Stages of revision 16: final copyedit and some further suggestions

 

The end or not the end?

This is the last time you’ll look at your script ….  until it’s accepted and you go through it with an editor or it’s rejected and you take another look at it, some months down the  line, before you send it out again.

Oh yes, by the time you get to this stage you’ve really polished it … and the first thing the publishing house’s editor is going to do is take it apart.

You yourself will do this as well at a later date – because fashions in writing change and you move on as a writer anyway.

To be honest, editing never ends.

 

More of a proof read?

You’ve probably got rid of most of the more obvious mistakes by now. The read aloud edit helps a lot. It may be wise here to concentrate on a few specific things. There are some things that we all get wrong frequently and there will be your own specific common mistakes. E.g. I often type “form” when I mean “from” 

Here is a suggested list but it is by no means comprehensive. It’s a good idea to develop your own list over time.

·         Is dialogue set out correctly?

·         Are you using a word too often e.g. “Gosh” “seems”

·         Is your use of the apostrophe correct?

·         Look out for confusions  such as

o   who’s / whose

o   its / it’s

o    your / you’re, 

o   to/too/two

o   their / there

o   bare / bear

o   affect / effect  

·         Are you consistent in the way you hyphenate words?  

·         Are you consistent in the way you write numbers as words (different styles recommend numbers up to twenty, up to fifty or up to one hundred – can you see which style I’m using?)

·         Are you distinguishing between generic relations – mum, dad, grandpa, and proper  nouns Mum, Dad, Grandpa  

Some proof-reading tricks

Can you bear to start at the end reading one paragraph at a time?

Complete this edit in small chunks.

But perhaps the wisest of all: ask someone else to proof read, or even pay someone else to do it.   

Change the way the text looks

This will help you to get some objectivity. You can:

• Change the font.  
• Single space
• Set it out as booklet
• Print it out as a booklet

 

A final tip

Start each stage of revision in a different place. Otherwise, you tend to rush as you get towards the end and your final chapters will receive less attention.  How many pages does your text have? Divide that by 16.  Say you come up with 25.  So start revisions 1 on page 1, revision 2 on page 26, revision 3 on page 52 etc.

Then get submitting!       

Image by  Lorenzo Cafaro from Pixabay 

Responding to copyedits

Electronic feedback  

I’ve recently had a script back from a copy-editor. It was due 29 September and I finally got it the first week of November. More and more publishers are now using Track Changes on Word documents and it can seem a bit like being at school and getting back work covered in red ink. It’s easy to think your work must be terrible. It isn’t. Otherwise the publisher wouldn’t have accepted it. Your copy editor is good.

It’s very tempting to “accept all” and be done but that isn’t a good option.

Copy-editors are not infallible

This one was pretty good, actually, and made a lot of helpful suggestions. Typos were corrected. My script was aligned with the publisher’s house-style. There were actually just one or two changes I didn’t agree with so I rejected those. And this copy-editor did make one mistake: she misinterpreted an indirect thought as a direct thought. Eventually I also noticed a couple of things she had missed. So, it is a good job I painstakingly moved to every change and either accepted it or rejected it. This usually means accepting two changes at a time – often a deletion then an insertion.

More than a proof read

A copy edit is more than just correcting blatant mistakes. The copy-editor also advises about bits that aren’t working, checks for consistency in content and form and spots stylistic awkwardness, including, for example, the over-use of certain expressions.

How I worked with this particular editor

I kept “Track Changes” on all the time, so that I could see where I made extra changes.  

First of all, I went through every change and either accepted or rejected it. I probably accepted 99.9% of them.

Then I looked at the comments in the margin and responded to them. This produced new text that I had to copy edit myself. Sometimes, though, the comment related to a change I’d already accepted.

I revisited my own corrections and accepted them.

I rechecked my new work.

I kept revisiting chapters where I’d made changes until I’d no corrections left.

All of this took about three weeks. Finally I sent back a script that was much stronger than the original because both a copy-editor and I had worked hard on it.   

