Welcome (back) to the Scarlet Quill Society!

This year at YeahWrite our free workshop focuses on everything BUT the writing, with an editorial series that’ll take the words right out of your mouth and put them on the page. Of course, we’re also including some tips on writing so that the eventual edits to your story won’t be the heartbreaking kind where you have to remove an entire character or plot arc and re-evaluate every interaction in your 300,000 word novel.

Check out the bottom of this post (and every post) for a roadmap to the year. We’ll be updating it with links each month as the posts go live, so that you can navigate through easily. And speaking of navigation, don’t worry: our Navigating Prompts workshop from last year hasn’t gone anywhere. You still have a handy tool to refer to when you’re stumped by a prompt or need help on how to approach it or what judges might be thinking as they read your story.

The biggest bonus of the Scarlet Quill Society is that there are actual club meetings. That’s right! Once a month (usually on the Second Sunday) we’ll get together with you and talk about that month’s subject, answer questions, and record the chat for posterity. So if you have an easier time taking in information that way, or if you’re left with lingering questions after a monthly topical post, you’ve got a chance to get the full picture! Check out the full description at the main Scarlet Quill Society page.

But you don’t have to take our word for it

We’ve spent all year talking about editing. About working with an editor. About working with writers. About the best and fastest ways to get those edits done and the story or essay or novel or memoir or even academic paper in publishable shape.

But here’s the thing.

We’re professional editors and we know that it would be as ridiculous to hire a professional editor for every piece of writing you do as it would be to call a lawyer every time you sign your name to a credit card slip.

So when do you need an editor, and when can you DIY… and why? 

That’s this month’s topic. And let’s start off by saying that you probably don’t need an editor for, say, small communications like sending an email to your boss. But that doesn’t mean you should skip the editing step, right? You do this already: spellcheck and proofread. And if it’s an important communication for your boss, like quitting or negotiating a raise, you’re probably already asking a friend to read it for you. You know that you need an editor when you might have missed something important and there are real consequences for you or your writing and readers. The consequences might be as small as someone thinking less of you or as large as, in the words of one of our guest editors this year, “the Internet falling on your head.” Whether it’s missing out on a publishing contract in the first place or losing one, losing a competition or award by a few points or being disqualified entirely, failing to edit appropriately can impact a writer’s work and pay no matter how good their ideas were or how smart they are.

Folks, it’s December. It’s not time to flood you with a ton of new ideas. It’s time to revisit what we’ve learned this year and see where and when it’s appropriate to DIY and where you should really find a helping hand. Ready? Let’s do it.

Let’s review

A year is a long time, and we’ve packed a ton of information into our workshop, both for professional (and aspiring) editors and for the writers they’re working with. But what if the writer is you? We’ve got some recommendations for which tasks you can handle yourself, and which tasks we think you should outsource. Sometimes that means finding a professional editor and sometimes that means throwing your work out there for critique by a writing group or friend, but the common thread is that someone else will do a better job spotting and correcting these mistakes than you will.

Editorial roles: who’s who?

In January we talked about the various types of editors, and what exactly each one does, including:

• Sensitivity readers
• Developmental editors
• Copy editors
• Line editors
• Proofreaders

Some editors can wear multiple hats; others are specialists, but the main takeaway is that you need to outsource at least some of these roles.

• DIY: Get your work into the best possible shape you can on your own. Revise, and revise again. Do the mechanical things that you can do. Get your style guide in order, and cross-check all those character names, spellings, and personality quirks. Run spellcheck, but don’t expect it (or your grammar-check software) to find everything. Get used to issue-spotting, and you should be able to make a list of the places you’re concerned about. This will mean a more efficient relationship with your editor.
• Phone a friend: You cannot wear every editing hat for your own work. No matter how good you are. Know where your weak spots are and build relationships with people who are good at those things.

>> Read more

Preventing mistakes before you make them

In February we talked about how great it is when you get an idea and really get churning. Let’s face it: writing is fun, and sometimes you want to just dive in headfirst, but slow down for a minute before you open that blank document. You’re the person who’s best positioned to prevent your own mistakes, after all!

• DIY: Outline your story. This doesn’t mean you have to account for every scene and action, but write down your important plot points and sketch out the route your characters will take to get there. Protip: you can also outline your work AS YOU GO to keep track of it, or AFTERWARD to make sure it’s not imbalanced. Talk through your plot points with a friend to make sure your story makes sense. Do some research. If your story takes place in the fall in the Pacific Northwest, check weather trends to make sure you’re not dropping snow in Seattle in early October.
• Phone a friend: If you need in depth information beyond what your favorite search engine can provide, check with your friends and networks to see about chatting with a specialist. This is also a great time to sit down with a sensitivity reader if any of the work you’re planning touches on cultures or experiences that aren’t yours.

