Welcome to the Scarlet Quill Society!

It’s a brand new year, which means a brand new free monthly writing workshop here at YeahWrite. Which is kind of a misnomer, because this year we’re focusing on everything BUT the writing, with an editorial series that we think will knock your socks off. 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 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! The basics are below, or check out the full description at the main Scarlet Quill Society page.

So what is editing and who does it, anyway?

Everyone edits. Everyone. But not everyone has the vocabulary to talk about editing. That’s fine, we can get you up to speed quickly! We’ve written about finding and working with an editor before, and we’ll get back to that at the end of this year, but the first thing we want to do is revisit the basic vocabulary of what is an edit?

We can’t tell you the number of times we’ve been handed a story or essay and heard “edit this please.” And it turns out that the story does in fact need quite a bit of editing, but the author meant a copyedit and maybe a proofread, and we think it needs a developmental edit. So we’re going to be super duper clear to start this year off right.

As a story moves from idea to publication, it will (or it should) go through several editing stages. This isn’t necessarily linear: sometimes you get almost to the end of the process and then have to back up a few steps. But assuming there are no issues that crop up along the way, here are the types of editing every story should experience, in roughly the order they should be done.

Sensitivity read – This “edit” isn’t an edit in the traditional sense of the term, but a readthrough by a competent reader—or a discussion with an issue-spotter—who will tell you if your phrasing, characterization, presentation, and tropes are problematic. This can happen before you even start writing, and will save you so much trouble later on. You want to get these discussions in before you get so attached to an idea or phrase that you’re not ready or able to hear that it’s harmful. Sensitivity readers can also help you figure out if this is even your story to tell—there are so many stories out there, and you can always tell a different one. This can save you from pouring time and energy into something that’s genuinely unpublishable.

Developmental or Structural edit – This edit happens when your story (or in the case of longer stories, sometimes one good plot arc) is nearly done. It involves organization, major plot or thesis points, and (as the name suggests) the overall structure of the work. This edit should come early in the revision process. Dev edits, as they’re often called, don’t involve fixing your grammar or language because it’s likely that you will be doing so much rewriting afterward than any small changes wil be lost. The one exception is that if the story has a significant repeating grammatical error like missing articles or verb tense agreement, it’s nice to know that before you begin rewriting so you can brush up on the rules and save time at the copyedit stage. It’s possible to combine this edit with a sensitivity read, depending on your editor’s competency in the appropriate areas.

Line or Stylistic edit – What most people think of when they think of editing. By the time a piece is ready for line edits, the structural issues should have been addressed. At this point grammar is cleaned up, style is smoothed out, and sentence and paragraph structure is revised for clarity. Your paragraph order might get rearranged, but it’s unlikely that any major plot points will be adjusted. Writing is tightened up and unnecessary digressions are deleted. Your line editor is the person who will murder your darlings for you.

Copy edit – Sentence by sentence and word by word analysis of a piece, working for consistency and clarity. This edit usually involves some kind of style guide, even if it’s an informal internal one (does one character never speak in contractions? which names are italicised? which titles are used for alien nobility?). You may need to come up with that style guide for your editor, or they may help you generate one by asking questions as inconsistencies arise in your work.

Proofread – This is the last edit before publication, whether on a blog or in a book. At this stage, the last typos and spelling errors, as well as punctuation and capitalization, are cleaned up. The extra the between the the and the is deleted.

Again, you may end up going back through these stages several times. Rather than ABCDE, your order may look like BABCDBCDE as different editors (or you yourself) spot things in your work. That’s not a bad thing! It means you and your fellow editors are good at your jobs.

Another term you’ll hear bandied around is beta reader. Beta reading usually (but not always!) is an arrangement between people who are usually (but not always!) friends, and occupies a position that usually (but not always!) overlaps dev edits and line edits. See all those “(but not always!)”es in there? Beta reading is not a formally defined industry term, and if you’re asking for or offering beta reading, you should be very clear up front what your expectations are. And honestly, be prepared to walk away if your expectations and those of the reader or writer don’t match up. Do this while your friendship is still intact. If someone is looking for affirmation and you point out their story has a plot hole you could drive a bus through and they can’t spell? You might not still be friends after that. Even if they needed to know those things to make the story better.

Now that we’ve scared you, let’s talk about how to edit.

I’m gonna edit my own work and you can’t stop me.

Good! Awesome! Good for you!

Bet you didn’t expect us to say that, did you? But getting your work in the best shape YOU can get it before giving it to other editors is usually a really good idea (with the exceptions noted above). That’s the whole point of this year’s workshop. We’re going to give you the tools to help yourself as much as you can, and save time and money in the final editing stages of your work. As long as you remember that you can’t just skip steps in the editing process and that you really do need at least one other pair of eyes on your story to spot the things you can’t, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t edit your own writing and a ton of reasons why you should.

Other kinds of editors

Besides the different types of editing that happen to your work, different types of editors might look at it over the course of its life. Let’s talk about that.

Your editor or beta reader. You know what their job is: to make your work the best it can be. This role can also be called a substantive editor, if you are working with them after your story has been accepted to a market, or if you pitched something to a market and are writing it with their help. That’s right: even after you do all your edits and submit, your market may ask for an additional round or two of edits. That doesn’t mean your work was bad or unedited, just that it wants some final tweaks to fit their style. (In fact, if your work was bad or unedited, it’s unlikely that you’d have been accepted in the first place.)

Managing editor. For big projects, a managing editor (or editor at large or editor in chief) might supervise different types of specialty editors, from line editors to cite checkers to proofreaders. The managing editor may never read your words themself, but they can be a critical part of the process. Some managing editors will prefer that you talk primarily (or only) to them about your work; others will prefer that you speak to the individual editors who have reviewed your work about their areas of specialization. Depending on what the market is, this editor can also be responsible for setting the publication’s standards for voice and tone.

Submissions editor. The submissions (or acquisitions) editor, despite what you might think, does not edit submissions. Instead, they are responsible for reviewing submissions to a market to ensure that they are of an appropriate genre, length, and quality for publication in that market. For some anthologies, the submissions editor will be the final decisionmaker. For others, they may be only one step in a longer process for approval. However, one thing they definitely aren’t there to do is fix your typos and formatting, so get your story in the best shape it can be before a submissions editor ever sees it.

If you’re editing for someone else

Look, the hardest part of editing isn’t the edits. It’s that moment when the writer, who is a human being with feelings, and who made the story as good as they could on their own, sees your feedback.

We’ve put together some resources here on giving and receiving criticism that you might find useful to make that moment as minimally painful (it’s not going to be painless) as possible.

• A primer on giving constructive criticism
• Receiving constructive criticism – how to separate “that hurts” from “I need to work on that”
• Critiquing poetry – it doesn’t have to be more intimidating than fiction or essays
• The vocabulary of criticism

We hope that you and whoever you’re editing for find these tips helpful and useful. We know this is the absolutely hardest part of writing, but it’s also absolutely necessary to make your stories and essays the best they can be—and isn’t that the point?

Your turn!

What are you working on that needs an editorial hand? What kind of editing does it need, and from whom? This is a great chance to revisit some of your old work that’s having trouble finding a home and see what you—or someone else—can do for it. (Got a piece you wrote for the Super Challenge? This is an excellent time to dust it off.)

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!) second Sunday of every month at 2:00 pm U.S. Eastern Time. 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:

About the author:

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