopercharmbrights]

Anything which has an effect on something has affected it. However it is the author's job to effect the changes which affect the story.

that's just mean. now i'm more confused than i was (except i have an odd suspicion that i used it correctly).

Of course you did, otherwise I would have corrected it.

Essentially "affect" is a verb and never a noun (except in certain technical fields which do not impinge on erotic literature) and means "change" (as in "The headache affected her desire") or "take on" (as in "He affected a Texas drawl").

If you want a noun the word is "effect" (remember "sound effects"). The verb "to effect" means only "to bring about" or "to cause" and is not much used.

 

[meg1]

Ok, I think I can remember that. There are very few words that I get mixed up, but that's 2 of them.

Thanks for the clarification.