The question is this: is this a good idea, would it be worth the money, how do find these services, what do these services run, and has anyone here used such a service.

Matt
 

Hatrack has an area where you can solicit others to join you in a group, or there is a website called Critters Workshop where you can seek a critique.
 

I think I'll tolerate a little spending. A set-of-magazines I once submitted to had a twenty-five-cent reading fee...less, generally, than the postage I put on the envelopes. That's about the limit for spending for me. (I might go as high as a dollar in these latter days.)
 

Given that, my unprofessional thoughts are this: Before one begins shopping around a query for a novel, one should have 3 short stories published first. If a writer can't craft publishable short stories, then how will they write a publishable novel? And how does one know they can write publishable work? Critiquing, as mentioned above is a good first step, and then by submitted short stories and seeing if it bears fruit.

There are expections to the process. Some skipped the short story stage altogether. However, it would seem prudent that before spending a thousand plus on professional editing, and before that, letting novel revision consume what little time and energy you have, that you begin by establishing some writing credits first. Maybe you have. If so, sorry for the cautious lowhorse antics.
 

quote:

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Before one begins shopping around a query for a novel, one should have 3 short stories published first. If a writer can't craft publishable short stories, then how will they write a publishable novel?

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Seems to me that's asking something that only a lucky few can fulfill---especially in this day and age where the market for short stories is so radically limited. Besides, there are lotsa writers who are good at one, but not the other.

[edited to correct a misspelled word]

[This message has been edited by Robert Nowall (edited January 31, 2007).]
 

You're one heck of a lot more likely to have a first novel manuscript considered if you've already sold some short stories. Do you know how many manuscripts they get from some guy/chick who thinks he can write, thinks he's the greatest writer since Hemingway, but hasn't sold a single short story?

If you can name me a handful of writers who published a novel without ever having published a short, I'll virtually buy you a virtual ice cream sunday.

Check out the recent discussions on the subject.

Writing shorts is for EVERY writer; it is key to preparing for larger works, and having them published makes your resume stand out from the thousands that arrive in publisher's slush piles every year.

The market may be limited, but really it always has been. But when you consider how limited the short story market is in comparison to the book publishing markets, oi vey!

It's like baseball. If you can't cut it in the minors, the majors aren't even going to let you near their stadiums.
 

And there a difference between writing short stories and selling them. One can get the practice without selling. (I should know.)

If J. K. Rowling or Terry Brooks published anything before their first-known novels, I am unaware of it.

If J. R. R. Tolkien published anything other than poetry or scholarly works before The Hobbit, I am also unaware of it.

Of a more recent SF genre vintage, I can't recall seeing Kage Baker's name on anything before In the Garden of Iden.
 

And, yes, there are expections. Look at the whole Eragon debacle. Then again, some writers in thier earlier works might have used other names in thier by line.

But, what is the wisest course of action? Certainly, if ten unbiased critiqers all give two thumbs up, maybe its time to look into an expensive professional edit and begin to shop it around. Or maybe not.
 

Besides, even the process of submitting short stories helps make you a better, or at least more professional, writer. We see a lot of questions that indicate that many writers think themselves ready to sell first novels when they've no experience with submitting even short stories. And I see a lot of novel openings that don't show any awareness of narrative economy, which is best learned by writing short narratives (even if they aren't really "stories").

Short story credits, even for semi-pro e-zines, are far better than nothing. If someone read your story and paid you even a small amount for it, that's a good thing. That's even if we discount the very real effect that the community of editors has on any given person's willingness to take an otherwise unknown writer seriously.

If you have a number of scholarly publications that, say, got you a degree or two...that's worth putting down as a publishing credit. It might not outweigh a short story credit with everyone, but it's worth mentioning.

Professional editors cannot make a weak story into a good story. They can only remove common flaws that you should be able to fix yourself if you're serious about being a writer (with a few exceptions, like authors who are translating from another language). They're mainly for the person (or company) who wishes to self-publish something (like an instruction manual or political tract) and does not have the time to devote to becoming a writer. They will sell their services to anyone who pays, but that doesn't mean it's very valuable. If you can't edit your own work, then either you haven't developed the basic skills you need to be a professional writer or your work is so boring that you can't stand to read it yourself.

A few minor errors and typos won't put off any professional editor, they have copy-editors on staff to fix those kinds of problems. If your writing has enough basic errors to seriously hurt your chances of making the sale, it's usually not your worst problem. If it were common for simple grammar/spelling errors and typos to be the only problems with a story, pro-editors wouldn't care about them because they can fix those very easily with their in-house people.
 

