022: Behind the Curtain: The Process of Working With an Editor
Curious about what it's like to work with an editor? In this episode, I share my intake process, the steps I take when editing, and what clients can expect.
- Click here for ways to work with me + a free character profile template: www.thekatiewolf.com/info
- The last Tuesday of the month is a Q&A episode! Submit your questions for me HERE.
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@katiewolfwrites
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiewolfwrites
Behind the curtain: the process of working with an editor
Hi, friend, this episode is being recorded on my brand spanking new Blue Yeti microphone I'm so I'm so excited about this. I've had this crappy microphone, and I've done my best to make it work. And just the sound quality hasn't been great. So I'm very, very, very, very, very excited about this. I feel like a legit podcaster now, this microphone. Okay. If you've ever wondered about what it's like to work with an editor, this episode is going to share the entire process. It's going to peel back the curtain for you about how I do things. And what to expect. Every editor obviously does things different. You know, they've all got different services, different prices, different project management tools. But this is just how I do things.
I wanted to explain this because I think sometimes there's a little bit of mystery about working with an editor like what exactly happens after you say yes, I want to work with you. So I wanted to kind of demystify it a bit and explain how all of this works. So when when someone goes on to my website, my editing page, they can see all of the services that I have. listed out, I have several different editing services. But in this episode, I'm going to be talking specifically about a manuscript evaluation, and copy editing. Those are the two main services that I offer outside of coaching and some submission querying package editing. So when someone hires me to edit, they're usually hiring me for one of those two things. I lay out a little bit about what to expect on that services page, I tell you what the investment is. So you're clear on how many what the cost would be a price per word. And at the bottom of that page, there's a form that people can fill out. And the form just has some basic information, what's your name? What's your email? What kind of book are you writing? What do you hope to do with it, and then there's space for people to tell me a little bit about their project. And this is is helpful for me to get some basic information to learn how many words it is. And it's also great for me, because I don't have to do a lot of back and forth initially via email to determine if I'm the best fit for their project.
Occasionally, I have people reach out to me who are working on nonfiction, or like a business book, or poetry or something. And I know right away that I'm not the best editor, because I just don't, I can copy edit those things. But I'm not knowledgeable enough, I don't feel confident enough to give feedback on something like a manuscript evaluation. So I either refer them elsewhere, or just say, you know, I'm sorry, I am not the best fit for this. So this form is on my website is something that I created in my project management system, my tool called Honey book, honey book is awesome. It's where I do all of my invoices and contracts and keep track of all my projects is it's fantastic. And it accepts payment for me. So I don't have to worry about doing that manually or anything. It's just, it's fantastic. So once they fill out that form, I get an email to my main business email that says, hey, so and so filled out this form, take it from here. And it also creates a record and HoneyBook saying like, Okay, this is all the contact information, this is what they're looking for here, all their answers to the form, etc.
So then I can reach out to them and say, hey, thanks so much for your inquiry. I will answer questions. If they have questions right off the bat, there might be a little bit of back and forth about dates, I'll let them know when I'm available for a manuscript evaluation or copy editing. For copy editing, I do offer a free five page sample edit so that people can get a feel for my editing style and see what kinds of things I'm going to be changing. So sometimes people will want to do that. I'll give that back to them.
Sometimes there's a little bit of a back and forth about which service is best. Sometimes people want to do both services, the evaluation and copy editing. So then we talk about project details like timelines and dates and just get clear on all of that stuff. So that we know exactly when we're starting. And I will let them know exactly how long it will take me to complete their project. So let me just go over these two services really quickly. The difference between the two. And I'll talk about how I, you know, perform these services once we get to that part, but a manuscript evaluation is focused on the story. I don't go in and make any changes on the manuscript, I make comments throughout the manuscript. And then I write a six to 10 ish page, editorial letter that summarizes all of my findings, all of my feedback, I talk about what's working, what they're doing well in the manuscript, and then what's not working quite so well, what might need some additional work. And the feedback is focused on all of the story and kind of craft elements.
