Long story editing - abandon all hope?

[Chris6160]

I finished a long story recently and I've been hoping I can find someone to give it a look-through. I'm fairly strong on grammar, spelling, etc. on my own, so I don't need in-depth editing so much as I need someone to review it and give feedback on whether it's enjoyable or not. The story is just over 160,000 words (broken into chapters for eventual posting, obviously).

I've sent multiple messages through the "Find an editor" site system with no responses. When I went over to the editing forum for the site, it seems like whenever anyone posts with a similar request the only responses are "You're being unrealistic; you want thousands of dollars of work for free, not gonna happen."

Has anyone had luck finding editors for longer stories?

 

[StillStunned]

The thing about the volunteer editor concept is that it's great as a concept, but it was probably thought up by someone who's never done any serious editing.

Presumably the replies you've seen about "unrealistic" were mine. Although I don't think I've ever used the word "unrealistic". I try to provide some context so that both writers and would-be editors understand the amount of effort involved.

As a professional editor I do about 1000 words an hour, with a maximum of about 5000 a day. It can be very labour-intensive work, scrutinising every word, every sentence, every paragraph, both by itself and in relation to the text around it. And then you have to highlight or correct the errors or suggested improvements.

Your 160k story would be a month's fulltime work. I'm not saying no-one should volunteer to do it for free, and I'm not saying you won't find anyone, or that you should stop trying.

But I doubt many people here are as inclined to put that amount of time and effort into someone else's story, when they could be writing their own. People rarely get passionate about editing even their own stories, after all.

Honestly, if you want to know whether your story is enjoyable, just publish it. That way you'll have access to thousands of opinions, not just one editor's.

What you can do by yourself, though, is use Read Aloud or another text-to-speech feature and go through your story. Sit and watch the highlight jump from one word to the next, and you'll catch nearly all your typos and clumsy phrasings and excessive repetitions of particular words, and all those bits where you changed something later on but never went back to edit what you'd already written, or where you switch from first person to third person by accident, or where a character's name has a different spelling, and all those kinds of things.

Good luck!

 

[THBGato]

Do you have any fans/regular commentators on your stories that you can contact? That's how I found my editor (who helped me through an 87 thousand word story and some subsequent ones).

 

[Voboy]

Honestly, if you want to know whether your story is enjoyable, just publish it.

This.

Even if you find an editor, they won't be able to guarantee a positive reception. You'll still post with that nervous feeling in the pit of your stomach, wondering whether it'll find its audience. So why not cut out the middle-person?

OP, if you think it's good, send it. That's the only way you'll ever find out how good it really is.

 

[StillStunned]

And/or write something short, say a few thousand words, and publish that first. That way you might get some feedback about your style and technical ability, which you could then take on board for your larger work.

 

[Rustyoznail]

You ask for someone to look at one chapter. That would give you an idea of what you need to work on.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The thing about the volunteer editor concept is that it's great as a concept, but it was probably thought up by someone who's never done any serious editing.

Presumably the replies you've seen about "unrealistic" were mine. Although I don't think I've ever used the word "unrealistic". I try to provide some context so that both writers and would-be editors understand the amount of effort involved.

As a professional editor I do about 1000 words an hour, with a maximum of about 5000 a day. It can be very labour-intensive work, scrutinising every word, every sentence, every paragraph, both by itself and in relation to the text around it. And then you have to highlight or correct the errors or suggested improvements.

As another professional editor (disclaimer: my focus is technical non-fiction) I'll second all of the above. It is a lot of work. One of the daunting parts about volunteer editing is that if I'm not familiar with the author, I don't have much idea of how much work I'm letting myself in for, or whether that work will actually be appreciated.

The longest thing I've edited here is a story of about 100k words. I did that for friends, and I only put my hand up for that one because I'd already edited shorter pieces for them so I had a good idea of what I was letting myself in for. I knew the work would already be pretty polished before I saw it, and we have enough of a rapport that I know they genuinely value my input. Even if they decline a suggestion, which happens quite often, I know they will have given it thought.

I've had other editing experiences where it felt more like the author was looking for a pat on the back. It's happened that I've pointed out straightforward, obvious errors, and the client has published without implementing those corrections. This is very dispiriting, and it can reflect badly on me as an editor if the author makes it look like I missed those errors.