>> Read more

Editing on the go 

In March we talked about the writing process. While this isn’t the time to hammer out every word and phrase (you’ll end up deleting them anyway, or worse, hanging onto your darlings past the point it makes any sense to), there are a few things you can and should pay attention to while you’re in the thick of it.

• DIY: Look back at the scene or chapter you’ve just written and make sure that something actually happened, that the thing that happened moves the story forward, and that it happened in an appropriate timeframe. Note (in your head, if not in writing) the motivations of your characters in a scene, whether there are stakes for failure, and what those stakes are. Make sure your POV is consistent all the way through – it’s easy to slip from third person limited to third omniscient, for example. Keep an eye on mechanical things like the spelling of names, family trees, and other things you’ll need to hand an editor later.
• Phone a friend: As the writer, you know so much more than the reader at any given time. It can be really difficult to see whether or not enough information made it onto the page. Give your work to somebody else and ask them to identify things like character motivations, stakes, and places where you might need to call in a specialist for research or a sensitivity read.

>> Read more

Spotting big errors

In April we focused on big issues in writing, the sort of things that cause readers to bounce right off of your story. While up until this point writers may be their own best or most efficient editors, this is the place where you’ll probably have better success with a developmental editor or a skilled beta reader.

• DIY: Go through your manuscript carefully and identify places where the pacing may be off. Maybe you’ve got a huge infodump, maybe you need some “white space” to break up a series of action scenes to give the reader room to breathe (and time to care about the characters). Even if you’re not sure how to fix these areas, learning to find them is the first step to avoiding them in the future! Highlight them, so your editor doesn’t have to seek them out later.
• Phone a friend: A dev editor can help you figure out how to break up messy infodumps and action scenes, as well as how to spice up places where your writing feels more like a journal entry or stage directions. They can also help identify where the writing gets “lazy” (no judgment; it happens to the best of us) and relies on undeveloped or unexamined tropes, villains who are evil for evil’s sake, ineffective plot twists, and all the places where the story stops feeling like yours. Best of all, they can tell you how to fix that!

>> Read more

Developmental edits: the big picture

In May, we focused on developmental editing, which, as Rowan says, is the point at which you test the foundations of your writing. Dev editors are asking the big questions: is this story realistic and/or consistent with the rules of the world you have set it in? Can you tell what is happening? Does the story make sense? Are there biases or assumptions in the story that might cause harm? Did you build adequate foundation for your conclusions in that academic paper? Where are you losing readers? Which big cuts could you make and still have the heart of your story?

• DIY: In a word, don’t. You probably have a finished manuscript, and you are probably super invested in your story. If you’ve been paying attention to the areas we’ve already covered, now’s a good time to hand it over to somebody else who can spot the issues that you may have missed. Your job at this point is to work on getting your ego out of the way of your work becoming its best.
• Phone a friend: Find somebody unfamiliar with the story and ask them to read it from beginning to end. If you choose not to or can’t afford to hire a professional developmental editor (you can find standard rates at the Editorial Freelancers Association), try to find somebody in your network with the skillset to look at the big picture, and see what you can do to compensate them in pay or trade. (Not all editors have the same skillsets! Dev editing is absolutely not Christine’s forte, for example, but Rowan excels at it.)

>> Read more

Errors you’re making and missing: pulling your writing weeds

In June we talked about some work you can share with your editor. Everyone has writing habits that creep into their work whether they like it or not: favorite words and overused metaphors; scenes that start and/or end the same way (whether that’s grammatically – with a participial phrase, for example – or situationally – with waking up and falling asleep); over-described blocking. Note: this line editing work should happen after any developmental edits have been ironed out, otherwise you may be creating extra work for everyone.

• DIY: Sometimes you already know which “weeds” to pull. Do a find and replace on your word processor. How many times do your characters shrug or grin? Switch up your vocabulary, or consider replacing one reaction with a different, more appropriate one. Count the number of meals, and make sure you’re not overdescribing every dish when really it’s the conversation that is the focus. And does it even have to happen over a meal, or could it be a hallway conversation? As tedious as it sounds, check your punctuation. Do you scatter ellipses and em-dashes like bread crumbs for pigeons? You might be able to tighten some of this up.
• Phone a friend: If you haven’t been writing or editing long enough to spot patterns in your own work, this is a great time to have someone else read through it and give you notes. An outsider can say, “hey, did you know that your characters do an awful lot of shrugging?” or “The abundance of ellipses in this story make it sound like your narrator is constantly trailing off.” Once you’ve been alerted to your habits, it’s much easier to find them later – and hopefully to avoid making them in the first place! You can also just have someone fix all those places, but you may want to consider working with them closely on the first chapter or couple pages to ensure that their word and style preferences aren’t making your voice vanish and giving you something that sounds as bland as a Grade Seven book report.

