Volunteer editing...

[Image]

I've finally summoned up the courage to submit my first story! I have read all the guidelines and threads that pertain to writer resources that I have been able to find, and thought as an additional fail-safe I would submit it to a volunteer editor.
However, I have a question...

Reading through the choices I couldn't help but wonder about the criteria used for becoming a volunteer.
Some told me they were able to critique spelling or grammar only, some said they could give me pointers on readability. Most though, only told me what themes they would or would not edit; and many misspelled their own words !?!

I realize that I will choose an editor based on my own needs and standards and I did find several that suited me. I certainly don't wish to start off on the wrong foot here, but...

Should I just go ahead and submit it "as is", (I am fairly confident in my spelling and grammar) or get anal about it?

Any thoughts are appreciated...

 

[Guest]

I get by with a little help from my friends

Image-

Okay, with A LOT of help from my friends.

An extra set of eyes to zip through your ready to go copy is always helpful. They tend to catch the stuff that we just can't see because we have worked with the story so much.

For example... I read a friend's story and they had "left out" the main character's climax. Oops! They had the story so clear in their minds that they "knew" it had happened.

I have also had some major booboos avoided because a friend has given my work the "one last check".

Best wishes as you post!

b

 

[bridgeburner]

I was inquiring about volunteer editing recenly because I wanted to volunteer. I got some info/advice from a long-time member who mentioned that as busy as things are, the VE list is somewhat out of date. He said the best thing was for me to volunteer out on the boards when I saw peope looking for readers.

So here I am volunteering if you still need readers.

I can do copy-editing for you if you just need grammar and spelling/punctuation proofreading or if you'd like an actual critique I can do that as well. I'm not limited by genre ----if I'm reading to get my own thrill there are thousands of stories on Literotica. I'm honestly interested in helping writers to improve their stories regardless of my own lustful urges.

At any rate, if you think I sound qualified to give you what you need, email your story to me at bridgeburner99@yahoo.com and put Literotica somewhere in the subject line.

--B

 

[deliciously_naughty]

I generally have found my editors through discussing a story with a friend on the boards...and we'll trade drafts and give advice

 

[Chicklet]

Editors

Every time I've wanted an editor or constructive feedback I've found it on the boards - either here or in Story Ideas.

Chicklet

 

[Un-registered]

Of course destructive feedback comes for free, and anonymously!

I, too, tried to find a VE and got absolutely no replies from half a dozen listed VEs.

Now I bounce ideas off some friends and use paid commercial proof-readers for my novels.

 

[Image]

I thank all of you for the advice. Glad I asked first...

bridgeburner, I like your style. What you said about getting your thrills from any story you want made me laugh! I very well may take you up on your offer as soon, as soon as I figure out how to send it to you. I'm technically challenged, to say the least. Expect it soon though.
The other thing I worry about is it's length; about 4500 words. Too much???

 

[Un-registered]

The other thing I worry about is it's length; about 4500 words. Too much???

There have been a number of threads on here on that theme. The general concensus is that a story is the right length when it is the right length and only the author can tell.
Adding padding to fit a predetermined length really shows. Cutting to a predetermined length leaves out bits the author thought essential.
My stories have ranged from 800 to 60,000+ words and in each case I wrote until I had finished and then counted the words afterwards.

As to the optimum length to get good reads and votes counts on Literotica, that is an entirely different matter. There are about 3,000 words per Lit page and many are of the opinion that one full page is the optimum. Also there should be about ten orgasms in each story. Those figures do not, IMHO, make for good writing. It depends why you are writing; if it is for votes, follow the guide-lines above; if it is for pleasure, do your own thing.

 

[susurrus]

When I started doing this erotica thing, I didn't even think about using an editor. Maybe it was arrogance on my part, but I've been at this writing thing long enough, and done enough of my own editing that I think I've gotten pretty good at it.

I've met a couple folks while "treading the boards" who I've come to get to know pretty well, and so far, I'm the only one anybody's come to, but I even received a by-line in one of their stories concerning my editing job. I've sent a couple stories to others of my friends like this to get opinions on, but one of them is wrapped up in the "critics choice" thing, or whatever it's called, so he's too busy reading for that to look at my stuff.

My biggest gripe with editing electronic stories: no margins for writing suggestions back to the author. It makes it very difficult to have the writer expand or clean up a passage when you can't make a note and draw a line to the section that needs looking at. It's hard to do the editing and not leave a trace when you can't easily do that.