To put it simply, I don't really care for short stories, whether we're talking about reading or writing them. If I have a really good idea for a fantasy/sci-fi world, and I go through the trouble to create this world, and some solid, complex characters, etc, to only tell a short story about it seems like a waste of energy. Even reaching the end of my novel I'm left wanting to know more, which is why I'm most of the way through the sequel (rough draft anyway) at this point. Not to mention the effort of submitting the story to magazines, etc, for something thats only a few thousand words long.

Same goes for reading short stories. Even if I come accross one that is just phenominal, my first reaction once I'm done is, "wow that was a good story. If only it would have been longer it could have been a *great* story."

Do I just have to bite the bullet and write short stories anyway, just to get someone to pay attention to my novel? Honestly, if that's the case, I don't think I'll ever get published.

[edit: typo]

[This message has been edited by AstroStewart (edited February 01, 2007).]
 

Matt
 

I used to feel that exact same way. But Maps in a Mirror revolutionized my way of thinking about short stories. Not that everything it contains is gold, but some of it is. Eumenides on the Fourth Floor Lavatory is one of the most haunting stories I've ever read.
 

Really; if you can't edit your work well enough or find others who can help for no charge then how is paying someone to do it going to help?
 

Here's an analogy. I can't repair the engine of my car. I can't find someone to do it for free. So why would I pay someone to do it? To get it fixed.

I've heard and seen enough published authors thank and credit their editor(s) that I have to believe good professional editors add value to the process. If someone has the money to invest up front (rather than taken out of advances/royalties later), and can find a good editor who will do their magic for a fee, more power to them.

Myself, I've got a group of exactly zero "trusted readers" whom I can go to with a novel and get professional-quality feedback and criticism. So when I finish it in a couple months, I'll be in a bind. Fortunately, I don't think I'll have to worry about making a decision to hire an editor, my wallet has already made that decision for me. But if I had the dough, I'd seriously think about it.

[This message has been edited by dee_boncci (edited February 02, 2007).]
 

Publishers have/hire people to edit manuscripts that are good enough to be worth the cost of editing. The submitted manuscript has to be sufficiently crafted that something of the original work will survive the editing process, because otherwise they could just have the copy-editors write the story from scratch.

The most important thing is that professional editing really is a part of the publishing process. Getting your manuscript professionally edited is like getting it professionally printed and bound for submission...with the minor advantage of not being immediately obvious unless you choose to mention it.

I think that it may be worth doing as a test of your basic skills, compare your manuscript before and after a professional editing to see how much of your original wording had to be fixed. But then you run into the issue of style guides and changes that aren't really necessary or may have altered your original meaning. Professional editing services are mainly set up to allow non-writers to get something ready for publication, after all. They aren't usually in the business of helping writers figure out where they are in terms of language skills.
 

Maybe my mind is set in the past, but I think going through and correcting grammer and basic diction is the least of the functions a good editor performs - that probably gets passed off to an assistant.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that someone sit down dash off a rough draft and pay an editing service to "finish" it for them. At some point after a couple of revisions, maybe several, a relatively inexperienced writer/self-editor is going to max out what they can do in terms of structure, pacing, content, etc.

At that point it seems a perfectly logical choice if you can afford it to take the work to a reputable (is there such a thing?) free-lance "editor" (or book doctor, coach, workshop instructor, etc.) to get advised on where there are problems and what needs to be revised.

In my mind, these people do not rewrite your work for you, but make revision recommendations (general and specific) at which point the writer goes back and revises the manuscript if he/she decides to accept the suggestions. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the terminology here in this topic.

I agree the final copy editing isn't worth seeking until after the manuscript is sold for publication.

Being a top-level driver takes more than great reflexes and a need for speed. It requires constant awareness of your vehicle, particularly the engine and drive train. Most NASCAR drivers know a lot more than I do about engines, and I can certainly build and repair them.

Grammar and stuff is handled by a copy-editor, a different job entirely from the publication editor.

Professional editing services are not able to help you with dramatic structure, pacing, content, or any of those other things. They do the same job a copy-editor would do, check to make sure that your usages and spellings are correct. In addition they may rephrase some things to conform to one or more style guides, but that is actually a minus in terms of narrative fiction writing, which doesn't have a style guide because it would hamper the originality of the author's prose.

Book doctors and ghost writers are a different story entirely.
 

