How to Make the Editor Your Friend (III): Be Willing to Revise October 31, 2008
Posted by creativeliberty in Uncategorized.Tags: article revisions, copyediting, editing, editor, journalism, make the editor your friend, rewrites, self-editing, story coaching, writer
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Another area in which little things mean a lot in the writer-editor relationship concern story revisions, and the writer’s ability and willingness to revise a story once it’s been submitted to the editor.
When I say revision, I’m not talking comma patrol. As an editor, I expect to have to do a copyediting sweep to get the article to conform to Associated Press or house style expectations. However, if the writer is able to turn in copy free of typographical or common AP style errors, that shows me that he or she is aware of style issues and is trying to make my job easier, which is a plus.
But even when there’s been a good flow of information on the story’s progress back and forth between writer and editor (which often happens when the editor uses story coaching techniques), parts of an assignment may not hit the mark. The writer might explore a tangent that doesn’t bring out the general theme of the piece, he/she might raise questions with a source that they don’t answer later in the article (but sound deliciously relevant to the editor!), or it may be that one section is too long, while another, more important area has been overlooked in the quest to meet the word count for the assignment.
I often tell new writers to plan for one round of revisions in the article writing cycle. Eight or nine times out of ten, I don’t need a rewrite from them, but it avoids the ugly situation in which a writer might insist I should publish an article “as is” because they don’t have any more time to work on it (this has actually happened to me once or twice; those folks don’t write for me anymore).
My favorite way to communicate rewrites to writers is through a story edit memo, which provides my take on the story (what I got from the piece as a reader), identifies what I see as the story’s primary strengths (e.g., good use of description or quotes, excellent transitions) and summarizes what I see as the article’s main problems. I like to provide as specific feedback as I can, rather than expect the write to know what I mean by “tighten it up a bit” or “tell us more about the subject’s childhood.”
A couple of hints for making the revision phase go more smoothly:
- Clarify with your editor during the assigning phase how many rounds of edits are typical for the publication, if you haven’t worked for them before.
- Let your editor know early on if you’re having trouble structuring the piece in such a way that you can meet your word count without going over. (Or if, heaven forbid, you don’t have enough to fill out the length requirement.) He or she may have suggestions for what to expand or trim.
- If your editor doesn’t provide detailed feedback on a revision, by all means ask for specifics! If the editor says “write less about the businesses involved in this project,” ask how much less (number of words) and if there’s any part of that section he/she wants preserved.
- Don’t forget to ask what’s working about your initial draft. Getting the editor’s take on what he or she likes can make the decision-making while you are cutting or rewriting material easier.
Helpful links related to article revisions
How To Edit, Revise & Rewrite Your Articles, Essays Or Book Chapters
Tips On Revising Your Writing: How To Edit Your Article Or Manuscript Professionally
Rewrites and Revisions: They’re Nothing Personal
Working with Your Editor: Three Tips on Getting the Most out of the Editorial Process
This post is aimed at book writers, but some of the advice about responding to revision requests still holds.
Write This Way: Writing and Editing Links for October 23, 2008 October 23, 2008
Posted by creativeliberty in Uncategorized.Tags: blogging, blogging journalists, creative nonfiction, editing, journalism, new media, short-short stories, write this way, writing, writing contests, writing exercises, writing links
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Two perspectives on blogging and journalism, two calls opportunities to submit your work to be published online, and one very solid entry on the importance of craftsmanship in a freelance writing career are the catches of the day for our ongoing writing and editing link-fest.
First, over at Columbia Journalism Review, an article by Ann Cooper reviews the impact that bloggers are having on mainstream media reporting. In “The Bigger Tent,” she covers shifts in the way organizations outside of journalism are treating bloggers, and the issues this trend raises for mainstream journalists. Along with many pundits, she concludes that the journalist-versus-blogger smackdown is over, but Web logs continue to reshape what journalism, as a profession, really means. In this segment, she quotes NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen.
“These days it’s more the act of journalism that gets you entry into the tent, not whether you’re doing it every day, or doing it for pay….Does this mean we’re one big happy family in the big new tent? Far from it.“In an interview, Rosen said many bloggers still fume that they have second-class status; even when (bloggers) break news, ‘there’s still a sense that a story hasn’t really arrived until it’s picked up by the mainstream media.’ And while some traditionalists may be enjoying the breezier writing style that blogging allows, they wonder what it’s doing to journalism’s hallowed standards.”