>> Read more

Sensitivity reads: spotting -isms and -phobias

If you only watch one recording from the SQS series, watch July’s panel talk. There are certain things that are really difficult to spot in your own work, and number one among those is probably your own internalized biases and assumptions. Whatever your intentions, it’s the impact of your work that matters – and you may be inadvertently causing harm. Or if that doesn’t matter so much to you, you could look at it as shedding readers as fast as Twitter is currently losing advertising revenue. Luckily there’s an entire group of people willing to share their knowledge and experience to help keep that from happening, and make the work you put out richer and more exciting for a greater variety of people.

• DIY: Know what your competencies are and what they’re not. Sit down and train yourself to spot things that you’re not culturally competent with. Don’t try to fix them yourself, but do learn to spot them. You’ll still miss some, and that’s okay, that’s why you’re getting help on this.
• Phone a friend: Anytime your work includes things you’re not culturally competent with. No, really. If you are writing outside your own culture or community, your best move is to run it by a member (or members – no culture is a monolith) of that culture or community. Remember to provide your sensitivity reader with relevant content warnings, and always compensate them in some appropriate way.

>> Read more

Editing characters: who are they and what are they saying about you?

In August we turned to a focus on character. On the surface, we all know what a character is. But what makes an effective, well-rounded character? Once you hit the editing stage (if you haven’t addressed this earlier), there are a handful of questions that need to be answered: Is the character adequately described for a reader to form a picture of them? Are the character’s actions “in character”? Is the character built on harmful stereotypes about a group?

• DIY: Only you know your characters (whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, unless your editor went to your high school), so be prepared to do the heavy lifting here. Have a sense of what each of your characters looks and acts like. Keep notes on their appearance, personalities, quirks, backgrounds, and motivations. Describe all your characters – not just the characters who are not of the “default” race for your setting (which usually means “white,” if you’re writing in English). Consider whether you are relying on harmful stereotypes to communicate information about your characters.
• Phone a friend: Maybe your character’s motivations are clear to you, the author, but have they made it to the page? Beta readers can help you figure out if your character’s actions are appropriate and reasonable based on what they know of the character. Bring in a sensitivity reader, if you haven’t already, to help address stereotypes. Editors can spot patterns in the way you describe your characters (and which characters are described). Everyone has a part to play in character development!

>> Read more

Editing nonfiction: how much is enough?

September took us back to school, which meant looking at nonfiction. Nonfiction can be creative or academic, short-form or long. And it can be a melding of all of these categories. The one thing that’s true for all of it, though, is that it should still tell a story (yes, even academic papers and studies). The trick with writing nonfiction isn’t so much deciding what pieces need to be invented or included in order to tell a complete story, it’s deciding which parts to exclude to tell this specific story – it’s an inherently subtractive genre. That makes it harder for a writer who knows everything that actually happened to edit nonfiction.

• DIY: Check your facts. Verifiable events should be represented as they happened: the date of a storm, the date of a child’s birth, the name of a town, etc. Provide relevant (and specific) citations and references for academic and journalistic writing (or a list of places to look for confirmation for your editor). In either case, have a sense of your message: what are you trying to say with this story?
• Phone a friend: As much as we hate to say it, a creative nonfiction story isn’t interesting just because it happened to you or even because it’s about a Dramatic Thing like a hurricane. Find a reader who isn’t afraid to say, “nice story, but so what?” A reader will also be able to tell you if you’ve cut too much (they can’t understand everything that’s going on) or too little (they feel bored and like the story meanders, or they have trouble keeping track of which details they’ll need to remember for later). This is also the time to get a fact checker or researcher involved.

>> Read more

Line- and copyediting: getting picky

October brought us to the scariest (and most time consuming) edits. Line editing and copyediting are often what people think of when they ask for editing help, but there’s a reason we left it till near the end! This is where you start tweaking words, phrases, and formatting – it doesn’t make sense to do it before finishing and responding to dev edits or sensitivity reads, because chances are you’ll be rewriting swaths of your prose. As a reminder, line editors clear up grammar, smooth out style, and revise sentence and paragraph structure for clarity (but not at the expense of voice). Line editors will also murder all your darlings, so be prepared. Copy editors, on the other hand, go through your work with a fine toothed comb, editing for consistency and clarity. They make sure your punctuation is correct and find that extra “the” that sneaks in.

