Why editors matter
Mar. 14th, 2009 11:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blamebramptonBefore talking about editing in YA literature, a quick rec, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
leochi 's adorable next-gen Weasley-Potter clan image should be smiled at by everyone, it is that happy-making.
Now, onto editing. I have been trying out new YA authors of late. Sometimes this has been a very happy adventure, Frances Hardinge and Ysabeau Wilce have brought me great joy so far. But other times it has been an exercise in frustration. Not because I have been reading bad YA literature, a few paragraphs in the bookshop will usually be enough to warn me off books that would have me frothing, but because I have been reading books that should have been better than they were.
Sometimes it is a small matter, and one that the target audience may not even notice. Flitterwig, by Edrei Cullen and with delightful illustrations by Gregory Rogers, was a charming tale that's more young than YA. Ella, whose mother and brothers are dead and whose father cannot bear to look at her, discovers that she is a part-magical creature and that it is up to her to see that the Queen of the Faeries can return to the Kingdom of Magus.
There were some very clever ideas in this novel and some great spots of writing. My inner six-year-old was giggling at the demented pixie who helps Ella along, and for 95% of the book, I was wholly charmed. But the other 5% was wading through the bog of paragraphs that should have been sentences where the exposition fairy had been allowed to trample her muddy boots across the text. I also seem to remember some copy editing isues, but buggered if I can find my copy to confirm that.
It may not seem like much, but it was very noticeable while I read through, and made me want to break out a blue pencil and mark up edits, as someone else should have done before the book was published. As I say, though, the target audience probably did not notice. I read ever so many Famous Five and Secret Seven books when I was little despite the fact they were formulaic and had the odd plot hole, apparently these things mattered far less to me 35 years ago. I remember that I read them differently to the adult literature I was reading when I was small, and that I filled in all the gaps myself without question, which is probably what young readers of this book will do today, given the smartness of the underlying ideas and the satisfaction of the end.
On a different note is Justine Larbalestier's output. I really, really wanted to love this author. For a start, she set her trilogy up the road, in Newtown, and her other, stand-alone, novel features a character who is a lesbian and is filled with Australia jokes. I should have loved them. But instead I find myself saying, 'they're good, but …'
Her Magic trilogy follows the story of Reason Cansino, who has grown up moving from place to place around the Australian outback. Reason's mother is on the run from her mother -- the evil witch as she calls her. As the story begins, Reason has been caught by her grandmother and is looking to plan her escape. Disturbingly, she quickly learns that evil witch is not just an epithet, thought the evil part is up for debate.
On the one hand, this is a trilogy that has lots of intriguiing ideas. Magic is genetic and it is not all fun and games. Use it too often and you die early. Use it too rarely and you go mad. Reason learns that her grandmother is mentoring another young magic user, Tom, and that she has a doorway to New York in the back of her inner-city Sydney house. When Reason falls through the door, she is found by another magic user, Jay-Tee, who opens a whole new world up to her.
I think things started to go badly for me on page 3 of the first book, where Reason, who is depicted as a half-Aborginal, very smart, dyed in the wool Australian talks about her love for the town Warhope. That would be Wauchope, of which there are at least two in Australia, one in the Northern Territory, one in NSW. Neither Google nor my Australian atlas believes there is a single Warhope. I would love to be corrected on this, but it's not the only error.
This was the book I mentioned some time ago in which the scenes told in the voices of the Sydney characters have Australian spelling, while those from an American POV have American spellings. Except they don't always. And even if they did, it's a conceit that should have been stomped on by a competent editor as it does little more than annoy the reader at a subconscious level. By all means have an American version of an English or Australian book, but not this.
And while we are on the topic of Australian English, look, I know that I will never be as perfect as a native speaker, and I know that the Shire is a place of dark mystery to me, but I feel fairly safe in saying no 15-year-old boy from there would use half the fair dinkumisms that spill from Tom's mouth.
Then there is Rita, the wonderful servant who practically raised Reason' mother. She is an essential part of Reason's grandmother's life. And yet she is never there! We finally meet her in book three, for about five minutes. Given that it is established early on that the Newtown house in which much of the Sydney action takes place is large and with areas of chaos, surely she could have been allowed to pop by and hover nearby a few times without causing too much difficulty?