Overall the article lays out the current trends and tensions quite well, and seemingly with little bias for or against blogging.
For those who have already recognized that journalism and blogging don’t have to be an either/or proposition, there is a 7-part series over at the Online Journalism Blog that covers the results of a survey of 200 journalists in 30 countries who blog. Posts cover topics ranging from blogging’s role in generating story ideas to its impact on the post-publication “life” of a story. This series might be quite useful for writers wanting some ammo to gain permission to start a blog associated with a print or online publication.
The Writing Journey blog has been posting a series on “How to Start Your Freelance Writing Business,” and has an especially good post on honing your craft. Author Bob aptly summarizes the need to take the skills and technique involved in writing for Internet sites seriously and offers several good tips on how to do it, including my favorite:
“You write. Plain and simple. Write every day. Write many kinds of things, test out different ideas, and see what you’re capable of and interested in.”
Amen. I would add that there are all sorts of great resources for writers wanting to improve their craft, including the book Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark, and the old stand-by On Writing Well by William Zinsser.
Finally, here are two links to calls for writing submissions you may be interested in:
BREVITY: Searching Through the Blog Fog
BREVITY, a magazine featuring short works of creative nonfiction, has put out a call for short nonfiction narrative blog entries. The deadline for submissions is Oct. 31, and authors whose work is chosen to reprint in “The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 3,” edited by Lee Gutkind, forthcoming in August 2009 from W. W. Norton. Those bloggers chosen as contributors will receive $50 for one-time reprint rights.
If brief fiction is more your style, Shortfolio, a blog/website which publishes short stories of 500 words or less, has put out a call for new submissions. The only requirements are that you meet the word limit, would like to have your story commented upon, and that the story not have been published anywhere else beforehand.
How to make the editor your friend (II): Adhere to the word count October 9, 2008
Posted by creativeliberty in Uncategorized.Tags: editing, make the editor your friend, nonfiction writing, self-editing, word count, writing, writing coach, writing tight
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When I was in high school, my journalism instructor used to say that I was hard to edit because I wrote so tightly. She meant it as a compliment—emphasizing that I didn’t tend to write fluffy, loose paragraphs loaded with dross—but that tendency of mine did come back to haunt me when I had to cut a piece. One of the hardest situations a writer can face is to over-write a piece, and cut repeatedly, and STILL be over on the word count.
Adhering to an assigned word count is like the other two previously mentioned ways to make your editor your friend: it’s just common sense, as well as common courtesy. Despite this, I have received 400 word stories when I asked 2,500 and 1,500 word stories when I asked for 500. The first was from a first-time writer working on a trade magazine article who was in over his head. The second was from a long-time writer, who had also edited the publication I was working at before I did, who just felt he had more that he “wanted readers to know about” that he had to stuff in his op-ed column.
Guess whose piece I revised gladly? Guess whose piece completely hacked me off (since this all took place after deadline)?
I think most writers, experienced or not, don’t write long or short with ill intent. It also seems to me that the vast majority of writers miss word count by over-writing rather than under-writing.
Many writers do as I do when I write an article and over-research, which can lead to writing long if the scope of the article wasn’t clearly delineated when the assignment was made. Plentiful research, as useful as it is for finding the telling detail or confirming speculations made by sources, can also tempt the writer into wanting to find a way to cram everything into the article.
One of the most helpful cures when you’ve gone over your word count is to go back to your “nut graph” and strain the paragraphs that follow through that filter. How directly do they relate to the main point of your article? If the content is mostly diversion, can you make a convincing argument that the words must stay—and find other words that can go instead?
Other typical easy ways to trim an article:
- If you have a tendency to put “echo quotes” (a second source more or less agreeing with the first person, with little elaboration) in your stories, take them out.
- Write in the active voice. Passages written in passive voice almost always take more words to say the same thing.
- Watch for the tendency to engage in “throat-clearing” and write useless set-ups for our quotes.
Links to learn more about adhering to word count and writing tightly.
Trouble Sticking to Your Word Count? Try These Editing Tricks
Five Ways to Cut Your Word Count
Write Tight! Tips from Chip Scanlan of Poynter Online
Five Myths About Short Writing