Oh, well. I just like the fact that I can help. There are a lot of stories out there that have a lot of merit, that would be made even better with a good editing job. But, if nobody puts out the S.O.S. for editing help, there's little to be done for it.

As far as length: I don't let it bother me. I've got this weird theory that the characters will eventually take over the story and let you know when it's over. If that's after six paragraphs or twenty pages, it doesn't matter. I know there are readers out there who get scared off by a story that's more than a couple of pages long. It's too bad, because a lot of the longer stories are better written.

 

[Crimson Knight]

My biggest gripe with editing electronic stories: no margins for writing suggestions back to the author. It makes it very difficult to have the writer expand or clean up a passage when you can't make a note and draw a line to the section that needs looking at. It's hard to do the editing and not leave a trace when you can't easily do that.

Depending on what type of file format you use, you can insert comments, suggestions in the story using red text. It seems to work pretty well.

 

[Image]

Susarrus

You're right! It IS the characters that dictate the story. They'll orgasm when the hell they want to!

OK, sent off to bridgeburner for feedback on Friday.....
Anxiously awaiting reply...
Thanks again everyone,
Image

 

[jfinn]

My biggest gripe with editing electronic stories: no margins for writing suggestions back to the author. It makes it very difficult to have the writer expand or clean up a passage when you can't make a note and draw a line to the section that needs looking at. It's hard to do the editing and not leave a trace when you can't easily do that.

If you're editing the work as a Word doc., all you need to do is highlight the text you're commenting on, then go up to the top and pull down the Insert window, and choose Comment. That should bring up a window at the bottom of your screen where you can write in whatever you want to say. Hit close when you're finished and the screen will return to normal with the commented section highlighted in yellow. To see the actual comment, run the cursor over the highlighted text and a window will pop up with the comment. To delete the comments, pull down the Tools window, hit Track Changes, then Accept or Delete Changes. Also, this area has a feature called Highlighting Changes where you can indicate that you want to show all the changes you've made to an edited document.

I use these features all the time. They're both are great and make editing a lot easier.

Jayne

 

[Weird Harold]

If you're editing the work as a Word doc., ...pull down the Tools window, hit Track Changes, then Accept or Delete Changes. ...
I use these features all the time. They're both are great and make editing a lot easier.

You can also enable the "reviewing" toolbar to get buttons for highlighting, inserting/deleting comments, and accepting/rejecting changes. I've gotten to the point where I won't edit anything that isn't in Word 97 (or later) format.

WordPerfect Suite 8 also has very good reviewing/editing tools for inserting comments and highlighting changes so the author can see what the editor has done and accept or reject the suggestions.

 

[wildsweetone]

holy cow batman, what a timesaver!

wow, you would think that with 25+ years of typing skills, i would have picked up those reviewing features. i apologise most humbly to everyone whom i have put through hell trying to read my editorial comments.

what an incredible lot of time this is going to save me and the Authors I work with. Thank you Jayne and WH, I appreciate you both I have always felt my editing thoughts were very intrusive, this is a wonderful alternative

now, all i need to do is to figure out what exactly the 'track changes' are meant to be used for, and to see if the highlight colour can be changed as i edit for the odd colourblind person who may well find it difficult to spot.

 

[jfinn]

Re: holy cow batman, what a timesaver!

now, all i need to do is to figure out what exactly the 'track changes' are meant to be used for, and to see if the highlight colour can be changed as i edit for the odd colourblind person who may well find it difficult to spot.

You're very welcome and thank you Harold for the tip about the toolbar!

As for the colors, you can change them and adjust exactly how you want to use the edit features by hitting the options button in the highlight changes field. That'll bring up colors and strike out options and it also kind of explains what you can do in the edit area. If nothing else you can play with the different options there and see what suits you best.

Jayne

 

[Weird Harold]

Re: holy cow batman, what a timesaver!

now, all i need to do is to figure out what exactly the 'track changes' are meant to be used for, and to see if the highlight colour can be changed as i edit for the odd colourblind person who may well find it difficult to spot.

I have my changes set to show Red with strike-through for deleted text, Green with Underline for new text, and blue with underline for changed formatting (i.e. changed to Italics)

The strike through and underline distinguish the changes for the colorblind and distinguish them from other red/green/blue text.


You can set the changes to highlight differently for each editor if there's more than one editor.

One additional feature you might find useful is the "compare files" option in the track changes menu. You'll have to play with it a bit to figure out which file shows as "new text" that match the actual changes, but it doesn't really matter that much becuse you just need to change whether you are accepting or rejecting the changes to pare it down to a single version.

