What Kind of Editor are You?

Partially because I'm hoping to some day soon be working with a professional, I-work-at-a-publishing-house, this-is-my-day-job editor--and even more because I've been forced to deal with I-know-better, how-about-I-just-rewrite-your-work, emphatically non-professional editors at my current day job--the idea has been rolling around my brain lately: what kind of editor am I? What kind do I need?

As far as my personal editing style, I think I'm best at the small picture. A sentence that's not working right I can spot--and fix--in a blink. Paragraph and even chapter level problems are easy-peasy (is it too long? too short? not following? I know the answer).

What's harder, and what I've been trying to train myself to do better, is seeing the forest for the trees.


I'll catch most of the grammar mistakes, but if I'm pulled along by a writing style, I may fail to pick up on plot holes (or the lack of anything really resembling a plot). I can recognize major problems afterwards sometimes, and if it's pointed out to me, I can find the instances where things went off the rails in that specific way, but I have a harder time saying "somewhere around the 1/3 mark, this part of your story drifted sideways, and this is how you can fix it."

In fact, that's the biggest issue: I'm not even totally terrible at seeing the big-picture stuff, but it's not as easy for me to repair.

I've been working on this, both with my writing and with friends' (I like to think a recent critique of a friend's in-progress novel featured quite a few well-spotted "big picture" issues, and even a couple potential fixes for them, because I like to think highly of myself if possible). But it's never been as easy for me as pinpointing the word that isn't working right, or the sentence that feels like a non sequitur.

The kind of editor I really need will be much, much better with big pictures than I am. Especially on the and-here's-how-we-troubleshoot-that front.

It's also informative to realize the kind of editor you DON'T want to be. For me, especially lately, the answer to that is: the one who has to change something just to prove she was there. It's one thing to point out that logically, X couldn't happen in the way the writer is describing, or that Y is factually untrue. It's another to switch the phrasing out for your preferred style.

Phew. Now I KNOW you know what you're doing.


Because even if you think your preferred style is better, it's not, specifically because it's yours...not the author's.

For my books, I'm hope-hope-hoping to find someone who's good enough to know when and how to help...and when to leave well enough alone.

I'm hoping to find that in other portions of my life too, of course...I'm just not planning on it ;)