Thread by @NMamatas

I use a website that connects writers—mostly people who wish to self-publish their work, rather than people who aspire to commercial publication—with editors.

I get many requests, then the offer I make is almost inevitably turned down, because my offer is to actually edit.

Many of the clients say that their work has already been edited once or even twice, but they want another pair of eyes on the manuscript before they upload it to the Kindle story. They send a small sample of the work. It is invariably—INVARIABLY—garbage.

The editors they previously hired didn't edit at all. At best they corrected some copy errors and perhaps untangled a few of the most awkwardly constructed sentences. But the basics of narrative: the logic of where to begin, how to proceed, what information a reader needs...nope.

Many of the pieces are first-person present-tense, which can work fine when one realizes that the effect of FPPT is not intimacy with the narrator, but alienation from the narrator. There's also almost never any logic to where the narrator's "recording device" turns on.

The influence of movies and other visual media (video games, and increasingly manga but not Western comics of the Bronze Age or earlier) is too obvious, and story values go out the window.

Paragraphing is also often entirely incorrect, though it's a good clue as to who has ever, and I mean, ever, read a book.

Many writers just pile dialogue from multiple speakers in the same paragraph for no reason. (There IS a reason to do it sometimes.)

One should put the dialogue of multiple parties in the same graf when one is suggesting characters speaking over one another or otherwise having a quick conversation while other things are happening.

The people I see do it in an attempt to replicate a manga or comic panel.

Another major issue involves failures of time and space, especially in third person POV. Action and story stop to tell us about this or that character in the subjunctive—what someone *would* do in some common/unusual situation—as opposed to putting the character in the situation.

Characters will also endlessly contemplate some prior situation or abstract circumstance while floating about in null-space rather than being placed in the narrative moment.

This isn't omniscient POV, but rather an attempt to replicate the multi-angle "coverage" of cinema.

Here's $1000 worth of editorial advice in a tweet:

Select a POV in order to make every subsequent decision about which information to give the reader easier.

Give the reader the information they need the moment before they realize they need it.

So, why are these books being edited twice to no positive effect? A few reasons:

1. most editors aren't editors
2. most writers don't want to be edited.
3. it's too time-consuming to edit an unfixable book.

1. The editorial section of the publishing industry is a small one. Training is mostly on the job and requires significant aesthetic development. (Also many salaried editors don't edit either, thus "vagina wallets" and such.) We're mostly employed.

2. Being edited is hard. Those two characters who represent your best friend and favorite cousin respectively? Make them one character. "But but...kill Lucy?!"

Yes, kill every Lucy in the world.

3. The reality is that standard editorial practice is designed to make a publishable book a better one, not to turn a semiliterate collection of semi-sentences into a publishable book.

Best practice for the books being presented for editing on the website is a form rejection.

Self-publishing works for terrible books because the prices are low—functionally zero with a KU subscription. Ebook reader UIs lend themselves to skimming.

Would you flip through a bad book that reminds you a bit of a book you like ("vampire...big cock") for free? Sure!

If self-pub is the goal, then having an attentive and untrained "editor" read through the piece to leave marginal comments such as ":) yes!!" is fine. But the more people attempt the same strategy—fast writing and instant publication of free books—the less well it will work.

So, eventually, you'll have to find a real editor in order to stand out from the crowd.

It might even be less expensive in the long term than spending multiple hours a day on giveaways, blog tours, email newsletter hustles, and the like.

And you might even learn to write.

PS: if I wanted to share the name of the website, I would have.

PPS: check out my latest book, which includes stories from a variety of POVs, features a diversity of technique, and collects fiction from a number of different genres.

(I work at Books Inc. Support local bookstores!

booksinc.net/book/978161696…)