Category: The Editor’s Hat

Advice for writing and editing, along with some thoughts about working with editors.

Editing Reality Check

Writers often spend a long time writing their stories. Eventually, they need to turn their attention to editing. However, many writers don't fully understand what editing actually entails.

In the archives of this blog, you will find an article that details the stages of editing, breaking down editing into three main categories: developmental, copyediting, and proofreading. Each stage is important for a manuscript's development, but for different reasons. Unfortunately, too many writers seem to rush through the developmental editing process, going straight to line editing. It's because many writers tend to think of editing as just the copyediting phase.

What is worse is that there are some writers out there who incorrectly believe that because they've hired an editor that their story will read beautifully and be adored by all.

It's time to face the reality regarding writing and editing.

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Fiction is NOT a Genre…

Recently, I was skimming through a fellow editor's website (who shall remain nameless) and encountered a page where people were listing the titles of their manuscripts and their respective genres. OMG, the number of people that listed their genre as FICTION...

People, FICTION is NOT a genre. It tells us nothing about your story, except for the fact that it's made up. And it's not good enough to tell us the you write Young Adult or Middle-Grade either. All this tells us is who your target audience is.  Let's face it, a science fiction story is very different to a western. (However, you could have a Western SciFi — Firefly is the perfect example of this sub-genre.) A Young Adult SciFi and a Middle-Grade SciFi, on the other hand, will contain similar elements, all related to the SciFi genre.

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Young Adult: A Category or a Genre?

Whenever someone tells me they write young adult (often shortened to YA), my first response is always, "That's nice. So what genre do you write?" More often than not, I get a blank stare in response. The look in their eyes says it all.

"I just told you. I write YA."

At this point, I normally chuckle. "So you write fantasy." Most of those I meet who have made this young-adult-classification mistake write fantasy of some flavour, commonly urban fantasy.

However, sometimes I'll get that affronted look. "No. I write YA." To this, I bow my head in shame.

The confusion between genre and category is something that plagues every new writer. We're told that we have to categorise this piece of work that we have spent months, if not years, working on, but we don't want to fit into a box; we want to be in a circle. So… the question is, what does young adult really mean?

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Old-fashioned printing press.

By all means, rush the process.

Writing a manuscript takes time; editing it takes even longer. However, rushing the process is the biggest mistake that any new writer can make. One spends months, if not years, pouring everything, including their heart and soul, into this body of work. It's only natural to want to see it published—they have dreams. But dreams that are worthwhile require time and effort.

Editing a manuscript into something worth reading is not something that happens overnight. There are steps that every manuscript must go through before it finds itself as a book on the shelves of your local bookstore. Rushing the process will produce shoddy work that will result in very bad reviews, and not just from those that hate your story.

There are several different flavours to this Rush-The-Process dish.

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