Editing For Those Who Don’t Know That They Need It

Original: Who’s a very delightful experience.

Original: I was asked Howard like to be contacted.

I sometimes get concerned when people misuse acronyms. Some examples: ATM Machine, ABS brakes, FAQ questions, etc. I don’t know if people just don’t realize what the are doing, or if they just don’t care.

(Automatic Teller Machine) Machine

(Anti-Lock Brake System) brakes

(Frequently Asked Questions) questions

Acronyms exist to make things simpler, but if you don’t know what an acronym means, you can end up with something like, “What the WTF?”

Little things like this can take you a long way in your writing, or even just in professional correspondence. I’ve heard so many hiring managers say that they will throw away an application with obvious mistakes on it. Knowing how to apply acronyms correctly can give you a leg up in the future. Don’t let yourself fall into this trap.

So, I work for a mystery shopping company. Companies and corporations contact us to send out mystery shoppers to specific locations, and have them fill out questionnaires about the experience. Most of the time, it is pretty monotonous. I edit those questionnaires for clarity, grammar, and to make sure that they’ve answered the question correctly. Some days, I get hilarious responses to normally boring questions. Most recently I had this:

Q: Did the sales person show a passion for the [redacted] brand and products?

Pretty boring stuff. I usually get stuff like, “They seemed excited about [redacted.” Not this time though. This time I had to stop and take a break because I was laughing too hard.

A: The only passion he showed was a passion for the air conditioning.

This is especially hilarious, because this stemmed from the sales person REFUSING to take our mystery shopper for a test drive because it was too hot outside. We hardly ever get questionnaires where they don’t take test drives, so it was especially surprising that it was for such a petty reason. I can’t imagine how pissed the shopper was at the sales person’s selfishness.

Original Text:

Bottom line was, everything's all crazy now. Well, 'everything' had been crazy all his fucking lifebut he thought, okay, the psychotic Dark Lord hell bent on taking over the world and killing everyone else is gone and down, so it's time to live like a normal wizard boy now! (He's eighteen now, hardly a boy anymore, but still…) 

Editing Notes:

Overall, this section is a great start for any story, however, one of the first things we see is the joining of the words ‘life’ and ‘but.’ That alone would cause the reader to need to take a second look at things, and then you realize that there is a tense issue in the very beginning. The second is the lack of a dash in “hell bent.” Whether something requires a dash or not is usually subjective, but can be determined with a quick Google search. In this case, the dash is necessary. The last thing would be the sentence in the parentheses. While the meaning is clear, it is a bit awkward to read, and doesn’t flow with the text surrounding it. It causes a rift within the text, and draws your attention away from what is important: the story.

Let’s take a look at the sentences individually.

For the first sentence, we must first address the tense issue. The words that are conflicting here are ‘was,’ ‘everything’s,’ and ‘now.’ Looking at the surrounding text, we see that the story primarily takes place in the past tense, so we can go from there to edit this sentence.

Bottom line was, everything was all crazy.

Simple enough, and now we are not confused about the time placement of this story. It is being told in retrospect, not in real-time. I also separated ‘everything’s’ into ‘everything was.’ I find that unnecessarily using the [’s] can be awkward, and so I tend to remove it if possible. One could also remove the first, ‘was,’ but I left it in for the sake of limited changes.

Moving on, the second sentence is a bit of a doozy. This sentence is 42 words long, double the length [20] that a typical reader can absorb the first time around. Let’s just jump right in. I will also include the phrase from the parentheses to show how this all comes together.

‘Well, ‘everything’ had been crazy all his fucking life,’ he thought. ‘But, the psychotic Dark Lord hell-bent on taking over the world and killing everyone else is gone and down. It’s time to live like a normal wizard boy now!’ He was eighteen, hardly a boy anymore, but still...

The main takeaway I had from this was that it was an internal monologue, so I included single quotation marks around those phrases. I’ve also worked the maximum sentence length down to 19. I also adjusted the sentence within the parentheses to reflect the past tense established previously. I removed the parentheses since the phrase is now separated as not being part of the monologue.

I would say that this is a bit heavier than a light edit, but I did choose a more interesting passage. I chose this work based on a post in the drarry tag. I have not read the entire work, but so far it seems like a very interesting premise. I encourage you to check it out if that is something you would be interested in. You can find White Lies on AO3 here.

If any of you reading this would like to hire a professional editor, here are the things you should know about me:

I am currently working as an editor for MaritzCX, a mystery shopping company. I am also in college working towards a degree, so long form edits may take more time. However, with that in mind, my prices for long form edits are less expensive than usual.

My pricing is divided up between light and heavy edits, and short, moderate, or long works.

Light and short: $1.00 per page

Heavy and short: $10 per hour

Light and moderate: $1.25 per page

Heavy and moderate: $12 per hour

Light and long: $1.75 per page

Heavy and Long: $15 per hour

Short works would be less than 50 pages, moderate, 50-100 pages, and long would be more than 100 pages.

Be aware that if you send me something that would normally require heavy edits, and you request light, I will only do spelling corrections and glaring grammatical mistakes. I will not do analysis of the work, nor will I attempt to draw out any plot or consistency issues. Sending something to me a second time will also be charged, either per hour or per page. I will not do a second round of editing for free.

I will edit single paragraphs for free, so if you have concerns about a section of your writing and would like me to look it over, I would be more than happy to. I know that some of this stuff can be overwhelming, and creating a world can be challenging, so I want to be a resource for writers out there.

Also, good luck to those participating in National Novel Writing Month!

Original text:

Travelers, merchants, troupe members, servants of the castle, of the king, even, were often chosen to transport the most dangerous criminals from this very fortress embedded in the mountains, where guard dogs as large and menacing as dragons were stationed and guardsmen were armored to the brim with wits and intellect that outmatched any soldier.

Editing notes:

First, we have to deal with the length of this single sentence. A run-on sentence can bore or confuse the reader. Sentences longer than 20 words tend to create unease amongst the reader base. This sentence is 55 words long, and likely, you had to read it through two or three times to completely understand everything. This sentence can be fixed with some simple changes, and those will make it much easier to read.

First we should separate this sentence into two.

First:

Travelers, merchants, troupe members, servants of the castle, of the king, even, were often chosen to transport the most dangerous criminals from this very fortress embedded in the mountains;

Here you have options, you can either use a period (.) or a semi-colon (;) to separate the sentences. It is really up to author preference, however because the second sentence is continuing along the same vein of thought, I’ve added a semi-colon. This sentence also includes an interesting phrase that really catches the reader’s eye, and breaks up a monotonous list nicely, “servants of the castle, of the king, even.” I really appreciate this wording, as it allows the readers to take a break and think about the groups listed, and it is a nice transition to the second half of the sentence.

Second:

Here, guard dogs as large and menacing as dragons were stationed, and guardsmen were armored to the brim with wits and intellect that outmatched any soldier.

I changed ‘where’ to ‘here’ to adjust for the new sentence, and to allow for a more immediate view of the guards and guard dogs. They are ‘here’ and not just an unknown ‘where.’ The comma after ‘here’ is necessary because it is a clarifying word, and technically is not necessary. The sentence functions perfectly well without it. Lastly, the comma between the two dependent clauses eliminates a comma splice and allows the two subjects to have their own space.

Overall, this story is very well written, and is very engaging. I highly recommend it to anyone intereseted in the Killugon ship, or anyone who just wants a good read. You can find it here.