The three books cover several plot lines. The major one is the mystery of how magic works, and whether or not Reason can discover a way to save her mother and herself from the tragic destiny that magic seems to have in store for them. Her family is the key, and new members appear at several points in the story, forming the major subplot. The secondary subplot concerns romances for Reason and Jay-Tee (alas, not with each other).
This secondary subplot rather eats about 40% of the three books, squishing the main plot and first subplot into the corners. It also ensures that any boy who picks up the book thinking that it sounds interesting will be tossing it out the window somewhere in the second book. God knows I felt like it. Two of the three 15-year-olds are sexually active, and two other characters had their first children when they were 15. By the way, how is it that they did this without having the Australian Child Services involved?
One Social Worker does appear, but accepts the children's stories when they attempt to explain away the multiple injuries that their magical adventures have caused. There are, as is often the case in YA literature, no adults worth their salt, which probably explains the high level of teen pregnancy with no apparent consequences.
All of these are things that an editor worth their salt should have questioned the writer about. Each of them is enough to toss a reader out of the novel if that's the thing that annoys you. In total, they meant that I had to keep putting each of the books down, then coming back to them when I could.
And it is SO FRUSTRATING, because she is not a bad writer. The mistakes she makes are ones that many young writers do, hell, I did for some of them. That's why they need good editors, who are able to gently but firmly push them away from excesses and indulgences. And I keep looking at the Magic Trilogy and seeing the very small tweaks that would make it much much more readable.
How to Ditch your Inner Fairy is Larbalestier's more recent book and it is a level of writing more assured and polished. There are still a few minor quibbles on the way through, but the world building of a place where everyone has a fairy, from one for finding great clothes while shopping to one for never being caught when rulebreaking, is so compelling that the little niggles go by the by. Until the final act of the book. All the promises of explanation and resolution are wizzed through in the last 30-odd pages, with only the romantic subplot actually resolved. Which drove me nuts, because this book had even wittier and more interesting ideas than the Magic trilogy.
Again, it needed a good editor to say, 'Justine, I love it, but this bit just needs a little more to really wrap things up.' And it's not just me being fussy here, the lovelyaldehyde had the same reaction, and so have the teenagers I know who have read it.
Why is this all so important? Because good editing means the difference between small print run books that people on LJ think are good and small print run books that take off and become blockbusters. You need either it or publicity, and sometimes the former will lead to the latter. One of the obvious examples is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was for the most part a beautifully edited novel. There was nothing in it to throw the reader out of the text, to make them work harder than they needed to. Insetad, it all made for a seamless inviting read.
In a purely mercenary sense, good editing is like cleaning your house up before you try and sell it. It is the reassurance to the reader that not only did the author think this book was worth lavishing time and effort on, but so did the publisher. You have more faith in such a book, and less in one that is badly edited.
And it offends me on Justine Larbalestier's behalf that her publisher let her down here, because I think she is smart and has talent, and that it should be polished and shown at its best. The editing these books received did not do that.
leochi 's adorable next-gen Weasley-Potter clan image should be smiled at by everyone, it is that happy-making.Now, onto editing. I have been trying out new YA authors of late. Sometimes this has been a very happy adventure, Frances Hardinge and Ysabeau Wilce have brought me great joy so far. But other times it has been an exercise in frustration. Not because I have been reading bad YA literature, a few paragraphs in the bookshop will usually be enough to warn me off books that would have me frothing, but because I have been reading books that should have been better than they were.
Sometimes it is a small matter, and one that the target audience may not even notice. Flitterwig, by Edrei Cullen and with delightful illustrations by Gregory Rogers, was a charming tale that's more young than YA. Ella, whose mother and brothers are dead and whose father cannot bear to look at her, discovers that she is a part-magical creature and that it is up to her to see that the Queen of the Faeries can return to the Kingdom of Magus.
There were some very clever ideas in this novel and some great spots of writing. My inner six-year-old was giggling at the demented pixie who helps Ella along, and for 95% of the book, I was wholly charmed. But the other 5% was wading through the bog of paragraphs that should have been sentences where the exposition fairy had been allowed to trample her muddy boots across the text. I also seem to remember some copy editing isues, but buggered if I can find my copy to confirm that.
