4 Steps In Editing A Novel From The Inside Out

How should a book editor properly edit a novel? Its not a simple matter of acting like a clean-up crew--that is to say, a hygienically-minded proofreader. Book editing done well is a rigorous and demanding exercise.

    The first thing I try to detect and, in my role as an editor, respect is the texts latent voice. This involves more than the technicality of identifying narrational point of view. It also is not easy to describe. What I initially try to do is to hear the authors cadences as they percolate through characters dialogical speech patterns, which of course should be distinctive to each. Through them I cock an ear for the echo, register, or stylistic tonality of a writers ventriloquism, the kind of nuanced effect found, for example, in John le Carrs latest production titled Our Kind of Traitor (2010). Attunement to this idiom guides me in proposing editorial changes.

    I next concern myself with the credibility of those characters. Do they speak in a manner consistent with their individual depiction and the texts setting? Spiffy, for example, is an inapt description of male attire in 1920s New Hampshire. I also pay close attention to how characters are originally introduced, since such profiling will have a significant bearing on their subsequent roles. Are they plausible, again as gauged in terms of the works fictional context, and are their actions congruent with both the storys events and human psychology? Persuade us that your invented personae are real and that we should care about what happens to them.

    Then comes the matter of plot. While verifying that developments jive with previously indicated circumstances, I check for minor lapses. Sometimes this can be a minefield. As in a 5,000-piece puzzle, one wrong detail can derail the entire project. Consultant editors should be fanatically adept at questioning these occasional miscues. Thus, if you do not find that your manuscript comes back to you with at least some marginal queries about plot consistency, something is wrong. Even Homer nodded. We all need another pair of eyes to tell us how were doing.
    What I look for, finally, in a fictional manuscript is an answer to the question, So what? By the narratives climax and resolution there should be some indication, however obliquely framed, of its conceptual import. This is another way of saying that the text ought to limn by its end what has been at stake throughout the entire plot. Formulaic or pat closures, of course, should be avoided. The dnouement instead must arise credibly from earlier plot complications and project some larger insight into what has informed them all along. The pay-off for the reader, in other words, should be worth his or her investment of time and attention.

These major points encompass what I look for while editing a novel. My approach is to work from the inside out, letting a fictional manuscripts flow guide me in monitoring its unfolding design. I would like to think that most editors adhere to this method, or something like it, but in my experience many come at the task from the outside in. Seek professional assistance, then, from those who are sensitive to your works organic shape. That doesnt mean theyll be uncritical; it does mean, however, that their suggestions will mesh with your novels objectives.