There’s a lot of chatter in the writing world about the relationship between writer and editor; today, we’re specifically going to address the writer-copyeditor relationship. It’s one that’s fraught with worry, pride, self-image… as has been said by many, many others, the manuscript often feels like the writer’s baby.
Before we dive into this, let’s establish some baseline terminology so we’re all on the same page (heh, page). I’m going to make some broad-strokes definitions for our purposes here, definitions that vary throughout the industry according to the publishing house, the individual, etc. (there are plenty of resources out there online that give different people’s concept of what each is).
Editor: This is the person who takes what you write and tells you how to make it better on the macroscopic scale. Is this character too whiny? Is the pace in that scene too slow? Does a central concept need to be developed further or condensed? Will this aspect of the story appeal to your intended audience? Yeah, that sort of thing. They’re generally the big-picture folks, the ones who deal most directly with your ideas.
Copyeditor: This is the person who handles the fine details. Spelling. Grammar. Punctuation. Consistency/errors in all of the above. All the annoying stuff that makes you think of your high school English teacher (and, hey, lookit—they even use the same red pens) and wonder what kind of nitpicky nerd even bothers with this stuff. That would be us. We’re the ones who take the fine-grain sandpaper, remove those little microscopic burrs that would cause your “machine” to function a little less well, and put the final polish on your story.
Anyway, now that we’ve agreed on basic terms, on with the show.
Don’t be afraid. Your copyeditor is more afraid of you than you are of them. (Yeah, I used “them” as the non-gendered, general pronoun. I’m allowed.) Let’s be honest: the writer is what the pop-media field would likely call The Talent. They come in with the Big Ideas, the stories that attract people, and the editor is the one shepherding The Talent. Who’s the copyeditor in this? The assistant. The one who handles the little day-to-day details. The person behind the scenes who does all that little stuff. Yeah, that’s us. It’s definitely not a glamorous job, and it’s quite often one that inspires searing, white-hot anger (whether justified or not, there it is; after all, we are the ones with the task of pointing out warts on your baby [I stole that phrase from Jim Butcher, y’all! Woo!]). Our work depends on yours; without the writer and the editor, we got nothin’. And we KNOW this.
But like your other intestinal flora, you need us. You haven’t built a career around the picayune little junk; you’re aces at the aforementioned Big Idea (apologies to John Scalzi there; I’m using this differently, so please don’t hit me with your awesome Mallet of Loving Correction). You paint a picture with words, or you help with said painting. We’re the ones who get the cigar ashes off of your magnum opus, shoo the flies away so the reader doesn’t do the equivalent of “Oh, EW, is that a New Jersey Air Maggot right smack-dab in the middle of what I had THOUGHT was a nice piece of art?” We try to remove all those little details that can get between the reader and what you’re trying to say; as Elmore Leonard said, writing should be transparent, so our job is to make sure that window between you and the reader is as smudge-free and scratchless as possible. after all you wouldnt want the readr to get to sidetracked by Little mechancal details would you ? (See what I did there?)
We don’t ask much, just an occasional scritch under the chin and some kibble in our bowls. We don’t demand that the writer be a True Believer in the One Holy Book of Chicago/AP/MLA/WTFever. What does help us most is consistency: if you can figure out a basic rule for how you’re going to use commas (serial, independent clauses, etc.), for example, we’ll be better able to watch out for where that doesn’t mesh with house style (hey, don’t look at us; them’s the rules). Make sure a character always speaks in a certain register (e.g., Billy Joe Bob ain’t gonna use the subjunctive until he’s showin’ off his Harvard larnin’, so knowing when he’d use “If I was gonna do that” as opposed to “If I were to do that” is a simple thing but surprisingly easy to forget) unless they have a strong, consistent reason to do otherwise in specific situations. Use invented terms/names consistently (if everyone calls it the High Council of the Holy Snarkian Empire in the first four chapters, it’s probably best not to change to the High Holy Council of the Snarkish Empire in chapter five). Granted, yes, it is our job to catch such little bloopers, and we’re happy to do it, but every second we spend catching and fixing the itty-bitty little stuff like that is a second we might miss seeing the sudden appearance of the Snarklan Empire right in the middle of all those Snarkian Empires. Help us help you.
I’m just sayin’. There’s a reason that the industry standard is to use Track Changes or its equivalent: the comments/corrections we make in your manuscript are, in the end, suggestions, ones that you can accept or reject with the click of a single button. We’re not just saying, “I’m right and YOU’RE SO OMG WRONG.” We have a house style guide that we’re paid to follow. We know what seems a bit wonky comprehension-wise to us. There’s always the chance that we’re the ones pulling a herp-derp and just not gettin’ what you’re layin’ down. But when it comes down to it, it’s worth consideration, even if that consideration leads to your saying “Nope, nope, nope; I think it would suck that way.” What we do is a “You might want to take a look at this and see if it’s really the way you want it, ’cause I’m not entirely seeing it” thing, not a “CHANGE THIS, YOU ILLITERATE WORDBEAST” thing. In the end, we’re just human, grammar gods though we may be; sometimes, we just don’t get something… and sometimes, yes, we make or miss mistakes. So, yeah, you should certainly feel free to take what we’re saying with a grain of salt, but it might be a bit of an overreaction to tie us to concrete blocks and chuck us into the Great Salt Lake.
We’re here to help you. It’s our job. And it’s one that people of our ilk, as a rule, like to do. We’re not pointing and laughing. We really do want to help however we can to make your work just that little bit better.