It may not seem like much, but it was very noticeable while I read through, and made me want to break out a blue pencil and mark up edits, as someone else should have done before the book was published. As I say, though, the target audience probably did not notice. I read ever so many Famous Five and Secret Seven books when I was little despite the fact they were formulaic and had the odd plot hole, apparently these things mattered far less to me 35 years ago. I remember that I read them differently to the adult literature I was reading when I was small, and that I filled in all the gaps myself without question, which is probably what young readers of this book will do today, given the smartness of the underlying ideas and the satisfaction of the end.
On a different note is Justine Larbalestier's output. I really, really wanted to love this author. For a start, she set her trilogy up the road, in Newtown, and her other, stand-alone, novel features a character who is a lesbian and is filled with Australia jokes. I should have loved them. But instead I find myself saying, 'they're good, but …'
Her Magic trilogy follows the story of Reason Cansino, who has grown up moving from place to place around the Australian outback. Reason's mother is on the run from her mother -- the evil witch as she calls her. As the story begins, Reason has been caught by her grandmother and is looking to plan her escape. Disturbingly, she quickly learns that evil witch is not just an epithet, thought the evil part is up for debate.
On the one hand, this is a trilogy that has lots of intriguiing ideas. Magic is genetic and it is not all fun and games. Use it too often and you die early. Use it too rarely and you go mad. Reason learns that her grandmother is mentoring another young magic user, Tom, and that she has a doorway to New York in the back of her inner-city Sydney house. When Reason falls through the door, she is found by another magic user, Jay-Tee, who opens a whole new world up to her.
I think things started to go badly for me on page 3 of the first book, where Reason, who is depicted as a half-Aborginal, very smart, dyed in the wool Australian talks about her love for the town Warhope. That would be Wauchope, of which there are at least two in Australia, one in the Northern Territory, one in NSW. Neither Google nor my Australian atlas believes there is a single Warhope. I would love to be corrected on this, but it's not the only error.
This was the book I mentioned some time ago in which the scenes told in the voices of the Sydney characters have Australian spelling, while those from an American POV have American spellings. Except they don't always. And even if they did, it's a conceit that should have been stomped on by a competent editor as it does little more than annoy the reader at a subconscious level. By all means have an American version of an English or Australian book, but not this.
And while we are on the topic of Australian English, look, I know that I will never be as perfect as a native speaker, and I know that the Shire is a place of dark mystery to me, but I feel fairly safe in saying no 15-year-old boy from there would use half the fair dinkumisms that spill from Tom's mouth.
Then there is Rita, the wonderful servant who practically raised Reason' mother. She is an essential part of Reason's grandmother's life. And yet she is never there! We finally meet her in book three, for about five minutes. Given that it is established early on that the Newtown house in which much of the Sydney action takes place is large and with areas of chaos, surely she could have been allowed to pop by and hover nearby a few times without causing too much difficulty?
The three books cover several plot lines. The major one is the mystery of how magic works, and whether or not Reason can discover a way to save her mother and herself from the tragic destiny that magic seems to have in store for them. Her family is the key, and new members appear at several points in the story, forming the major subplot. The secondary subplot concerns romances for Reason and Jay-Tee (alas, not with each other).
This secondary subplot rather eats about 40% of the three books, squishing the main plot and first subplot into the corners. It also ensures that any boy who picks up the book thinking that it sounds interesting will be tossing it out the window somewhere in the second book. God knows I felt like it. Two of the three 15-year-olds are sexually active, and two other characters had their first children when they were 15. By the way, how is it that they did this without having the Australian Child Services involved?
One Social Worker does appear, but accepts the children's stories when they attempt to explain away the multiple injuries that their magical adventures have caused. There are, as is often the case in YA literature, no adults worth their salt, which probably explains the high level of teen pregnancy with no apparent consequences.
All of these are things that an editor worth their salt should have questioned the writer about. Each of them is enough to toss a reader out of the novel if that's the thing that annoys you. In total, they meant that I had to keep putting each of the books down, then coming back to them when I could.
And it is SO FRUSTRATING, because she is not a bad writer. The mistakes she makes are ones that many young writers do, hell, I did for some of them. That's why they need good editors, who are able to gently but firmly push them away from excesses and indulgences. And I keep looking at the Magic Trilogy and seeing the very small tweaks that would make it much much more readable.
