Having completed phase one of my ghostwriting assignment (the first twelve chapters of the novel), I’m now deep into phase two. However, my timescale is so tight, and my editors are so efficient, that I’ve just received a complete set of notes on phase one.
Getting feedback as you go along is a good thing. I’m pleased to say the first chapters were positively received. The editorial notes are well-targeted, intelligent and immensely helpful, although, upon receiving them, I naturally experienced the Five Stages of Editorial Feedback (every writer goes through them; if they tell you they don’t, they’re lying). There’s a single instance instance of moving goalposts: I need to rewrite an early passage because of last-minute tweaks to the storyline. That’s a hazard of this kind of project, but nothing too troublesome.
The rest of the edit comprises remarks ranging from “Can you rephrase to avoid repetition?” or “How does [this character] know this [fact]? Can you clarify please?” In addition, there’s the usual grab-bag of word replacements and sentence deletions, the occasional restructuring of paragraphs, adjusting a character’s reaction to a particular event, and so on. Standard copy editing stuff. There’s also a heartwarming mix of comments like “Wow!” and “Super!” I even appear to have brought some of the editors close to tears! I mention these latter not out of any desire for self-aggrandisement, but to illustrate the way a good editorial team will treat the process of copy editing as a complete communication tool. Geography means I’m over a hundred miles distant from these folks yet, reading the edit, I feel like we’re in the same room.
Most importantly of all, I can use the phase one notes to inform my writing in phases two and three. One issue that cropped up regularly was a tendency of mine to “tell.” In other words, I fell into the trap of using an omniscient authorial voice, thus creating undesirable distance between the reader and the POV character. I think this is a product of writing a little too fast, and of the time it’s therefore taken for me to get properly into the characters’ heads. I’ve recorded in these diaries how, early on, I was writing a little mechanically. That went away as I got deeper into the MS, and I reckon it’s gone altogether now; I’m living and breathing the story. That alone should make my “telling habit” go away. If not, I’m aware of it now, and that should keep me on my toes.
Graham Edwards 