You Are A Bad Editor

Yes, you reading this subtitle. But you can become better.

We’ve all been there. You’re someone of importance in a literary circle, or you’re an experienced writer someone has reached out to for advice on a piece. You get their email and they describe their work as Tolkien-esque, or Lovecraftian. You open the document. It’s a choppy, saccharine mess from a fledgling writer trying to use a style they can’t even properly mimic.

You write a terse, polite, but ultimately scathing reply. You critique little missteps and highlight the weak prose like an annoyed English teacher correcting grammar. You think to yourself that they’ll never be a writer if they can’t even copy other people. Afterwards you read your own writing with increased confidence and assurance. You tell yourself that you did the right thing rebuking them so fervently, because if they’re really dedicated to the craft, they’ll take the hit to their ego and keep writing like you did. They’ll work harder and maybe write something good someday. Yet you’ve really done nothing for the writer who came to you.

You are a bad editor.

Editing—proper editing—uncovers the intent and the story beneath the words that exist on the page. It reads beyond the flubs and uncertain syntax and looks at what the writer is trying to do, rather than what they’ve actually done. This requires a subtle mindset shift. You’re not editing the prose. You going beyond the words you read to see the things that are.

Immature or growing writers are often still in the “ape my favorite writer” phase of development. They use their heroes as a comfort blanket for their own ideas because they don’t have the experience or the skills necessary to have their own prose or give unique direction to a story. This is no fault of theirs, nor should there be any shame in it. They are still developing. You couldn’t blame a child for not knowing that the man on the street isn’t really a homeless veteran and that you shouldn’t give him any money. They don’t have the experience.

What does your gut say to do when confronted with weak or clunky prose?

As an editor, you have to leverage your experience and your strengths to look beyond their mistakes and discover what feelings, ideas, and processes they’re trying to bring out in their stories. Pick what can be developed and develop it. Too often editors get stuck in the way the words sound or the way the sentences look without seeing the writer’s intent for the story, or worse, they project their own intent onto the story. Sometimes the original writer may not know exactly what they want to do themselves. In that case, you simply ask. Discover what they’re trying to do, because at that point, this isn’t a drive-by workshop. It’s a writer-editor conversation. Talk to each other.

Let’s take an example of a submission I once received with some self-described Tolkien-inspired prose (and bearing in mind this is just one section of a larger piece):

She spooned a generous helping of the soup from the cauldron and silently directed me to a chair nearby. Something about the action felt… motherly. Comforting, even. I did as she said and immediately knew I had made the right choice because the soup was everything a soup should be. It warmed me right down to my soul with just the first taste. Like an animal, I scarfed down the entire helping and eagerly looked toward the cauldron for more although I regretted that glance as soon as I saw the smug look on the woman’s face.

This submission is from an amateur writer who is still growing. It’s a decent start, but it’s clearly stream-of-thought. It doesn’t flow very well and the word choice is awkward. The ideas appear jumbled and the intent for the scene is unclear. Are we focusing on the taste of soup, the relationship between the narrator and the woman, both at the same time, or something else entirely? What is the right move as an editor?

Most editors would tell the writer just what I said: the paragraph doesn’t flow well, the word choice is awkward, the ideas are jumbled and the whole intent is unclear. Maybe if an editor is feeling particularly nice, they’d rewrite the scene for them as an example of fixing one (or all) of these things. On a bad day, you’ve likely read passages like this with a little annoyance and even some snobbery, privately relieved that as bad as you sometimes think you write, at least you’re better than this.

In truth, your reply to this writer—and any quick edits you do for them—is a disservice to the editing craft. It’s nothing more than workshopping, and while workshopping is fine for writers still gaining skills or trying to build their own community, as an editor, you need to provide something more than what they can get at a workshop.

Why is workshopping inferior to editing? Because for writers who have already developed a full vision of their work and their style, as mature writers have, workshopping is just an exercise in patience, because they all know they’re not going to take any input that seriously. They already know the flaws of their writing before it’s ever workshopped, and they certainly won’t accept stylistic changes. What they need is an editor to make their story better.

The chief task of an editor is to make the writing better, not the writer. The writer is only capable of using the skills they have at that moment in time. Their toolbox won’t get bigger by your input, not appreciably. Your goal as an editor is to understand what they’re trying to write, not what they actually wrote. This means being a very diligent reader who thinks clearly when editing.

Again, unequivocably: the editor’s task is not to make the writer better. That is wholly on the writer. The task at hand is to make the writing better without robbing it of the writer’s spirit. You have to draw out intent without taking away personality. You can’t write for others, but you can use your experience and knowledge to see what the writer intends and make it clearer.