So plot inconsistencies, conflict, character development, character arcs, dialogues, setting, tension, all of those things that really make a story shine, though, that's what really pulls a reader in, right. So if you don't have those elements setup, if you're lacking if there are all kinds of plot inconsistencies, if the character is not fully developed, that's when a manuscript has series issues. And that's when it can be helpful to unless someone like me or if you've had BETA readers, and you feel like you've gotten some good feedback, but you really want to make sure that the story is strong. That's the perfect time to enlist a manuscript evaluation. I also sprinkle in some of my reactions as a reader, because I think that's kind of helpful to like, if there's a scene that's really funny, or a character that I just freaking adore. I will include, I'll sprinkle in some of those comments too, because I think that's helpful, you know, to kind of know, like, what readers are responding to in your story.
Copy editing is a little bit more straightforward. It's just cleaning up grammar, punctuation, usage, verb tense, subject verb agreement, all of those things that really polish the manuscript. So I'm not giving you any feedback on the story itself. Occasionally, if there's a jump, or it seems like something's missing, or something's confusing, I will put a comment in, but that's not what I'm focusing on. I'm just cleaning up the grammar, punctuation, usage, all that stuff, all that nitty, nitty gritty stuff with copy editing, copy editing does not include any formatting. So for example, if you want to self publish, and you want to put your ebook on, you know, Amazon or something, you have to format it in a certain way. And that's a service that a lot of editors well not a lot some editors offer. But it's not one that I offer. So I'm really just focused on the manuscript itself, cleaning up all those things. So once someone has decided, okay, yes, this is great, let's start this day, they know what the investment is going to be how much it'll cost, they know, when they're starting, they know how long it's going to take me all that stuff, then I create a document in HoneyBook. That's a combination kind of final proposal for the project, slash contract, slash invoice. And the invoice is where they can pay a deposit payment to reserve their spot.
I do require a deposit. It's helpful for me, and it's helpful for the client, because that way, we know I've got that space reserved for you. I book out ahead of time, right now, it's I'm recording this in March, and I'm starting to book for early May. So you know that you've got that spot reserved, you know what start date, you're, when we're starting, I know that I need to say, Hey, I'm full, I can't take any clients on these dates, it's just a good way to make sure that that spots reserved for you. So once someone goes through, they check all that information out, they sign the contract, make a deposit payment, then we're official, I will reach back out to them on the project start date and say, Hey, can't wait to read your manuscript. I'm so excited, can you send me a copy in Microsoft Word, they'll send that over to me. And then I get started. with a manuscript evaluation. I go through and read and make comments as I read. And then I also have a separate document open that just is a collection of all of my thoughts and specific examples of what I'm talking about. So if I'm reading and I noticed on page 10, that there was a character introduced, but I'm really confused about who this character is. I will make a note of that in the comment in the manuscript.
But then I'll also reference it on that separate document, if something I'm noticing is that there are a lot of, there's a lot of head hopping, for example. So we're in the point of view of one character and all of a sudden we jump into someone else's point of view. I will reference that in that editorial letter, but I'll also I want to give you examples of what I'm talking about. So I will note Okay, on page 62 about halfway down. This is exactly what I'm talking about this head hopping this character. It has been you know, we've been in this character's head, and then all of a sudden we jump into this other characters head for a few sentences, and then come back to this other character. And it's very jarring to read that. So it's just a collection of all of my thoughts. Once I finish reading, I will go through and do another read, I might skim certain sections, if I feel like they're solid, I don't need to check any my feedback, I will check all of my comments, then I will move over to that collection of notes and thoughts and examples, and clean it up so that it's a more polished editorial letter, I will move things around, I will group all of my feedback, I want this to be easy to read.
So I will say okay, here's all the feedback about characters, here's all the feedback about plot and like plot inconsistencies. So that it's easy to read, easy to digest. And I mean, I say this when I give clients feedback, but I just want to say this on the podcast, too. I'm not the ultimate authority. Like, if someone gets feedback from me that they don't agree with, they don't like they don't want to incorporate that's totally fine. Like, it's their story. I'm just here to provide suggestions and feedback. It's up to them what they do with that. So after that's complete, polished it, make sure everything's good to go send it off to the client, with the copy editing. So I do the same thing, I get a copy of their manuscript in Microsoft Word, and then I turn track changes on so they can see every single edit that I'm making, whether it's changing a period to a comma, whether it's changing the verb tense of something, it's hyphenating, something, whatever it is, they can see all of the changes. And I go through, and I edit the entire manuscript.
