What Happens When My Manuscript Gets Edited? Part Four: Disagreement and Clarification with Your Editor

Today’s post is a coda to the series I’ve written over the past few weeks as an in-depth guide to the editing process. We talked about how an editor (or at least this editor) works, what’s involved in line editing and copyediting, and what a developmental or content edit looks at.

Now I’ll tackle a follow up question that’s important to consider in the context of working with an editor:

What do I do if I don’t agree with my editor’s suggestions?

First, don’t worry! No editor expects an author to agree with them 100% of the time. And I’ll speak here as both an editor and a writer myself: Writing is a craft, but also an art, and there’s rarely one single “correct” way to express an idea. The “rules” of writing are best thought of as guidelines – they often make for clear and effective storytelling, and sticking with them will steer you right in most cases. If something about a scene or a sentence doesn’t seem to be working, it can help to consult the “rules” for a diagnosis. But there are always exceptions, innovations, and competing considerations. Sometimes it’s more important to stay true to your narrator’s voice than it is to be clear or grammatically correct. Sometimes telling is a better option than showing for the experience you want to give your readers.

Part of being a good editor is considering when a “rule” applies and when it might not. Ideally, an editor is in tune enough with a writer’s goals to see where they’re using artistic license. However, writing techniques and English grammar are such vast and complicated topics that even the most experienced writer may have a gap in their knowledge. The editor wants to step in and help in these cases. And the editor has one thing the writer can’t: the perspective of a reader who doesn’t know what you intended to say. This can be very useful even when – perhaps especially when – they’ve misread you.

Their specific “fix” might not apply, but they’ve alerted you to an opportunity to improve.

Or they may just have missed your point, in a way you don’t expect your target readers will. At times, you may feel like Raymond Chandler when he wrote this letter to The Atlantic:

“By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have. I think your proofreader is kindly attempting to steady me on my feet, but much as I appreciate the solicitude, I am really able to steer a fairly clear course, provided I get both sidewalks and the street between.”

Chandler’s verbal artistry echoes in my ears whenever I pick up a pen, both as an editor and a writer. In my own career, sometimes a publisher’s editor has tried to steady me on my feet when I was steering a fairly clear course, with my eyes wide open and my mind relaxed but attentive! And I’m sure I have also offered authors unnecessary steadying on occasion.

When you find yourself in such a situation, you probably won’t get as far with snappy letter to your publisher as Chandler did. But writers do have a tool in the editing process: “STET.”

This is from the Latin for “let it stand,” and when you leave it in response to an editorial suggestion, it means you want to keep the original phrasing, spelling, or punctuation.

(Keep in mind: you can take a third option and rewrite the phrase in a different way that avoids the editorial objection while keeping your artistic intention. Often a bit of compromise can be useful and can stretch your creative muscles.)

When working one on one with a freelance editor rather than with a publisher’s editing team, an actual “STET” may not be required. In the file your editor returns to you, you can simply delete the suggestion or Reject the Tracked Change that you don’t see a need for, even after considering it carefully. I recommend leaving the suggestion and circling back to it later if you’re unsure – you can always remove it afterward, but you might also realize, upon reflection, the suggestion is more helpful than you initially thought.

If you send the manuscript back to the editor for another round of editing, it’s often helpful to explain that you didn’t take a larger-scale suggestion, and why. This helps the editor understand your goals and can prevent them from making the suggestion a second time (otherwise they might worry you misunderstood them or didn’t see their suggestion the first time).

You should also feel free to follow up with your editor asking about their suggestions or checking how an alternative revision would work. I’m happy to explain my thoughts and explore different options. (Being a word nerd, I might enjoy it a little too much…but at least editing is a productive outlet for that fascination!)

The more you yourself know of grammar and writing techniques, the better equipped you are to evaluate editorial suggestions.

Content vs expression

Before rejecting a suggestion, double-check that you understand what your editor has suggested and why. For example: an editor may suggest removing a phrase that looks perfectly fine…but the exact same phrase appeared in the previous paragraph, so this suggestion is to help you avoid repetition. Additionally: sometimes an idea is good but the expression of it is confusing. In workshops and in editing, writers sometimes object “But it has to happen this way to be in-character/to be realistic/to keep the plot on track!” Maybe so. Is the feedback actually about what happens, or about how the happening is explained and described? The latter is much more flexible.

This divide between expression and content distinguishes line editing from developmental editing. But as I’ve discussed these past few weeks, it’s not always a clean break. At the end of the day, a story is a gathering of words. The shorter a piece of writing, the more entwined expression and content are. To change a single word in a poem may substantially change the poem. To change a paragraph in a short story may materially alter the plot arc, character arc, or theme. For this reason, developmental editing of short stories is often done line by line.

All the same, you can usually express the same sort of idea in many possible arrangements of words. As I observed last week, the same plotline might work as a thriller, a mystery, a literary novel, or a fantasy novel—or a combination like “upmarket romantic suspense”—depending on what elements the author chooses to emphasize with through POV, pacing, subplots, or descriptive details. An editor’s feedback can help you find the best arrangements of words for your particular purposes.

So a concern about particular words you use is not a sign of trouble with the underlying story. At the same time, a paragraph that is wonderfully written may pose problems for the plot, pacing, or themes if it doesn’t quite fit your goals for the story.

Honestly, this gap between content and expression makes me optimistic: the story doesn’t have only one shot at being told. It can be revised and reworked until its best version shines.

In conclusion: Speaking for myself

In closing, I want to emphasize that this series of blog posts has been about my approach, although a lot of this is common practice among editors. If another editor does it differently, they’re not necessarily doing it wrong!

Editors vary in the amount of feedback they leave and comments they make. Some of this depends on the needs of the client and the particulars of the story, and some on the editor’s communication style. For example, copyeditors may make non-optional corrections to spelling, punctuation, and grammar “invisibly”—that is, without using Tracked Changes. I’ve found most authors prefer to see all the changes I’ve made, but I adapt my approach when clients ask me to make certain changes invisibly.

Some editors aim to offer a solution to every issue they identify in the manuscript. In fact, this is considered a dividing line between lighter and heavier copyediting: heavier copyedits offer more solutions, while lighter copyedits point out concerns. However, editors don’t always do this, and authors don’t always want them to – it takes time, and many authors prefer to come up with a solution in their own voice. I offer ideas and suggestions, but I want my clients to feel free and confident in solving their own problems, with my support. (This is what I prefer as an author myself. Unless the edit is to make a sentence grammatically correct or significantly clearer – something I might not be able to see from my perspective because I already know what I’m trying to say – I like to do my own revisions.) If, however, my client would prefer for me to offer a solution in each case, that’s a preference I can accommodate!

When it comes to frequency of comments, my tendency is toward “better to know” – as reflected in the length of this blog post series. So my feedback is often thorough. I find writing a comment for my client helps me consider my suggestion further and sometimes generates new ideas. But when “too many” comments would be overwhelming or time-consuming to go through, I aim to dial back.

Remember that you can always communicate your preferences, concerns, and expectations with your editor. Also, most editors will happily offer a sample edit on a few pages of your story so you can see their feedback style firsthand. I do.

That may be the biggest overall message of this series: you should feel able to speak for yourself, communicating what you want with your editor, and that mutual understanding makes for the most productive edits. By reading these posts, you’ve increased your understanding a lot and set both yourself and your editor up for success!