How to Ditch your Inner Fairy is Larbalestier's more recent book and it is a level of writing more assured and polished. There are still a few minor quibbles on the way through, but the world building of a place where everyone has a fairy, from one for finding great clothes while shopping to one for never being caught when rulebreaking, is so compelling that the little niggles go by the by. Until the final act of the book. All the promises of explanation and resolution are wizzed through in the last 30-odd pages, with only the romantic subplot actually resolved. Which drove me nuts, because this book had even wittier and more interesting ideas than the Magic trilogy.
Again, it needed a good editor to say, 'Justine, I love it, but this bit just needs a little more to really wrap things up.' And it's not just me being fussy here, the lovely
aldehyde had the same reaction, and so have the teenagers I know who have read it.Why is this all so important? Because good editing means the difference between small print run books that people on LJ think are good and small print run books that take off and become blockbusters. You need either it or publicity, and sometimes the former will lead to the latter. One of the obvious examples is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was for the most part a beautifully edited novel. There was nothing in it to throw the reader out of the text, to make them work harder than they needed to. Insetad, it all made for a seamless inviting read.
In a purely mercenary sense, good editing is like cleaning your house up before you try and sell it. It is the reassurance to the reader that not only did the author think this book was worth lavishing time and effort on, but so did the publisher. You have more faith in such a book, and less in one that is badly edited.
And it offends me on Justine Larbalestier's behalf that her publisher let her down here, because I think she is smart and has talent, and that it should be polished and shown at its best. The editing these books received did not do that.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 04:20 pm (UTC)<3
Skipped the spoilers =D
Have you read Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief, The Queen of Attolia & The King of Attolia?
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 05:00 pm (UTC)Yes! Well said.
I read Blyton as a child as well and I remember no plot holes. I don't particularly want to read them to double-check, so I'll take your word for it.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 05:10 pm (UTC)Am curious though... what makes a good editor? Does he/she write well or not necessarily? Does his skill come from education / experience / both?
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 05:36 pm (UTC)And now an ignorant non-native-speaker asks you to explain YA. Could it be "Young Author" or something of the kind?
LOL - I used to devour Enid Blyton novels as a kid - all I remember is, that the kids there seemed to eat sandwiches all the time and that they had nice torches and shoes with soft soles.
Thank you for this interesting article!
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 06:01 pm (UTC)I loved Enid Blyton too! She did like to talk about food, didn't she? I remember they drank endless bottles of ginger beer! I was quite disappointed when I finally tried ginger beer and thought it was repulsive, lol.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 06:11 pm (UTC)Hehe, I've never had ginger beer, so I couldn't say anything about it. ;D
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 06:06 pm (UTC)*laughs*
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 06:37 pm (UTC)Similarly, I have always been taught that good editing was like cleaning yourself before inviting guests in for dinner. I can't remember who said that to me — certainly one of my undergrad writing profs — but it always stuck. Your simile is just as effective, tho', so expect to see me
stealingusing it. ;-)Your posts about writing and reading and literature are always a pleasure to read. I'm happy that you do them.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 08:02 pm (UTC)IAWTC :D
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 09:36 pm (UTC)However, I used to love Enid Blyton, too and read everything I could. They weren't perfect but they were perfect for kids.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 11:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-15 03:05 am (UTC)My biggest regret with regard to HP is that the quality of the editing in Philosopher's Stone didn't carry right through the series: I'd have happily waited a few months more for Deathly Hallows if it meant that book 7 was as tight as book 1! (Not to mention OotP...) It seerms unfortunate that the commercial pressures associated with popularity (my guess is that the release PR schedule is the applicable juggernaut) should be in direct conflict with such a big part of what created that popuarity in the first place :(.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-15 03:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-15 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-15 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-16 02:11 am (UTC)I am curious if editors have less say in the editing the more "senior" an author is. Does an author like Stephen King have people editing his novels? Ahh, I feel like that would be more than one editor could handle! I think J.K. Rowling' older books are far more well written than her later ones (though I love them all minus book 7). I still haven't read Justine Larbalestier's books, but I have a deep fondness for YA novels (even flawed) and must check it out.
Have you ever read Robin McKinley? She is traditionally considered to be a YA, but from what I've read (Sunshine in particular) she is excellent!