5 Things I Learned When Editing 2 Books in 12 Months

The scene: I’d written two serialized books that’d been posted to Royal Road, and I wanted to get them ready for Kindle and Kindle Unlimited. Like, really ready, so I hired a professional editor. 

Cue the editor: Specifically, I reached out to JD Book Services for three rounds of edits on Eight (developmental, line, and copy) and two for the sequel (line and copy). 

What followed: a year of slogging through the editor’s comments, during which I frequently questioned my sanity for wanting to write, but from which I eventually emerged as a better writer. Plus, the books were much tighter and more coherent thanks to the time invested. 

Cutting to the chase, here’s what I learned: 

1. How to properly use a gods-be-damned semicolon. Before, I’d treated it as a super-powered comma, but that’s not a semicolon’s purpose; its job is to separate two independent clauses. If one of the clauses can’t stand alone, then it needs either a comma or an em dash. Unfortunately, I’d littered my novels with semicolons before I learned that lesson. 

2. That writing serially introduces certain artifacts, which can be exacerbated if there are long periods of time in between posts. For me, I post a chapter a week on Royal Road, which may not sound like a long time, but depending on the length of a book, months might pass before a thing mentioned in chapter X is referenced again in chapter Z. That necessitates reminders that sound a lot like the author repeating themselves constantly when read non-serially. 

3. To watch out for unintentional rhymes. They’re not a problem when reading, but can be distracting when the story is translated into an audiobook. 

4. Record keeping for stats and character progression has to be immaculate, so that if there are edits, you can keep it all straight and not introduce any errors when making adjustments. That went double for silverlight gains, the equivalent of experience points in my books. 

5. To let scenes breathe and to take the time necessary to flesh them out. This lesson was a hard one for me, and the editor pointed it out over and over in the text how I had a tendency to drop a big thought and then move on. It was like I wanted to prove I was a clever writer, but didn’t have the discipline to demonstrate I was a hard-working one too. 

To put it more bluntly: any stray ideas or observations that weren’t worth taking the time to fully integrate, those were distractions from the story’s flow and had to be cut. And, as the edits proceeded and the story grew stronger as a result, I learned that this way of building up scenes also enhanced the feeling of authenticity arising from them. They were so much better than before, and it became clear that if there was a choice needed between the two, authenticity beat cleverness every time.  

So, those are five things I learned when editing two books in twelve months. There’s more beyond them, but I’ve gone long enough. I hope you find these observations interesting or helpful in your own work. 

Please note: No editors were harmed in the making of this post, which was probably a mistake. It means that I am solely to blame for any errors, grammatical or otherwise.