Editing checklists
Contents
EDITORIAL ASSESSMENT
In performing an editorial assessment, you will want to be sure to address areas of concern that fall into the following areas of story.
Premise
What is the story at the highest conceptual level? For instance, Lord of the Rings is a story about a peace-loving Hobbit who embarks on a perilous quest to destroy a ring and as a result loses the serenity of life as he once knew it. Sometimes this is called an "elevator pitch" or a "log-line", but don't get caught up in being fancy or think how this book would be pitched in a sentence in a way that would capture an audience. Simply try to think of how you'd summarize this story in a sentence for the sake of identifying whether, on a concept level, the story works.
If the summary is, "A young woman goes on a series of adventures and gets in arguments with her friends until finally moving to a new town and deciding to write a book about her life," then the story you are analyzing is not developed at the conceptual level. A good premise is interesting and has a hint of conflict and how it's going to change the protagonist. As the editor doing an editorial assessment, you'll want to be formulating the premise. A story whose premise is well-realized should fall in place quite naturally for you, whereas if you find it difficult to put your finger on the premise there's a good chance the story is either cluttered by, or comprised mostly of, "things that happen" and not a story at its core.
Prescriptive tips
Though difficult and often requiring significant rewriting, a story whose premise has not been realized can be fixed. Your goal to the writer will be to get them to think about their protagonist, critical conflict, and why it matters. Tell them that in pinning this down, it will lead to tightening / rewriting to compensate for the newly found premise.
In the example of, "A young woman goes on a series of adventures and gets in arguments with her friends until finally moving to a new town and deciding to write a book about her life," might really be about a thrill-chaser whose reckless life of parties alienates all her friends but puts her in touch with an unlikely friendship that causes her to see the harm of her ways. You can supply suggestions of what you think the premise is, but be careful in your wording not to invent the story for the writer — point them with examples, with the goal of inspiring them to follow that trail to discover the path authentic to their vision for the book. In the case of the thrill-chaser redemption premise, it might mean the author has to introduce a character who will become a good friend that serves as the counterweight for the protagonist.
In the manuscript you've assessed, where it "falls flat" in the sense of premise, often there is a missing dimension to the story, be it a counterfoil character to create conflict or inner meaning to the conflict. Sometimes there might be too many characters and the remedy is the reverse: narrowing the focus down on an actual protagonist.
Beware of cookie-cutter approaches though. Every work of fiction is unique and some will break the mold. For instance, Game of Thrones involves numerous point of view characters who function like protagonists and the sense of "protagonist" is more abstract in that book, riding along the advancement of a more epic series of events defined by important character's whose lives are interwoven. Premise does not always define whether a book will be interesting. Rather, it is a diagnostic tool for you to dig at if something is wrong on a conceptual level when you sense the book, as a whole, isn't working. But if the book is working spectacularly and you find yourself unable to extract a good premise, you'll be wasting your time as an editor — at this point that's the realm of marketing and copywriting.
Execution
A great idea is meaningless if it is not well-executed. Complement to premise, which is abstract on a high level, is execution, which is abstract on a more fundamental level. Execution is the scene-by-scene, element-by-element realization of the story's premise. When you consider execution, you are thinking about voice, structure, characters, settings, tone, atmosphere, theme, and craft. Like premise, you can only appreciate execution once you've viewed the whole, because some devices might not become apparent until you've viewed read the entire novel. For example, Stephen King in The Shining arbitrarily wanders point of view mid-paragraph between his three characters and often inserts parentheses mid-sentence, which at first is very distracting, but the overall execution and confidence of voice pulls the reader forward and, reading the book as a whole, one can appreciate how the fluid point of view and insertions create a looser, more erratic engagement with the narrative, and this in turn augments the topic of insanity and unreliability of the mind explored in the themes of that book.
When thinking about execution, your goal is to try and rise above your own subjective tastes, where various elements might seem "off", from a relative or strict "by the rules" basis. Instead, you want to consider all the unique approaches the author has taken and the net impact they have on the reader. In doing so, try to find incongruities. What particular aspects of execution seem to contradict others? Does the author present a childish voice and story that would be better suited to readers ages 14-16 but frequently includes swears? Does the author use multiple point of views but seems to favor one particular character whose importance in the overall story doesn't seem to justify the choice?
Prescriptive tips
As with premise, your advice here can point the author toward significant rewrites. Be careful in your wording here. You aren't telling the writer they have to change these given issues, only pointing out the effect they are having and making sure they are aware of the incongruity it will have with readers. It's possible the writer of the book with the childish voice is not writing for YA and will as a result want to overhaul the book to give a more mature voice. It's also possible they are deliberately keeping the childish voice and will market the book for adults, in which case the problem they will have to face (and which you would help them with in discussion) is how will such a book appeal to adults, for instance is it a detective homicide book told from a child's point of view with the purpose of giving us a child's perspective on crime? The point is: be aware when you're giving direction regarding overall execution that in doing so, the author likely has intentions for the effects they've created, which means the most effective advice takes into consideration anticipated audience.
