On Editing, and what it means to notice it.

[theweaselking]

Remember how last year I complained about voting for "Best Editor" for the Hugos because I genuinely can't tell good editing from good writing, and only ever notice bad editing?

Well, this year I've been working extra-hard to pay attention to editing, and, uh, I still have the same problem: I can't see good editing, only the absence of it. I have no idea if a good book is well-edited because the editor found and fixed many mistakes, or if it's poorly-edited but there weren't many mistakes there in the first place. All I can notice is *bad* editing, where there are mistakes made repeatedly and not fixed.

Which brings me to Jim C Hines and Libriomancer and Codex Born, which are *poorly* edited. Which is really very sad, because they're good books with a neat concept but I *keep seeing* the editing mistakes, most of which are inconsistencies and contractions in the rules of magic.

In these books, Modern Humans(tm) living on Earth(tm) are sometimes Libriomancers: people who can reach into a book and pull out the contents, whether that's a phaser from a Star Trek novel, a chlorine gas attack from a WWI history book, an infection of Sparkly Vampirism from Twilight, etc, and use them in the real world. In an effort to prevent people from pulling out, say, Fred Saberhagen's Farslayer and wreaking havoc with their newfound ability to instantly kill literally anything on the planet from literally anywhere, books can be "locked" to prevent their magic from getting out. A locked book is useless to a Libriomancer, trying to pull something out of it will fail.

And *good* editing would probably have caught all the various cases where a book is locked in one scene and unlocked in another, or where a certain kind of book is a perfectly normal thing to pull stuff out of versus a weird thing that shouldn't work, etc.

For example: All the Harry Potter books are locked for various reasons, but the largest is the Time-Turner: Pulling that out is super-dangerous, so books using it are locked and there's an aside about how Ms Rowling was given a stern talking to about including it in later books. Regardless of having the time-turner or not, all Harry Potter books are completely locked. But in a different scene, our main character complains that pulling something out of a book doesn't teach you how to use it - he nearly gave himself carpal tunnel using Harry Potter's wand and still barely managed to flick the feather! In another scene, two characters mention hoping the newest D&D sourcebook isn't locked yet so they can use the spells and magic items before they get turned off, since all D&D books get locked but the locking sometimes takes a few days - and like a chapter later, Our Protagonist is thinking he shouldn't be able to pull things out of a D&D sourcebook *at all* but he's going to try anyway because it's generally considered impossible so *of course* those books are never, ever locked.

Those are two of the more obvious errors. They're not the only ones. That kind of misstep is *all through* the first two books in this series. (I haven't reached book 3 yet - I plan to read it, because the mistakes aren't killing the books for me, but auuugh)

It's really unfortunate, because these mistakes are so blatant and would have been so easy to fix. And all this rambling gets back to my main point: I can spot BAD editing, where an author made a mistake and an editor didn't catch or correct it, but I still have no idea how to identify good editing.

Comments

[ashbet]

Hmmm... maybe *authors* should vote for "Best Editor"? But then editors with many clients would have an unbalanced chance of winning. Authors and beta-readers, maybe? ;)

I am wondering if a *few* of the inconsistencies have to do with [character] belonging to [organization], and therefore having preview access to certain books before they're locked?

(I only read the first book, haven't picked up the second.)

I agree, though, that this kind of error should be caught by a good editor (and it would be wise for the author to keep a master list of the books referenced AND THEIR STATUS, so that there aren't flip-flops regarding whether or not _X_ book is locked in the characters' present day.)

-- A <3

[kjn]

I believe you're looking at editing at too low a level - what you are talking about is copy editing, mostly. Sometimes the author is good at this, sometimes they need an editor. Doing it well is merely a sign of a good editor, not a great one. A great editor is unlikely to do this, since it's drudge work.

Markers for great editors. Hard to see, unless you are in the business or can really follow several authors. But here're a few possibilities:

• Look for strong new authors, especially if their careers pick off and they keep improving. Discovering and nurturing new authors is the #1 job of any editor.
  
• Check if a bunch of your favourite books have been handled by the same editor.
  
• If you are a beta reader (or similar) for a published author, looks at the comments and things they run by you after the real pro editor has looked at it. Compare with the old stuff.
  
• Listen to and ask any published friends.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Excusing editing mistakes as "those don't matter because a great editor wouldn't look for them" seems to miss the point entirely.

Yes, I get that copy and line editing *personally* is likely below the pay grade of Sheila Gilbert (who is credited as editor on both the books I mentioned). However, whoever *did* the copy editing did a bad job of it and missed multiple obvious inconsistencies, often within a few pages of each other. Even if she wasn't doing it personally, isn't the editor responsible for, well, the quality of editing on work she farms out to underlings?

How am I supposed to ignore "there are two Chapter 5s" as anything other than a blatant mistake, by the editor?

Anyway. This gets back to "I can't see good editing, only bad".

[torrain.livejournal.com]

'scuse, he's talking about plot holes. That's way closer to developmental editing than copy-editing; it's the "does everything I am describing fit together to provide clear and coherent content before it gets checked by a copy editor"-level stuff.

The idea that a great editor will find it beneath them to help make a book coherent is an interesting one, and I'm not saying it's never true, but I would look extremely hard and extremely suspiciously at anyone who said it was only to be expected.

ETA: I realize there is some fluidity in the terms used for the different levels of editing[1], but Writer Beware's summary seems like a good place to start, and I cannot for love blood or money find any place that suggests plot holes are the things which are meant to be fixed by copy editing.
---
[1] "some fluidity" = "and I thought the sizing on women's clothing was annoying in its inconsistency what the hell is line editing anyway"

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

That's the problem with editing - if they are doing their job well the general public doesn't see it. An editor can be very hands-off or very hands-on and help the author to fix some stuff that the author didn't figure out. grrm has a pretty good rundown of his favorite editors.

And unless you can see the before-and-after - such as the marked up version of What we talk about when We Talk About Love, one can't see the brilliance of an editor.

Probably best not to vote on editors then.

[skington.livejournal.com]

Has there ever been anything useful on this topic at, say, Making Light (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/)? It might be getting a bit close to talking shop, but there are an awful lot of editors and writers who hang out there.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

I'm an editor. I've even been nominated for a Hugo in this category. I'm also an author. I get all the inside gossip.

I generally leave the category blank except for my own name, but only because I'm a raving narcissist.

The category is too much of a black box—nobody can really tell what a book editor managed to accomplish. They should eliminate the category.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Doesn't the category also cover anthology and magazine editors? I find it's easier to tell when I'm really impressed and pleased by how the sequence of the works in one of those flows, and how they worked together to improve each other.

Admittedly, I read way more magazines and anthologies than I do collections or novels, but I'm comfortable nominating based on that.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That covers Editor Short, but leaves me with two issues: #1, Editor Long. #2: I don't read magazines or anthologies, I read single specific works that may have been published in a magazine or an anthology.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I went from 'Hugo Awards to editors (both lengths)' to your specific long-form examples, and then bounced back out to assuming Nick was talking about both lengths of award. My bad.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

There's a separate category for short fiction editor, which is much more sustainable.