The Copy Edit

I’m just going though, accepting and rejecting changes, on the final copy-edit of Babel. The copy-edit proof can look horrendous. It can really put off an inexperienced writer. By this stage, anyway, one is weary of the book and one may want to just get it signed off. The temptation is to “accept all changes”. This is actually rather a dangerous thing to do, for several reasons.
I know the copy-editor who worked on Babel quite well and thoroughly trust him. Even so, I had plenty of cause to examine every single suggestion very carefully.
One of the most worrying things was that half way through, he suddenly got a different take on how to punctuate direct speech. It’s easy to make this sort of mistake: I know that my students sometimes get the same thing wrong persistently and I begin to query my own judgement. I actually disagreed with some of the rules that he seemed to follow about commas, especially after “and”, and when to start a new paragraph. Interestingly, he was using same rules that I’d learnt at school – and that was a Grammar School, so there must be something in it. However, I sincerely believe that our fast-paced life has made us move away from using commas where we used to and that a comma in front of “and” is often acceptable and frequently creates another meaning. I’m actually seeking a third opinion on that and on the paragraph breaks. We always have two copy-edits and the other copy editor did not pick up many of these.
Sometimes the suggestions did not improve the text. Neither did they spoil it. Why not go with the suggestion, anyway?
In other cases I absolutely agreed with the copy editor but decided not to change: the slight clumsy phrase or the overwritten sentence was part of the text’s or a character’s voice.
In most cases, however, the copy editor’s suggestion made the text much tighter and much more readable. These suggestions are probably also lessons for me for next time I do my own copy edit.
Perhaps then, we need a set of rules for reacting to a copy-edit:
1. Don’t believe that your copy-editor is infallible.
2. Read and respond to each suggestion carefully.
3. If what the copy-editor suggests is no better nor no worse than what you put in the first place, why not go with it anyway? It’s the copy-editor’s job to know about these things.
4. If you disagree, discuss this with him / her and / or get another opinion.
5. Resist any changes that will spoil the voice of the text or one of its characters. You may have to make your case!
Happy writing!

The Final Edit

I am so near finishing Babel now. I’ve just got to finish the amendments to the first half of the book form the final copy edit. I would have done it Monday, but I’d left the manuscript in the office. Maybe a lesson that I should keep creative work at home and academic work in the office.
Of course, I’m having two other people read my work. I’m having a few hard copies of the book made and I’ll be trying to get some pre-publication reviews. Any offers?
It leaves a very excited feeling in the pit of the stomach.

Working with Editors

Yes, it’s all part of the job of being a writer. Getting the publishing contract does not mean it’s all over. In some ways it’s just a beginning. And you do have to be able to react to what an editor asks. Sometimes it can be painful. Yet in the end you are grateful. It’s another pair of eyes and the opinion of someone who can be a little more objective.
I’ve just posted off what I call an edit but what the design / copy edit team at the publishers call third proof. The edges have become rather blurred this time – but there’s been a history maternity leaves, illnesses and lost emails so we’re trying to catch up a little. Proofs were supposed to be done in December and the resource is actually due out about now. We’ve somehow missed a layer of editing.
The resource is for teachers’ and contains photocopiable sheets for the students. I had to take note in writing that each section has to fit on an A4 sheet. Yet the publisher needed the submission without formatting. I thought it prudent to submit both a visual text and one in publisher speak. This worked to some extent, though at design level there has been some misinterpretation of layout which has to be corrected – and some annoying reduction of font size and area of page covered. Being a partner in a publishing company and married to our designer I know it does not have to be like this. In fact, we’ve designed a couple of sample pages to show what can be done. This is really all level two editing.
I wrote the book from the heart and based on over twenty years’ experience in the classroom. A working method developed organically and from time to time I inserted certain elements into lesson plans. The editors loved these and asked them to be included in every lesson. At first, I felt dismayed. It made the lessons too regimented, too predictable. But I did as asked. Now that the text is back with me I realise that they were right. The content holds the excitement. The routine gives the security. Teachers are always pressed for time – they need to understand their instruction sheets swiftly. I’m happy with those changes now. So, it’s clear we do need our editors.
The resource is looking good apart from the small font in places and too much white space on a few student sheets. I’ve requested that they look at that. Now we wait. There will no doubt be more questions. Soon, though, a copy will arrive in the post. I’ll open it with trepidation, dreading finding the typo that no one has noticed. But it will feel good all the same. I even dreamt last night about how good it would feel and how good the book will look. Fingers crossed.

