Death By Editor (Complete)

[JediKaren]

Oh for Christ sakes, he had it! He threw down the red pen on to the dark wooden desk he was working on and pushed back his chair. A cat near by freaked out and ran out of the room to somewhere safe. Papers scattered around the desk and some flew down to the floor from the sudden gust of angry wind. He had more than enough of her nightmarish grammar.

 

He was not whining, he told himself. He was not being unreasonable. She, that so called great author, could not write a decent, grammatically right sentence even if her life depended on it. And yet, in the ways of the world, she had hired him, chosen him out of millions of editors, to edit her story, if you could even call this a story.

 

Now she did write a really good tale. The detail was wonderful. The mental image was beautifully painted with words. The plot was solid. It was even entertaining. Her grammar”¦.was well another story, another nightmare.

 

Every single, lousy sentence had at least five problems and he wasn't making this up. Each page was nearly a solid sheet of red ink. He scribbled all sorts of reminders. Some of them were darn close to curses. He wanted to curse her out so bad. Had she even attended a basic English class? Did she know about commas? Had she heard of staying in just one tense? She would even mix up tenses in the same sentence not to mention the same paragraph. Oh and he didn't want to go into proper usage of the words. Then there was the spelling. Spell check was not her life cord. She should just completely stop depending on it and get a freaking dictionary. He wondered briefly if she owned a dictionary.

 

He rubbed his eyes and then his temples. He had been at this for nearly four hours and had managed to get through one lousy chapter. Just one! There were fourteen chapters is this stupid story. He was going to die. No, she was going to die. That horrible excuse for a writer! It was not fair he worked for next to nothing when he could write and she couldn't.

 

The phone rang. He picked up the silver and red cell phone and looked at the caller idea. Oh dear god, it was her. This could not be good. He sighed and flipped the phone open.

 

”œJames Donson here.”

[Tiana Calthye]

Irony of ironies that I should critique this. My big problem was that... if she liked her last editor so much... why hire this one?

 

Yes, that would've made him a bad editor, because what a professional editor is supposed to do, is mark all of the changes he or she has made to the manuscript, that way the author can approve or deny all of them. They can't just go 'this was wrong so I fixed it', the author can still go 'well, I put that ellipsis there for a REASON'.

 

By the time a book reaches an editor, it should have already been proofread for grammarical mistakes and spelling errors. Getting books published by sending them first to a professional editor is a great way to get scammed. The process generally goes

 

1) You get the book perfect. Publishable perfect. Beta readers, friends critiquing, your English teacher, blah, whatever.

2) You attempt to get an agent. Assuming the positive side and you actually DO get an agent out of the hundreds of rejections...

3) The agent will direct you to an editor if necessary, maybe, but it's the agent's job to get a publisher...

 

And that is generally the point where it will be edited, through the publishers, who will have their own stylistic standards and make sure your book is good enough for them. All changes will be marked so you can approve or deny them.

 

I'd assume her agent sent her to this guy.

 

So yeah, that made her last editor incompetent.

 

Just my little ramble! From the study I've made of the publishing business, that was a bit off from what I knew! And seeing how I intend on heading into it someday (or design) I have studied it. >.>

 

It was a cute story, by the way, though it could've done with a bit of editing itself. It had a bit of a mystery feel to it, even without the murder and it might've been interesting in first person.

 

"It was a dark and stormy night. I scowled at the book in question as thunder crashed beyond my window, red markups after markups scattering across her atrocious page! I had nearly reached my limit when SHE walked through my door. I threw the book at her."

 

(snrks)

 

It had that sort of feel.

 

It was a neat ending twist too, since it has the feel of her as the antagonist, and he as a frustrated protagonist who's just about had it.

[Anakin T Skywalker]

I agree, cute and funny idea... but it has a few grammar problems of it's own.

[Lord Ar-Pharazon]

I didn't particularly care for the use of Jesus Christ's name in your work, as it set a tone which immediately turned me off. You can argue about the context, but such a context wasn't established yet. It was an immediate turn off, because of a lack of development at that point. Capitalize God too. Even if you don't believe in him, He's still a proper noun. I already feel like the editor at the beginning of your story.

 

Your first part immediately begins with pronouns, which I believe is bad form, and this trend continues. You said the cat freaked out, which somewhat described its actions, but ”œfreaked out”

[Amidala Skywalker]

The beginning was funny, for anyone who can relate. I actually predicted the end...I knew he was going to snap. But he must have serious anger management problems...I mean, it's just a story with horrible grammar...not the end of the world (although I understand with wanting to kill yourself as you read it).

 

Anyway, interesting premise. Could use some cleaning up, but overall nice and fun to read. Good work!

[JediKaren]

lol at all of you.

 

This was a joke of a joke. My friend Paul who has been editing Reaching Through Darkness on another site is a very tough editor. As tough if not worse than you all. Anyway for my story I have to get one person to edit the chapter before I let him tear it apart. So a few days ago I was telling him how I couldn't get some chapters to him anytime soon. He offered to edit them straight up. I laugh and said he would kill me the time he was done with them. Then I said as in a joke "death by editor" and then it hit me. He read it and loved it. I'm well aware of the mistakes and I think they almost add to the story.

[Tiana Calthye]

I agree. I found it an 'ironic' addition to the story, with its mistakes.

 

And you've never had me as a beta reader, just a reviewer. I'm not always very nice... I can be a very strict beta reader.

[Darth KenObi-Wan]

I liked the bit where you repeated yourself in the same sentence.

 

My friend asks me to go over her assignments for grammar and spelling. I totally feel for that editor.