Fiction Fundamentals

Please welcome today’s guest blogger: Sally Bradley.

Sally Bradley runs Affordable Novel Critique Service where she offers economical editing services for writers at any level. She and her family recently moved from Chicago to the Kansas City area where she’s adjusting to bugs and snakes in the summer and ice storms in the winter.

There’s often a debate amongst writers as to whether hiring a freelance editor is a waste of money or a learning opportunity. When I hear this debate, I often find that there are some myths involved.

Myth 1: Publishers don’t like to hear that you’ve hired an editor to do your rewriting for you.

Truth: A freelance editor does not rewrite anything for you. Instead, a freelance editor reads your work for elements like plot, character development, setting, correct use of point of view, sentence structure, and a variety of other things.

When I edit for a client, I insert comments that may point out where dialogue is unclear or where I think the writer missed an opportunity to dive deeper into a character. I include a letter that covers many topics, things like how well their plot worked to fixing problems with sentence structure.

When the client gets the edit back, it’s up to them to decide what to do with those comments. They can ignore them all, or they can incorporate the comments that they feel improve their work.

Why does it matter who polishes the book?

Myth 2: All I need is a great idea. The editor at the publishing house will clean the book up.

Truth: Most of us know this isn’t the way it works. Publishers aren’t hurting for ideas. It’s well-crafted fiction they’re searching for.

Your idea may be great, but if you don’t have writing skills, it can be extremely difficult to interest a publisher.

This is where working with an editor can be of long-lasting help. If you listen to your freelance editor, you may learn some writing skill you didn’t know before. Or you’ll take your existing novel skills even deeper.

That means that everything you work on in the future will benefit from what you learned from that editor. You’ll be improving as a writer.

Myth 3: Editing costs outrageous sums of money.

Truth: Every editor charges a different amount for their services. If you look around, you’ll find some that fit into your price range.

Check writing associations like American Christian Fiction Writers for members who do editing services. Check in the back of Sally Stuart’s Christian Writers’ Market Guide for freelance editors. Many have web pages where you can get a feel for what kind of work they do and whether or not you can afford them.

An editor may also have different levels of pricing. Affordable Novel Critique Service, which I run, works this way. For a less advanced writer, I offer a mentoring critique which runs anywhere from sixty to a hundred dollars. This makes it very affordable for a writer to learn writing skills like how point of view should work, for example.

Working with a freelance editor can help you grow as a writer without causing financial strain. That investment in one book can turn into increased writing strength if you’re willing to take criticism and learn from it.