On Literotica, your best bet is to build up relationships through shorter projects first. If your own spelling/grammar/etc. is good enough to help somebody else, trading services can be a viable approach, but 160k is something to build towards rather than going in cold.

 

[Bramblethorn]

And/or write something short, say a few thousand words, and publish that first. That way you might get some feedback about your style and technical ability, which you could then take on board for your larger work.

OP does have some shorter pieces out there: https://www.literotica.com/authors/Chris6160/works/stories

I would strongly encourage OP to link to these when posting "editor wanted" type requests. It gives prospective editors a way to gauge how much work they'd be signing up for, and whether it's work they'd want to do.

 

[MyBareTorso]

160,000 words??!! That is a LOT of effort...post it and get it out there! Great advice from all above re self-editing. 160,000 words requires much hard work and time to edit...as others have wisely suggested, you will likely have to get this out there on your own. To write that much, you must have a level of confidence in your work though...get it out there!

 

[ElectricBlue]

What you can do by yourself, though, is use Read Aloud or another text-to-speech feature and go through your story. Sit and watch the highlight jump from one word to the next, and you'll catch nearly all your typos and clumsy phrasings and excessive repetitions of particular words, and all those bits where you changed something later on but never went back to edit what you'd already written, or where you switch from first person to third person by accident, or where a character's name has a different spelling, and all those kinds of things.

Another easy self-edit tip is to change the font, the colour, and the font size. It's amazing how many typos you will pick up simply by tricking the eye so you're looking at something different. With a long story, I do this frequently - I have a rolling edit technique, which means by the time I get to the end, I've spotted nearly all the dumb typos, misspellings and so on, and the final version is pretty much as good as I'm ever going to get it.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

It sounds more like OP wants a beta reader - the type of editor who will comment on the overall structure, this bit worked, this bit didn't ring true for me, this character was/wasn't convincing.

Compared to proof-reading editing, this can be much quicker if simply providing a few sentences of reaction - though it could be even more work if seriously considering how to be better structure a long book.

Asking for a beta reader for part of the story might help. But to be honest, probably best posting it here, a chapter of 10-20k going up every few days, and then when you re-read it in 6 months, you'll see its strengths and weaknesses for yourself, assuming readers haven't told you.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

It sounds more like OP wants a beta reader - the type of editor who will comment on the overall structure, this bit worked, this bit didn't ring true for me, this character was/wasn't convincing.

Compared to proof-reading editing, this can be much quicker if simply providing a few sentences of reaction - though it could be even more work if seriously considering how to be better structure a long book.

Asking for a beta reader for part of the story might help. But to be honest, probably best posting it here, a chapter of 10-20k going up every few days, and then when you re-read it in 6 months, you'll see its strengths and weaknesses for yourself, assuming readers haven't told you.

I think this nails it. You really want a beta-reader not an editor.
Might help if you shared what the story is about.
People are more likely to answer and you are more likely to get a good fit if they know the category and basic plot.

 

[8letters]

I finished a long story recently and I've been hoping I can find someone to give it a look-through. I'm fairly strong on grammar, spelling, etc. on my own, so I don't need in-depth editing so much as I need someone to review it and give feedback on whether it's enjoyable or not. The story is just over 160,000 words (broken into chapters for eventual posting, obviously).

I've sent multiple messages through the "Find an editor" site system with no responses. When I went over to the editing forum for the site, it seems like whenever anyone posts with a similar request the only responses are "You're being unrealistic; you want thousands of dollars of work for free, not gonna happen."

Has anyone had luck finding editors for longer stories?

First off, I think stand-alone stories are much better than series. The later chapters in the series are going to get a lot less views that what the equivalent stand-alone story would get.

The most likely place to find an editor or beta-reader are people who send you PM's. They are fans of your writing, so they are more likely to be willing to spend some time on an unpublished story than someone who hasn't read anything you've written. However, you'd have a problem in that you write for a lot of different categories. The fans of your BDSM stories aren't going to want to edit your SF&F stories and vice versa.

That being said, I don't think you should be looking at this as you're asking for someone to edit a 160K story. I think you should be looking at it as you're asking someone to edit the first chapter of the story, which would only be a 10-20K story. If the person enjoys editing that chapter, they'll hopefully be up to editing more chapters.

Lastly, I highly recommend getting the freeware version of Grammarly. To me, you should have a clean Grammarly pass of your story before you send it to an editor.