The Read Aloud Edit

Yes, I’ve been doing this with Babel and in one day got almost half way through it. It can of course make you throat very dry. It made my eyes go funny. But it is incredibly worth it. You notice so much more than when you read silently, for example:

• missing punctuation
• superfluous punctuation
• misspellings
• words missed out
• words added in
• clunky language
• repetitions
• lack of continuity between paragraphs
• ugly language
• darlings that still haven’t been killed
• overall flow

There is only one more edit after that – the copy edit, and in fact the reading out loud one partly does that anyway.

Writer’s Sore Throat

I’ve just been reading a novel out loud. It’s my latest one, and this is the penultimate check. The last read through will be a good old copy edit. It’s amazing how many of those sorts of things I’m picking up. I’m finding detached full stops, “ifs” instead of “ofs”, and sometimes assigning the wrong person to a speech.
It really is to be recommended, reading your work out loud. I have also uncovered some more serious mistakes:
A fight scene was not at all long enough.
Someone said something out of character.
Several sentences were clunky.
Sometimes a bit of dialogue needed to be accompanied by some physical action.
Just occasionally a different word was noticed
Reading aloud is so effective because it slows you right down. You notice far more than when you read in your head. It’s also possible to read aloud silently. You just hear a voice, possibly your own voice, reading the words. This is useful if you’re on a train or somewhere else equally inconvenient.
Why the penultimate check? Well, it needs to be near the end as you’ve made so many changes by now that you may have lost some of the flow. And there is another important check to be done last of all.
Just two words of caution, though.
A few things are better written one way for reading aloud and another for reading silently. That’s another good reason to do a final read through afterwards. You can always put things back to the way they were then.
Reading a whole novel out loud can give you a sore throat!

Editing

I have a big editing job to do at the moment, and a smaller one. The smaller one is bugging me …. Or maybe I’m using it as an excuse not to move on to the bigger one. With the smaller one, I’ve quickly agreed the changes the editor wants, taken out a couple of sections he suggested, then in one case, made the surrounding text run more smoothly. There are some slight alterations he has suggested, though not demanded and I tend to agree with him, though the reason those items weren’t there in the first place is because they are beyond the realms of my knowledge and I don’t have the time to do the research at the moment- especially as we are now into the Christmas period.
But all of this seems trivial compared with the bigger edit I have been putting off for months. This is a YA novel, over 100,000 words long. What has been suggested is very similar to what an editor might suggest after you’ve got the text as perfect as you can.
I see there being three basic levels of editing:
1. Major structural change.
2. Strengthening of weaker parts and getting the balance right. This will involve sharpening up characters and removing parts that don’t need to be there.
3. Checking flow and copy-editing.
I need to do something in all three areas.
Oh, well, best get down to it, I guess.

Editing processes

Veiled or Behind the Veil or Beyond the Veil - or whatever I end up calling it, is almost finished. It's a YA novel. Just two more read throughs, probably in hard copy, and it will start going out into the wide world.
I have a list for editing, which goes from the general, to the precise. The first check is to see that the structure works, the last is a general copy edit. All sorts of things come in between: character, dialogue, showing not telling, pace, emotional closeness and then there are some genre-specific items. Like do the characters look like young adults in a YA novel?
I normally print out the first, the last and the last but one draft, unless I'm going on a train journey, and then it's hard copy to go with me, whichever editing stage I'm at.
I find it best to look for one thing at a time. However, I'll often notice something form a category other than the one I'm currently editing. I've got up a list of fourteen criteria now, and I'm thinking of cutting back a bit, or maybe doing a couple of things in one go.
Then the comes the problem of starting something new and sending this one out.