by Bobbie Christmas
Q: I have been steadily working on my corrections so I might start the search for an agent; however, when I asked my brother, who used the same editing services, to read through it, he ended up marking numerous areas that needed correction based on what his editor advised. I am confused. The editor for his manuscript recommends one thing, while mine never mentions it. I know the service I used employs many editors, and all editors have their own style. Should I just stick to what the editor who revised my writing corrected, or should I change the things his advisor says are wrong? If it’s the latter, it almost seems like my book needs to be completely edited again.
A: Among editors we have an expression, “Ten editors, ten opinions.” Every person who reads a manuscript will have a different opinion on how to improve it. When you use an independent editor—one that does not work for a publisher that bought the rights to your book—you have the right to agree or disagree with your editor. In the end the book and the decisions about it should be yours, until a publisher makes an absolute demand.
Some suggested changes may not refer to something wrong, but a missed opportunity to make the writing stronger. If it’s not wrong, you don’t necessarily need to change it, but consider whether you want to change it.
Gather all the opinions you can and then make your decisions from your gut, deciding what is best for you and for your manuscript. If a complete rewrite seems out of the question to you, then don’t do it—yet. You can always make that decision later, if the manuscript meets with too much rejection.
Q: Would the paragraph below be stronger if I changed the gerunds to past-tense verbs? The change sounds awkward to me and wouldn’t give the situation the frantic nature I’m going for.
We huddled beneath the basement stairs and held each other more tightly with the sound of each new noise. Glass breaking. Objects crashing. Wood beams splitting. Furniture colliding. For the first time I realized we were in the middle of a tornado.
A: On the good side, sometimes intentional repetition (of the “–ing” sound, in this case) adds a poetic touch to a paragraph. For the purposes of discussing gerunds and strong writing, however, I’ll ignore that potential, to make my point about how to make the paragraph stronger. The example has many sentence fragments (crashing, breaking, splitting, and colliding are not verbs). In addition, it mentions things a little out of order (“each new sound” appears before the sounds). To eliminate extra words, delete weak adverbs, keep the action tight, put things in better order, and use active verbs, the paragraph would be stronger written this way:
We huddled beneath the basement stairs. All around us, glass broke. Objects crashed. Wood beams split. Furniture collided. With each new noise, we held each other tighter. I realized we were in the middle of a tornado.
I can see that the sentence fragments gave the situation a frantic nature, but my suggested rewrite does the same thing, while it avoids sentence fragments.
Alas, ask ten editors, and you’ll get ten opinions. In addition, it is not the job of an editor to rewrite. I recast the example for only one purpose, to illustrate what I mean about tight, strong writing in correct order. It’s your paragraph, so you can decide how you want it to read.
Bobbie Christmas, book editor, author of Write In Style: Use Your Computer to Improve Your Writing, and owner of Zebra Communications, will answer your questions, too. Send them to Bobbie@zebraeditor.com. Read more Ask the Book Doctor questions and answers at www.zebraeditor.com.
