Re: Copy Editing and Hammers
Aug. 11th, 2025 07:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynling> What's the point of copy editing if you have no sense of style?
Sorry I'm not done yet.
When it comes to matters of style, a writer will sometimes bend grammatical rules to make their prose more interesting and enjoyable to read. This sort of playfulness is obnoxious if overused, but it can be fun in moderation.
To give an example, I have this one sentence in my story where I'm like: "The room was cluttered with A and B and C and D." The point of breaking grammatical rules in this instance is that the sentence is cluttered like the room is cluttered. Also, the sentence is written in perfect iambic pentameter to convey that the clutter is pleasing in its own way.
Again, it's annoying if every sentence is like this, but you'd think an attentive reader would come across this particular sentence and maybe smile a little. Most readers wouldn't notice the structure of the sentence at all, but perhaps they'd have a clearer sense of how the room looks and feels. The copy editor, on the other hand, saw the sentence and wanted to give me a lecture on grammar.
She also seemed to have trouble understanding that, even though a character might privately think one thing, there are circumstances in which they would say something else to be polite. This is not an inconsistency; it's basic characterization.
Once again, this can be obnoxious if the reader is expected to make connections that only exist in the writer's mind, but sometimes a character is going to need to say something they don't truly believe. Real people do this too. To be polite in social situations.
I guess there are two points to take away from this. First, I should be more specific about what I want from a copy editing job. And second, experiences like this make me somewhat hesitant to spend actual money (ie, hundreds of dollars) to hire an editor for a longer project. Getting clueless and unnecessary feedback is actively harmful in that it makes me second-guess whether what I'm writing is accessible to the lowest common denominator of TikTok girlies who only read YA romance. Nobody needs to write like that.
Sorry I'm not done yet.
When it comes to matters of style, a writer will sometimes bend grammatical rules to make their prose more interesting and enjoyable to read. This sort of playfulness is obnoxious if overused, but it can be fun in moderation.
To give an example, I have this one sentence in my story where I'm like: "The room was cluttered with A and B and C and D." The point of breaking grammatical rules in this instance is that the sentence is cluttered like the room is cluttered. Also, the sentence is written in perfect iambic pentameter to convey that the clutter is pleasing in its own way.
Again, it's annoying if every sentence is like this, but you'd think an attentive reader would come across this particular sentence and maybe smile a little. Most readers wouldn't notice the structure of the sentence at all, but perhaps they'd have a clearer sense of how the room looks and feels. The copy editor, on the other hand, saw the sentence and wanted to give me a lecture on grammar.
She also seemed to have trouble understanding that, even though a character might privately think one thing, there are circumstances in which they would say something else to be polite. This is not an inconsistency; it's basic characterization.
Once again, this can be obnoxious if the reader is expected to make connections that only exist in the writer's mind, but sometimes a character is going to need to say something they don't truly believe. Real people do this too. To be polite in social situations.
I guess there are two points to take away from this. First, I should be more specific about what I want from a copy editing job. And second, experiences like this make me somewhat hesitant to spend actual money (ie, hundreds of dollars) to hire an editor for a longer project. Getting clueless and unnecessary feedback is actively harmful in that it makes me second-guess whether what I'm writing is accessible to the lowest common denominator of TikTok girlies who only read YA romance. Nobody needs to write like that.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-11 01:56 pm (UTC)Like let’s say someone sends you a murder mystery story set on a planetary ring spaceship, and a character delivers a bit of sci-fi flavor text that’s not crucial to the plot. If this character says, “the spaceship is powered by an LGF3357 particle accelerator,” the correct response for the editor is to say, “Okay sounds legit.” In our universe, particle accelerators don’t power spaceships; but also, in our universe, artificial planetary rings don’t exist. You let the genre convention pass as a genre convention, and then you move on.
I know you understand this, of course. I’m just frustrated. I guess what I’m really upset by is how there are all sorts of “services for writers” offered by people who charge professional rates despite not really knowing what they’re doing.
I hired this particular person because they’re a published fantasy writer, but I should know as well as anyone that being a writer doesn’t necessarily translate into being an editor. Editing is definitely an art as well as a skill, and there’s just no real way to tell if someone who offers “editorial services” is just talking out of their ass.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-11 04:53 pm (UTC)That's even more shocking and disappointing coming from someone who's also a published writer of speculative fiction... :( I'm sorry you're having to deal with this. This sucks.