The value of a good developmental editor
I wanted to share my recent experience in having an excellent editor, and how much that feedback has influenced how and what I write.
A bit of background first: I have been writing in some form or the other for ~20+ years, and while I've had short stories and such published in college, I never went beyond that.
During COVID, I decided to start writing more and dusted off some old ideas and a bunch of outlines and short stories. I took stock of all the ideas that I had and realized there were 14 books that I had started and stopped over the years in various stages of progress. Then life happened, and I put things on the back burner.
And this year, I made a resolution to write more, and in the past 5 months, I have dusted off 3 of those and actually made meaningful progress. I found a rather excellent editor who was willing to be patient with me as a debut author and he reviewed my first novella. He had some exceptional feedback.
First, while he acknowledged my good prose, he was very blunt that I needed to do a lot more work before my writing was ready for publication. He was also very clear that I'd always regret it if I published something that wasn't fully ready, because it'll affect how readers see my work and how I see my work. Even if it were simply self-published.
Then he had specific feedback to me, which I found super helpful. I've outlined some of this below, in the hope that other writers may find it helpful.
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Emotional Arcs
You see, I am not a writer. I have never taken a creative writing class. I am an engineer and a former consultant. So I write like one. I hate dialogues because they feel... artificial.
So, his feedback to me was to practice at building an emotional arc -- not just for the protagonist, but also the antagonist and a couple of other characters. My MC was simply accepting what was happening vs. reacting emotionally.
Goal, Motivation, Conflict
This seems so self-evident after the fact, but making sure that every character and every arc has a goal, a motivation, and a "conflict" / work to achieve it.
The thing is, this means I needed to actually develop character depth. Not just who my characters are, but what's their back story. Where are they from? What drives them? What do they like? What do they dislike? And that profile affects how they react to the world around them.
This really changed how I looked at my writing, because now I really, genuinely needed to go in and change how characters react and behave in various situations, based on who they are as people. And I needed to get a pretty detailed character profile in my head, even if only a small sliver of it made it into the book.
Humanizing the characters so that readers root for them
Yeah, I struggled with this too. My characters are like NPCs -- they do things. You don't feel a connection to them. So, I needed to rethink how I can make readers care for them.
In fact, in most of my stories, the character just went and did "stuff". That's about it.
My wife had the idea of introducing a pet, introducing friends and family etc. so that the reader feels drawn into the life of the character. This goes hand-in-hand with the part about the GMC framework, and how can you tie the motivation of the character with the people in their lives.
In Media Res
Latin for "in the midst of things" -- a narrative technique where a story opens in the middle of the action rather than at the beginning. You see, I had the challenge of setting the stage over 5 chapters, during which readers simply lose patience. Now it may not work for every book, but it did make me reconsider whether or not a reader will be "hooked" to my book in the initial chapters.
A good friend of mine said "start with violence" (not literal violence, but rather with action vs. background) and that has now stuck with me.
Weather Reports
So many of my chapters started out with what he called "weather reports". I was just reporting what had happened between the end of the previous chapter and this new chapter. This goes hand-in-hand with the In Media Res feedback, where my stories needed a lot more "action" vs. "reporting".
Showing vs. Telling
I'm sure you've all heard this one, but the feedback here to me was very specific.
My editor's guidance was to unfold the "showing" in real time through the characters in a way that engages the readers and draws them in. It should feel like the story is playing out before them and that's how they learn what's happening.
I tended to "info dump" from characters and from narration, and slow-dripping the information is the right way to do things. And that takes time and effort.
Using all the senses
I'm not a visual guy. So I don't describe what someone sees very well. I also don't describe smells very well. I went back and basically a lot of my stories had things that smelled like ozone, burned rubber, "clean room" (wtf), or rubbing alcohol. Yes, really.
The feedback here was that I should look at using all five senses, and keep that thematic characteristic throughout the book. If my MC always notices the smells and how things feel, then her "micro takes" on these things builds an environment that's unique to that character (Andy Weir does this really well with Jazz Bashara in Artemis).
Passive verbs and adverbs
I am super guilty of this. A lot of my writing uses passive verbs, adverbs, and basically words like felt, thought, wondered, considered etc. which bore the reader.
So I've had to really go through and figure out where I can be more direct and not put my reader to sleep.
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Long story short, I have a ton to work on. But my editor was clear that all of this will elevate not only the work that he edited, but any future work as well. He's now editing my second novella, and I did a rushed update of many of these changes. I know they won't be enough, and he'll have similar feedback.
But I will absolutely incorporate this feedback into all my work going forward, and I can already see how much of a difference it's made to my writing. In just one weekend, focused writing that incorporated his feedback has made such a huge difference.
Like any activity, having an expert guide you makes a huge difference, particularly if you are open to constructive criticism. I have done this with my violin and chess playing, where folks have given me targeted feedback and I'd engage in "deliberate practice".
I wanted to share this because if you are ever considering hiring a developmental editor, you should absolutely do it. And I hope you found some of what I wrote helpful. Good luck to you all!