 

[susurrus]

Thanks for the tips. Part of my problem is being *just* familiar enough with Word to get my stuff written. I've never had reason to use the editing functions you mention. I'll have to give it a try next time somebody asks me to take a look at one of their pieces.

 

[Pure]

If I might add a supplement to Weird Harold.

The first thing is under tools, to check 'track changes while editing'.

Second, under options, to choose colors, etc. I have recently adopted a system like Harold's since sometimes the colors do not come out for certain people (apart from colorblindness)--perhaps they are not set up properly in Word, I don't know.

So I set the the deletions as *green and as strikeout. Additions as *red and underlined. There are other possibilities in the menus, such as putting ^^^ over the changes.

Since the changes, all there, can be messy, I recommend a review of the doc, with options changed to *invisible* for the deleted stuff. That way the proposed new text can be inspected. Otherwise it's easy to miss things, in the three color brouhaha. Once inspected, you can take out 'invisible' and restore (in my case) green strikeouts for the proposed deletions.

I have not gotten into the comment function, but I put comments in {{ xx }} as red additions.

As you know, if a person is inspecting a 'track changes' edited doc, he or she can 'accept changes' one by one (highlighted) or 'accept all'. IF the latter were done, the comments would be fairly obvious because of the {{ }} even with the colors gone. PLUS, the {{ mark is searchable-- I.e., you can search through for comments and delete them.

NOTE ADDED: As WH points out this is not at all the easiest way to make comments.

 

[bridgeburner]

Ah! It was Weird Harold himself who gave me the advice. Good to see you and thanks again, Sir!


Image ----

Got your file, no problem and had a chance to read it a couple of times this weekend. I should have a reply for you this afternoon or tomorrow morning, but to comment on length: I'm with everyon else, the story should be as long as it needs to be to get the job done. You're fine.



--B

 

[Weird Harold]

I have not gotten into the comment function, but I put comments in {{ xx }} as red additions.

The comments function is the best reason to use the reviewing tools -- the comments are shown in a second window and don't distort the text of the story except for a marker consisting of the editors initials and a number (mine show as [HAN1] through [HANxx])

They're searchable with the next/prev comment buttons, or they scroll along with the text of the story when the comments window is open. (the text of the story also scrolls with the comments window so the text being commented on is shown at the same time as the comment.)

They also can be removed intact even after all tracked changes have been accepted or rejected without having to search for bothends of the comment. (They also don't get deleted if "Reject All Remaining" is chosen.)

 

[wildsweetone]

I spent a pleasant hour or two playing with the Reviewing Tools last night. I've been unable to discover exactly how to change the yellow highlight to a different colour - it seems preset for the 'comments' tool. I now know how to change the colours for the other parts of the reviewing tools.

Is it possible to change that automatic yellow to one of the other highlight colours?

 

[Pure]

Hi WH,

Thanks for the reminder about Comment. I've tried it, and it looks very useful. There is provision for editing comments.

I see no option besides yellow, for highlights.

One question:

Earlier you said,

//To delete the comments, pull down the Tools window, hit Track Changes, then Accept or Delete Changes. //

Most recently you suggested delete [=reject, I assume] changes would NOT work/function against comments.

I guess it's the latter.?? That would make sense.

Thanks for helping us all get tecnologically upgraded: for a couple years I was in wild-sweet-intimidated-genius's shoes for these advanced functions..

 

[Weird Harold]

I see no option besides yellow, for highlights.

One question:

Earlier you said,

//To delete the comments, pull down the Tools window, hit Track Changes, then Accept or Delete Changes. //

Most recently you suggested delete [=reject, I assume] changes would NOT work/function against comments.

See the attached picture for how to change the highlight color.

Comments Do show as New text, since you mention it, I guess that rejecting all changes would also delete the comments that still show as "new text".

Other than that, the comments and changes are separate functions and the comments can be deleted cleanly without worrying about in-line comments being only partially deleted and getting left in the finishd story.

 

[Weird Harold]

oops.

forgot the picture.

 

[wildsweetone]

thanks for the giggle Pure much appreciated.

i discovered last night, that if you right click whilst hovering the mouse over the highlighted text, you then have an option to delete or edit the comment via the highlight rather than having to go back up into the 'edit comment' button.

ps Pure: 'wild-sweet-intimidated-genius's' an oxymoron methinks