Remember that even beginning writers have visions, ideas, and plans just like seasoned writers. It’s just that, due to inexperience alone, they lack the ability to make these visions and ideas take shape in the way they want—or worse, they don’t know that the shape they’ve made is clunky and crude. This then becomes your responsibility: to see through their stumbling and help them produce their intent while maintaining their personality and their voice.

---

Let’s return to the submission for a moment.

She spooned a generous helping of the soup from the cauldron and silently directed me to a chair nearby. Something about the action felt… motherly. Comforting, even. I did as she said and immediately knew I had made the right choice because the soup was everything a soup should be. It warmed me right down to my soul with just the first taste. Like an animal, I scarfed down the entire helping and eagerly looked toward the cauldron for more although I regretted that glance as soon as I saw the smug look on the woman’s face.

What is this writer trying to do with this paragraph, really? Set a scene? That’s obvious—but how are they setting it? What are they trying to build? Some clear motifs are providing food for others, feeding the hungry, bemusement, and comfort. For me, this writer wanted to build a scene that feels intimate and amusing, but they got lost in trying to convey too much. There’s unclear perspective and too many little details that muddy up the scene, which prevents it from shining.

First, let’s provide some typical workshop-style edits for this writer.

She spooned a generous helping of the soup from the cauldron and draped my bowl at her table. I supped first, and then ate with vigor. The soup was warm, filling, and comforting. I hadn’t eaten in days. When I chanced to look up, the woman stood by the cauldron filling up another bowl. A smug smile was on her face.

I’ve accomplished a few things: it is far more fluid, conveys similar details, distracts the reader less with details that can be left implicit (such as taking direction from the woman, sitting at a table, the soup itself warming up a body that is desperately hungry), and keeps the perspective focused on the narrator. It just reads better. I’ve created a stronger passage. However, notice that although the passage reads better, it feels completely different, and it’s actually a very bad edit.

Why? Because this writer would have never written the scene this way. They don’t have the ability to “see” these immediate changes like an editor can, nor do they have enough of a grasp of their own vision to make edits like this which mesh seamlessly into the surrounding text. All I’ve done is rob the writer of what little personality they’ve imbued into the work, and all for the sake of chasing perfection in the prose.

I am, in this case, a bad editor.

Remember: you’re not editing the prose.

Let’s take another stab at it. We know what the passage aims to do at the baseline level: a woman feeds a hungry narrator, who may be tentative about accepting help. Let’s clean up the mistakes in perspective, direction, and implicit fact and draw out its character without rewriting too much.

She spooned a generous helping of the soup from the cauldron and silently directed me to the table nearby. Something about the action felt motherly. Comforting, even. I hesitated, then sat. To my relief, the soup was everything a soup should be. It warmed me right down to my soul with just a taste. Like an animal, I scarfed down the entire helping and eagerly looked toward the cauldron for more. I regretted that glance, however, as there was a smug look on the woman’s face.

Here, I’ve accomplished my task as an editor in a superior way. I’ve taken the intent behind the piece and pulled it out, clarified the imagery selected, and smoothed out the prose to make it fluid. Arguably, I’ve also made it more concise—not always the proper move, and something to be aware of as I continue to edit—but I’ve done so without losing any critical details. Now we have an amusing paragraph with a perspective that doesn’t drift, doesn’t bother the reader with unnecessary “scene cues”, and reads well. It even sounds very close to what the writer would have written!

Yes, again, it does read differently from what the writer originally gave me: more complete, perhaps, and certainly more mature. In view of the rest of the piece, it will likely stand out as a little fresher than normal—yet, inarguably, it is a good edit. It enhances what was a weaker paragraph without dramatically changing the writer’s stylisms.

Of course, the hard part for editors is doing this on the scale of an entire story, even more so for novels. Editors have to constantly remind themselves to take out the “line edit” part of their brain and focus on the “intention edit” part instead. But doing so allows you to draw out the good parts in every sentence, in every paragraph.

This is what all editors should keep in mind: editing is for the writing, not for the writer. They are only as good as they are at the time they write a piece. You can’t rewrite all their words for them, and you shouldn’t. You should instead review all their words, figure out what they did right and where they went wrong, and then apply edits accordingly. These changes may be section-wide. If Bob is taking actions leading up to something, and then he turns counter at the last moment just to produce a climax that makes no sense and feels cheap, then the editor needs to see this mistake and guide the writer appropriately. If a paragraph is unclear or muddy, read for intent and use your experience to draw it out.

Writers come to editors for a reason. Most of them, especially if they are immature, will rely heavily on their editors to help them grow. You can choose to be a good editor, or you can choose to be just another workshopper. Which one will you be?

---

All writers seek readers. By sharing with a friend you think will like my work, you can help me find them.