Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Currently reading: The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood. Almost done this behemoth. Obviously there's enough in it that I'm liking to keep me going through *checks* 464 pages, but it is a mess that did not cross the desk of a structural editor. Since this is the author's first novel, I am both inspired and a little jealous.

Like, the worldbuilding is so cool! The concept is great! I like the characters. I buy the romance insofar as I buy any kind of romance in most genre novels, and at least the two characters have something in common besides being pretty, so that's good. But it's a plot-heavy novel without the kind of pacing that makes that work.
Let's talk about some trends I've noticed, particularly in fantasy writing, as of late:

1) This novel clearly had a great pitch, and the publisher must have figured that people will pick it up based on the back cover description. This is true, by the way. I read Gideon the Ninth because "lesbian necromancers in space" is a brilliant concept even though it was at least one editorial pass short of what I would expect from the publisher, and because the cover was stunning. Similarly, "lesbian orc assassin," also a fantastic concept, and I am here for it, but did anyone edit this thing? I don't think so. It needed to be 100 pages shorter and lose at least two characters, maybe more. I'm also still mad that some authors get to switch POVs mid-chapter and I'm not allowed to.

2) The first few chapters are awesome. These have been extensively workshopped. Not so much the rest. See also, Plain Bad Heroines. Great start, too bad about a mushy middle and a meh ending.

3) Shitty endings, which I'm pretty sure this is heading towards. In the last 60 pages, there is a plot point that I would have queried and kept on the author until she changed it, gave me either a satisfactory explanation as to why our villainess would behave this way, or at least hung a lampshade on this nonsensical plot point.

I don't know if this is more egregious in queer sci-f-/fantasy books or just that I read a disproportionate amount of queer sci-fi/fantasy and that's what I'm writing, so I'm more aware of it. The shitty endings are universal in a lot of lit fic too, though.

I still have like 40-50 pages left, so maybe there will be a reason why the main villain, who has been pursuing a McGuffin for about 350 pages, is broken out of prison by our heroine in the same building that houses said McGuffin, and she doesn't even try to reclaim it.

Look. Tor. You need to hire a substantive editor. The fewer fish in the pond, the more remaining publishers are getting away with some sloppy-ass practices.

Comments

[lizbee]

Look. Tor. You need to hire a substantive editor. The fewer fish in the pond, the more remaining publishers are getting away with some sloppy-ass practices.

The poor quality of Tor's editing has been a particular bugbear of mine, especially since it seems like queer authors and people of colour get especially substandard jobs.

[sabotabby]

Glad it's not just me. There have been a few books I've read that are tight—mainly novellas and N.K. Jemisin, and the Baru Cormorant books—but I'm starting to suspect that they arrived that way.

[lizbee]

A friend at a much larger publisher, with many bestsellers behind her, once received an edit so poor she paid for a freelance editor out of her own pocket. So it's not JUST Tor, but Tor is small enough and prestigious enough that it stands out.

[kore]

Some authors have to pay for their own nonfiction books to be indexed by freelance editors now out of work! W T F.

[kore]

More proofreading/copyediting than editing, I guess, but I've often been frustrated with the terrible quality of Tor ebooks. The formatting and spelling and hyphenation &c are frequently awful. The print books seem okay, but I think they just dump the uncorrected e-files into a converter program and leave it at that.

[sabotabby]

Oh, that too. But it's much better than Fernwood, which is atrocious.

[kore]

I remember when I tried and failed to transfer over to the UW press right around the middle of 01, "upselling" myself as a really good proofreader/copyeditor/whatever, and they were like, Oh well, we have the Microsoft programs for all that now.

[sabotabby]

It drives me fucking bonkers. I know most people don't notice but I do!

[kore]

I constantly see typos and homonym (or whatever they're called) errors in the NYT headlines and I'm like, I COULD FIX THAT! When I was new in town I went through a page of the Stranger and corrected all the errors in red ink and submitted it as a job opening (I had heard this was how someone got a proofreading job). They just laughed at me and said they had a proofreader and now I had pissed off the editor. I know ordinary people don't CARE about typos &c, but that's why they should hire us obsessives who DO.

[sabotabby]

I don't miss doing this for a living and I think I was only moderately good at it, but damn if I'm not better than whatever is passing for a copyeditor these days. But that doesn't bother me nearly as much as books that get published and raved about with massive structural flaws. It's because I'm trying to get my book in shape for publication, but I feel like it's already had more editorial passes than most of what I'm reading in the genre.

[kore]

It was one of the only things I was ever great at! lol. I COULDA BEEN A CONTENDAH COPYEDITOR

I think the giant structural flaws are due to people mostly depending on agents to do their editorial work with them now, and being a good agent is a totally different skill from being a good editor. Editors have to be unafraid to say "throw this whole opening out" or "you need to put about five more chapters in here" or "try writing from this POV instead," and agents are more good at "this will sell." And boy you can tell which books sell on high concept and four-five polished chapters and then the author's stuck writing them without any actual editorial assistance.

[sabotabby]

YES THIS. And the process is so laborious that I think no one wants to do that massive work.

And boy you can tell which books sell on high concept and four-five polished chapters and then the author's stuck writing them without any actual editorial assistance.

Holy fuck yes. It's become a pattern.