As I'm doing this, I'm keeping I have a separate document open, that's a style guide. So I follow Chicago Manual of Style as my style guide, and it's helpful to, it's helpful to have some idea of how to format things because as much as people like to think that grammar and usage is very cut and dry, black and white, it's, it's not. For example, I just edited a manuscript where the person used miss a lot as in like, Miss Jones, Miss so and so. And you can either spell that as capital M i s, s, Miss Jones, or you can say capital M s period. So which one do you choose? Well, that's where style guide comes in Chicago style says it's better to use the M s period. For so I would say, okay, Chicago style says this. So that's what I'm gonna change it to in this manuscript. And then I would keep track of those formatting changes that are not formatting, I guess it's kind of formatting. But I will keep track of all those changes in a personalized style guide for the client. So they know, okay, if they want to go back in and add some more to this manuscript, they know when I write miss, I need to write m s period to keep it consistent with what Katie did.
I will also keep track of words that have different different ways to spell them different ways, like hyphenated versus not hyphenated, so that they have a collection of words that can go either way, for example, hide and seek, you can, you can write Hide and Seek as just hide and seek just exactly three, three separate words, or you can hyphenate it. So it's hide hyphen, and hyphen seek. So I will say, Okay, in this manuscript, whenever you use hide and seek, I'm using it with the hyphens, and just include that. So after I've gone through that first time made all those changes, I will go back and do another round, and I will look for any errors that I might have missed, I will double check my work to make sure everything's good.
And then depending on the project, and how many corrections I've had to make, how long it is, depending on a lot of different things, I will sometimes go in and do a third pass off to the client. Now the client can go through and accept or reject all of the changes that I made. So it does take some time for them to do that, because they have to click Accept or Reject on every single edit that I made. But a lot of clients like to do that, because they want to see the changes that I'm making. They want to make sure that they're things they agree with. So that's the other thing that can happen too. I could suggest a change and say, No, this actually needs to be a semicolon. And the client could say, No, I don't want to make that a semicolon and reject it. So in that case, the editor has done the work but the client maybe doesn't agree with that, even though technically it's correct.
So then the final book could have that, that error in there. So for both manuscript evaluations and copy editing, after I send off the manuscript, I check back in with them about 10 days later, two weeks later with a feedback form because I want to know okay, how was this experience of working with me? What what do you think are my strengths what are what are some Things I can improve on with the services because I always want to get feedback from clients. Now, if people have follow up questions, they're welcome to reach out to me, for example, with a manuscript evaluation, occasionally, someone will just be like, Wait, I don't really understand this comment, like, what does this mean?
So then they can reach out to me via email, I'm happy to clarify, I do limit the follow up, just because if there's a lot of back and forth, you know, it might be better to like set up a designated coaching call or call to kind of talk things over, which isn't normally included. But if someone just needs some clarification, like, I'm happy to chat with them about, like, this is what I was, this is what I meant by this comment. So most of my clients are, I would say, 90% of my clients are on payment plans. So usually what will happen is they'll have a payment when the project is delivered. And then they might have another month or two of payments after that. But those are auto pay. There's no work that's required. They know it's coming. It's just sort of I haven't had any issues with that, which is fantastic. Because I have amazing clients, and I love them. So yeah, that's kind of what it's like to work with an editor. I hope this was helpful.
Again, like I said, kind of peeling back the curtain a little bit and showing you what to expect and how I do things. Because it it is sort of, there's a little bit of mystery. And again, like I said at the beginning, I realized every editor does things differently. So if whatever editor you reach out to, you know, don't be afraid to ask questions, don't be afraid to say like, I'm not really sure what I need, I don't really understand the services. But this is what I want, this is what I'm looking for. And then the editor can help you decide if they have a service that would be good for you. Or if maybe you need to go and check with someone else. So I'm always happy to do that with people. Sometimes people don't really know how to articulate what they need. But I can, you know, worst case scenario, we can always get on a call and just sort of talk about what this would look like.