Sorry, didn't mean to insult you or anyone else. Just asked a question and made some assumptions based on observations and knowledge of what I took (perhaps incorrectly) to be an analagous realm (aerospace).

A pilot or astronaut typically has a great deal of knowledge of how their aircraft/spacecraft operates, especially when it comes to correlating performance anomalies with functional areas of the vehicle, but when it comes to repair and maintenance of the machinery, they entrust the task (and their lives, frankly) to the engineers and technicians who have made such things their life's work. That's not to say a pilot or astronaut is incapable of doing such work (or a NASCAR driver for that matter) were she/he reroute their careers in that direction, but the way it works is that when it comes to crunch time, they don't do it because there are more skiled and more qualified people to do it. Sure, a number of fighter pilots probably own their own single-engine planes and maintain them as a hobby (a good friend of mine is a retired Marine fighter pilot who does just that), but when they're on the clock they're not allowed "under the hood". That is in no way an insult to pilots and astronauts in my mind. If anything, it's a compliment to the men and women of the ground crews that keep them in the air.

I believe that NASCAR has evolved far enough from it's infancy when the prohibition-era bootleg haulers got together with their personal vehicles for bragging rights that the analogy is not far off base. It's a competitive business with a lot of money at stake and the owners hire the best people they can find to keep the vehicles at top performance. Most drivers couldtake off their helmets and work on an engine to various degrees, but I'd be willing to bet if there was a race next week they'd want their crews working on their cars. Just a view here from the self-proclaimed heart of NASCAR country.

Okay, back to writing and editor/editorial services. I'm a novice at this writing stuff and so admit my working vocabulary of the business side of the fiction publishing arena is inadequate. I thought I was clear in my previous post, but I'll restate that I can see why it might be inadvisable to invest a lot of money on an editorial service that won't do more than a final spit-and-polish treatment of a manuscript. I'll take your word for now that there is no one out there operating on a free-lance basis that a writer can retain to work with them on what I think you called publication editing (I can't see your post from this window).

Hypothetically speaking, if such a person did exist out there, and if I had the money available, I would look at the option long and hard. I've heard terms like "book doctors" and "writing coaches", and maybe that's more what I'm thinking about than editors per se.

The reason is twofold. First, I don't work in marketing but have enough of an understanding from the product development side that the more ready-to-go a product is, the more likely it is to sell. Now more than ever businesses want to see a return on their investment right away, and they want to keep as little money tied up awaiting future profits as possible. Second, it would be a learning opportunity traditionally reserved for those who had already broken into the business.

I don't think we disagree all that much. I probably misunderstood the implications of the thread topic. The reference to Terry Brooks in the first post through me. I have read his book ("Sometimes the Magic Works", I think), and in it he devotes a significant amount of space to the importance his editors at TOR played in helping him learn the craft before he became a full-time writer. Apparently the article referred to from his website is about something else entirely.

My apologies for the various bits of confusion I threw into the works.
 

I figure sorting out grammar and spelling is my job, not the editor's job or copy editor's job. I approve of the notion of them pointing out lapses on my part---but it should be up to me to change them (or to decide if I should).

I'd hate to think that getting published in the science fiction field is now dependent on having advanced college degrees. Some of you have probably noticed my rants about "connections" and such---it's more of the same here.
 

Matt
 

The entire analogy is flawed, of course, because a writer actually creates the story, the diver only drives the car. But I ran with it.

Ghostwriters and book doctors do exist, they're just entirely different from professional editing services.
 

I feel I should apologize, since it was my post that inspired your colorful reply. I didn't mean to sound smug or trite.

If you need readers for your novel there are a lot of places where you can start a support group (not the least of which is here at hatrack). Also Critters, mentioned in several threads even as recently as this week.

There is also the local community college. They usually have some sort of writers workshop or creative writing crit thing for non credit and a nominal fee. Here in Washington State sixty-nine bucks will get you into a class where they say "bring your latest story or novel chapters". From people you meet there, you can form a support group of would be writers.

I mention this because back in 1980 I attneded a Community College class in San Diego called Science Fiction Writer's workshop. The class was taught by an unknown but published (two stories) writer and his talented but unpublished best friend: David Brin and Raymond Fiest. They critiqued our work and we got to crit theirs. I acutally got to see some sudjested changes of mine go into Startide Rising which eventually went on to win both the Nebula and Hugo Awards. OK it was only about two words out of whole book, but hey, there it is.

The moral of this post is: You never know which NASCAR driver is behind the wheel at a community college.