By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
Not every editor sends editorial letters
along with requests for edits, but my editor for the quilting mysteries
does—and I love them.
The reason she’s
one of my favorites to work with in this business is because of the way she
approaches criticism. She opens her
letters full of praise for the story, and then brings up issues to be
addressed. It’s a pleasure to work with
her. I just received one from my editor
last week, and I’ll share some of the points she brought up in mine.
Things she mentioned that she liked in
the story (in case you’re editing your own mystery): plot twists, character
growth for minor characters (I tried hard in this particular story to show
different sides of characters…especially the more unlikeable ones), and the
setting. Y’all know I really don’t enjoy
setting (at all!) but this time I tried
to make the setting more fun to write so that I’d do a better job with it…I
released my inner Nancy Drew and wrote in secret passageways, trap doors, and a
spooky attic. I also brought in some
Southern Gothic elements…just because I’m a fan. The Gothic elements also made the setting
more fun to write in.
Wondering what types of issues come up in
editorial letters? I’m happy to share my
mistakes in case any of you have got the same sorts of issues. Mine seem to come up in the same categories:
Making
sure bits of story set-up are present at story wrap-up:
This book is an old-fashioned country
house mystery—remote location, ice storm, murderer in the house. You know.
So my set-up involved trees that had broken during the ice storm and
blocked the driveway, making escape down the mountainous driveway
impossible. Somehow, I’d forgotten to
mention those trees at the end of the story and during the rescue, there was no
mention of them. I quickly wrote in the
trees and the necessity of a chainsaw.
Make sure
that other mentions in the story are explained in the wrap-up:
Was there really a ghost?
How did a gun get into a character’s
room?
Why wasn’t the house heated?
Character
consistency:
I’ve got a character who was a wealthy
and ruthless businesswoman. Why would
her house be in such poor repair/so shabby?
Well, she was a miser and didn’t want to pay for the upkeep. In my head,
I knew this…forgot to share it with the reader.
And the
bits that were mentioned in Track Changes on the actual manuscript:
More
detail wanted (what did the van look like, sound like? What type of gun
was the gun?)
Transitions
needed: Needed a bit of text to show a car going into a driveway instead
of suddenly ending up at the house. Needed to add transition to a very abrupt change after a section break.
Correcting
what characters knew: How did the
characters know which bedroom was theirs?
Who is
speaking? A bit of dialogue
confusion.
Continuity:
Peanut butter sandwiches miraculously turned into pasta
Tension: Drawing out tension in one scene—I was asked
to add a few sentences between the appearance of a pale-faced, frightened
character and her explanation of what she’d seen to make her that way.
Echoes:
A couple of accidentally repeated words that meant I needed to rewrite one or
two of the words.
Convoluted
logic: A character made an assumption while creating a plan…a leap of
logic that didn’t really make sense. It
was simply a leap I needed the character to make. I wrote in other options and explained why
the character ended up making the plan she did.
A sentence
that was a little too rough for the genre: I toned it down for my cozy
readers, at the editor’s request. I must
have been in a grim mood that day! Read a bit more like noir than cozy.
So those were my edits for the book
coming out in December. Not too bad…able
to work methodically through them and make the changes in a day.
What kinds of things do you focus on
during your edits? Do you usually need to make similar changes to mine?
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