How to revise other people's work without a personal agenda

Example 1: Braided memoir

Last week, I walked you through how I’m planning to revise my own novel (thank you for the messages of support and solidarity, they really cheered me up!). This week, I want to show you the other side to the editing work I do, which is editing other people.

I first jumped into the developmental edit business with a lot of verve and positivity. Close reading is a passion of mine and while I’m not great at seeing my own plot points, I’m skilled at helping people to either identify or retrofit their own. I like working with authors. More than like, I love it. But I soon realized that traditional editorial practices aren’t only something I don’t agree with, I’m not sure that they benefit the author.

Here’s what I mean by “traditional editorial practices.” Whether you’re lucky enough to have scored an agent or a developmental editor who has the time to work through edits with you or you’ve hired an independent editor to get your manuscript submission-ready, generally, during the editorial process, most authors will receive a combination of line edits and an “editorial letter” containing pages of thoughts and big picture takeaways.

Sometimes, these developmental edits can be life-changing. I recently had the privilege to read such a letter by the author and editor

Kelly McMasters

for a student I’m working with, and I was totally blown away by the helpfulness and care that Kelly puts on the page for her clients. But generally? You know what’s in editorial letters? A lot of thoughts that aren’t necessarily connected that represent the agenda and aesthetics of the editor the writer was paired with, or hired. Which is understandable, and fine? But are you revising your book, or are you revising toward the book that someone else wants you to write? More and more, I’ve come to believe that the best editors help their authors meet the author’s stated goal while also helping them to meet the expectations of the market that they are trying to enter. What editors shouldn’t do is push a personal, aesthetic agenda onto a writer just because they think that short sentences are superior, dialog is extraneous, sex-scenes are offensive, landscape writing is boring, or whatever the (personal) hell.

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Removing your aesthetics from a developmental edit takes practice and humility, and providing students and clients with actionable feedback that empowers them instead of wounds them takes experience and skill. This is why, personally, I’ve done away with editorial letters for my clients.¹ In addition to the reservations I’ve shared above, I find it nearly impossible to edit from an editorial letter. In these letters that can range from four pages to twenty, you’re hit with all these opinions, thoughts, and feedback, not necessarily chronologically, and not in a format that’s easy to reference. Like, you have to read the letter. It’s kind of hard to navigate. While an editorial letter is useful to have as a reference for a big revision, I don’t find it to be the best tool we can give authors to tackle their revisions with. I prefer creating a customized and ultra pragmatic solution for each writer tailored to whatever their biggest challenge is. For some people, that will be length. For others, it will be lack of plot. Today, I’m going to show you an example of an editing tool I created for a braided memoir that hasn’t struck the proper balance between its narrative braids.

This video shows just one example of how I like to work “off the line” with my clients, and also for myself. Maybe you will find this method helpful for what you’re doing, maybe you’ll decide that I’m obsessed with scissors and Word doc tables—only time will tell! I hope you like the video and that the sound quality isn’t terrible because it’s such a windy day.

Video tutorial: How to provide feedback on a braided memoir that won’t break a writer’s brain