• DIY: DO do at least one round of these edits yourself. Clean up everything you can to make your editor’s work less cumbersome and more efficient, saving their time and your money. Use some of this time to prep a style guide/stylesheet. Whether it’s strictly for your own use or you intend to hand it to an editor, if you’re writing longform works this document is invaluable for keeping track of all those little details that tend to shift around if we’re not paying attention. (Is that character’s name spelled with one L or two? Is their hair curly or straight?) Run spellcheck again, and try a find-and-replace to find things like “the the” or extra spaces between sentences. Go back through and look for those weeds we talked about in June, and note on your stylesheet that your editor may want to keep an eye out for those.
• Phone a friend: When you’ve gone through your own work over and over, your eyes start to gloss over mistakes. You already know what you were trying to write. So that’s what you’re going to read, instead of what’s actually there. Get an outside editor who hasn’t read the thing ten times to spot those mistakes for you. Note: whereas dev editors will often make notes in the margins or in comments, line and copyeditors should be making and tracking changes to your text. They’re suggesting concrete changes to specific sentences, and as the writer you have a choice what changes to accept–but if you find yourself rejecting more than you’re accepting, ask yourself why.

>> Read more

Finishing touches and final checklists: more than just spellcheck!

November is the last month before this recap, and proofreading is the absolute last step before publication. It deserves a significant amount of attention from a human. Spellcheck has its place, but it’s not going to catch things like homonyms, awkward line breaks, or whether that comma is italicized or not. Like it or not, this is a time when it’s really critical to have someone else look at your work.

• DIY: Do run spellcheck again. It can’t hurt. Check your formatting. Does each chapter heading have the same amount of space before and after it? Are they all in a consistent font style and size? Is the layout clean and clear? Do the numbers in tables add up properly? It’s grueling work, but it has to be done. Catch as much as you can… but ultimately?
• Phone a friend: ALWAYS. Always have someone who is not you proof your work. If you get no other editing, do this. Nothing will make you look worse as a writer than a big fat typo on the first page… or on the cover of your book. 

>> Read more

In conclusion…

We’re living in the real world, here, we promise. We know not everyone can afford to hire or has time to work with a professional editor through all the discrete stages of every project. But we also know that when it really matters, you should do your best to find someone to work with, because not doing that can cost you even more. So do as much as you can on your own, yes. You’ve got a ton of tools at your disposal like the Purdue OWL, Grammar Girl (great for aural processors!), and heck, not to toot our own horns too loudly, but the writing resources right here at YeahWrite! Cleaning up as much of your own work as possible will make the editing process much faster and simpler, saving you time and money. But you can’t do it all on your own, and we hope we’ve explained why. Y’all, this post has two editors and a proofreader. It matters. You should have seen it on the first pass (no you shouldn’t, you wouldn’t respect us anymore).

Anyway, it’s December! We made it through another year together. We wish you all a happy and healthy new year, and if we don’t see you at the December meeting, we’ll see you for our 2023 workshop, where we get to do not this for the next twelve months!

Your turn!

Got questions? Let’s continue this conversation in the Coffeehouse on Facebook or Discord. And keep an eye out for the next face-to-face (face-to-Zoom?) meeting of the Scarlet Quill Society. 

Join the Scarlet Quill Society!

Live Scarlet Quill Society meetings take place on the (usually; we’ll warn you!) (this is your warning! This month’s meeting is on the third Sunday) second Sunday of every month at 2:00 pm U.S. Eastern Time. This month’s meeting will take place on Sunday, December 18.

Each month, paid Society members will receive an email with a link to the Zoom meeting. If not every topic interests you, you can also purchase one-time access passes to each month’s meeting via Ko-Fi. If you can’t make it to the meeting, or you don’t like to speak on camera, you are welcome to submit questions before the meeting that our editors will answer in the meeting.

• $5 one-time access to this month’s Zoom session
• $5 monthly subscription: Access to all the live meetings and recordings as soon as they’re uploaded, as well as a private Discord channel where your topical questions will be answered by YeahWrite editors!
• $3 monthly subscription: Access to the meeting recordings as soon as they’re uploaded, as well as a private Discord channel where your topical questions will be answered by YeahWrite editors!

A week after the meeting, recordings will become available to all at no cost, but if you find them useful we encourage you to leave a tip in our tip jar—it helps keep the lights on over here and allows us to keep bringing you the high-quality workshop content you’ve come to expect from us, as well as acquire some exciting guest panelists.

Rules of Order. Order of Rules. Something like that.

Wondering what the next meeting of the Scarlet Quill Society will be about? Here's our club agenda for the year.

September:

• Read: Editing nonfiction: how much is enough?
• Watch: September meeting

October:

• Read: Line- and copyediting: getting picky
• Watch: October meeting

November:

• Read: Finishing touches and final checklists: more than just spellcheck!
• Watch: November meeting

December:

• Read: DIWhy? what you can (and can't) do yourself
• Watch: December meeting

About the author:

Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.

rowan@yeahwrite.me

About the author: